Sexting

Parents, it is time for another vocabulary lesson. Are you familiar with the term “sexting”? It refers to the new teen craze of distributing nude and semi-nude self-portraits electronically. As you can imagine that usually turns out badly, but now prosecutors have begun to charge teens who send and receive these racy pictures with child pornography and other serious felonies.

So what can you as a parent do? To find these pictures you may need to check your child’s cell phone manually to see what is on there and your ability to do that should be part of your contract with them to own and use the cell phone. Kids need to be reminded that while sending these kinds of pictures now might be fun and exciting, those pictures can go astray and even if this is some person they have strong feelings about right now, that person may not reciprocate those feelings now or in the future.

But don’t panic. Distributing these kinds of pictures isn’t a new thing for teens to do and we need to remind ourselves that this is only the technology making that easier. Kids need to remember that they must learn to share selectively – this isn’t kindergarten anymore.