There’s apparently a new trend of sexting (sex texting) sweeping the world. People of all ages have moved on from phone and cyber sex and now go straight for the jugular, sending pictures of themselves in a state of undress via SMS text messages. Which is fine for adults but a little more controversial if the sender or recipient is an underage teenager.

Teenagers are a strange bunch. Every generation of teenagers is different from the last but they all share similarities, being leaders of fashion, heavy users of technology, and doing everything in their power to annoy anyone older than themselves. They also, by a quirk of nature, are probably the horniest people on the planet, with puberty and raging hormones making them turn from children who hate the opposite sex to adults who would do anything in their power to get the opposite sex to notice them in the blink of an eye.

Sex is an unavoidable and necessary part of life, and technology has always played a part. But gone are the days when a dirty magazine or VHS tape was handed around. Now, teenagers are more likely to take a quick snapshot of certain usually hidden body parts and send it to a potential new partner.

According to BBC News, a British charity called Beatbullying recently surveyed 2,094 teenagers between the ages of 11 and 18. Thirty-eight percent of the respondents claim to have received sexual images via electronic means, with 55 percent stating they’d the images via a text message on their cellphone. Other methods include via email or a social network such as Facebook, MySpace, or Bebo.

Beatbullying and the British government see this as a major problem, with the charity’s chief executive, Emma-Jane Cross, saying:

We don’t want to inhibit young people in their exploration of sexuality, but it is important that parents and schools are aware that ’sexting’ is a significant issue among our children and young people, so together we can act to stop this kind of behavior before it escalates into something far more problematic.

I fail to see what the big panic is in this context. If this is two young people communicating with each other in this way then there’s really nothing any parent or legislative body is going to do to stop it. And really, it’s no different than what teenagers have been doing for decades or even centuries, using each other to learn about sex and the opposite gender.

However, there is a darker side to this. Some teenagers have been bullied by having a personal picture of themselves spread around the school via the same method. Which clearly isn’t very nice. Plus there is the danger, especially on social networking sites, or pedophiles gaining access to the pictures. Which is something that everyone would surely want to avoid.

In America some teenagers have actually been charged with child porn offenses for uploading pictures of themselves to social networking sites.

Common sense needs to prevail, with teenagers told of the dangers involved with sexting. But as I said before, they’re a law unto themselves and will continue to get their kicks however they see fit. We were all just as bad at that age in different ways.

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Entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 9:21 pm under Amusing, Cell phones, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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