This is one of those subjects that just can't be passed over without comment.

As I was surfing through a variety of websites who have similar missions to our own, I ran across a fairly new term.... "Sexting".

I decided to go to Wikipedia and see what they had to say on this phenom and wasn't surprised to see that its been around awhile. Apparently they just finally put a name to it.

According to Wikkipedia "
Sexting was reported as early as 2005 in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine,[1] and has since been described as taking place worldwide.[2] It has been reported in the U.K.,[1] Australia,[3] New Zealand,[2] the U.S.,[4] and Canada.

A January 2009 survey of 1,200 teenagers by Burlington, Vermont television station WCAX claimed that one in five had sent explicit photos of themselves. [5] A sociologist at Colorado College interviewed 80 children and believes this claim is overblown; she claims; "I had them go through their last ten messages, their last ten photos and I never saw it".[6]

A 2009 UK survey found that 38% of under-18s had "received an offensive or distressing sexual image via text or email".[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting

There are numerous social issues entangled in this newest web of social exploitation. The first being of course that the communications are often so explicit as to be considered pornographic.

I decided to do some additional searches and found a blog who's name I'm not going to mention here, where someone had asked about the word Sexting and what it meant. One young woman responded with this (only part of the post) " My brother is all about Sexting. What Sexting is can be described as teenagers (boys and girls) having sex over the phone by sending erotic, dirty, disgusting, flirty, loving text messages with hits to meet up later for sex. So is Sexting the new hook up line? Apparently not, although Sexting is all about getting down and dirty it doesn't always happy, maybe 30% of the time does Sexting actually end up with the teenagers having sex. I first heard about it from my brother but have been hearing a lot more about Sexting online and on TV shows on stations like MTV. Another reason Sexting is so popular is that parents can listen in. Normally the teenages would have talk sex and dirty talk over the phone but then the parents can hear everything which I think is what led to Sexting. Parents can't listen in, and teenagers can delete the messages when they are done with you know what."

Ok, the "you know what" intrigued me further, so I did some more gooogling and found this: " Wasn't able to find any one thing specific, but did learn that there is a program or app (application) out there that can do anything you need. All you have to do is search for it, and believe me these kids know how to search.

In continuing to search I found sites that told what kinds of acronyms they use to do this new social outlet.

In our Parenting Your Kids Away from Abuse parent guide we have four pages of acroymns that have been being used for some time, but now have hundreds more that we will be adding for next year's updated manual.

The concern from this writer's standpoint is that even if these kids aren't having actual physical sex to begin with and are just practicing "phone sex", the next obvious step is real time sex. The sweetness and joy that is experienced between to people who fall in love and decide on a life together is a far cry from what these kids are participating in. It is pure and simple indulging their newly found sexual appetite in a demeaning and demoralizing way.

This is also a perfect lead in for any sexual predator who wants to seduce a young girl who is already sexually motivated.

The best way to slow the wave of sexual promiscuity that is sweeping the country and the rest of the world where kids have internet and cell phone access is through education. Teaching the parents what to watch for in the text messaging their kids do, and teaching the teens and preteens about the reasons this is harmful to their sexual and social development and give them positive alternatives to these sexual activities.

Susan Rogers
Director
Safety Awareness & Family Education Network, Inc.
800-643-3310

For comments please email to director@safenetwork.org

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