Don’t believe anything you hear about sexting causing an increase in teen pregnancy. There is no way it can be true. How can I say that? Because teen pregnancy in the US has plummeted since 2007. “For five years now, America’s teen birth rate has plummeted at an unprecedented rate, falling faster and faster. Between […]
Tag Archives | sexting
About our strange way of understanding teen sexting
Guest post by Nina Funnell Based on her many thoughtful conversations with youth and adults about sexting over several years, Australian researcher and author Nina Funnell – who I met and heard speak at an Internet safety conference in Sydney last year – offers adults the rare opportunity to step outside the box of conditioned, […]
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Enabling peer protection: Knowledge is empowerment
From infancy on up we learn what’s right and wrong, based on our families’ and, later, peers’ values. That’s important. It develops that inner guidance system – or “moral compass,” as it’s sometimes called – that makes for safer, smoother navigation through life. But that isn’t all kids need as they grow and find their […]
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Virginia teen sexting case: (Somewhat) reduced injustice
It was a picture-perfect example of how a law intended to protect children can be used to victimize them. But the juvenile judge didn’t comment on the perversion of justice – or the prosecution’s victimization of a teenager by ordering police to photograph the boy’s genitals and threatening even more abusive treatment. He just eased […]
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‘Revenge porn': Exposing cruel disclosure
This is a sidebar to my earlier post about social norms as one of the solutions to social cruelty online, zooming in on one form of it. “Revenge porn” needs to be understood and exposed for what it is so it can be neutralized. Its power to harm will lessen as we stigmatize the shaming […]
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Textbook case of what NOT to do in teen sexting cases
The Washington Post has done some important reporting on a teen sexting case in Virginia, spotlighting what could (should) go down in history as a textbook example of how police can abuse rather than enforce child pornography law in the digital age. A 17-year-old boy “is facing felony counts of manufacturing and distributing child pornography,” […]
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Social media major factor in teens’ social & sex lives: Australia study
With its 5th national study of Australian teens’ sexual attitudes, behaviors and health since 1992, La Trobe University for the first time took a careful look at social media’s role in their social and sexual lives, finding that it plays a significant one. “Our survey clearly shows the major role social media has in the […]
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Youth sexuality, romance & digital media in Canada: Study
When MediaSmarts conducted its focus groups with young Canadians, it heard quite a bit about the important role the Internet plays in their “exploring and learning about sexuality and relationships,” the Canadian digital literacy organization says. But the authors write that the survey itself – of 5,000+ students in grades 4-11 – suggests that that […]
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‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc., Part 3: Bias in the news coverage
Sexting is the latest subject of “intersecting panics about technology, youth, sexuality, raunch culture and celebrity,” Australian author and research Nina Funnell wrote me after I heard her speak in Sydney in March. “While these panics all pre-existed the phenomenon of sexting, they have found new life and form” with it. Along with her qualitative […]
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