Pew Research conducted a survey of 800 teenagers between the ages of 12 to 17 with a parent of guardian in the room about sexting, and of those only 4% admitted to sending nude pictures of themselves, while 15% said they’ve received naked images of other teens. The older a teenager gets, the more likely it is that he or she has committed the act of sexting, with 8% of 17 year olds saying that they’ve sent nude images of themselves and 30% saying they’ve received images from others. Out of the teenagers who paid their own phone bill, 17% of them admitted to sexting while only 3% of the teenagers whose mommy and daddy pay the bill say they’ve done the digital naked polka. These are numbers given out with a parent in the room, imagine how high the sexting rate really is if the kids answering the questions didn’t fear getting the shit beat out of them when they got home. Either way, the 27 page report is filled with hilarious quotes, definitely a recommended read:
“If a guy wants to hookup with you, he’ll send a pictures of his private parts or a naked picture of him[self]. It happens about 10 times a month,” explained one older high school girl. “It’s mostly the guys I date or just a guy that…really wants to hook up with you. I’m not really that type of person [who sends sexts], but I have friends who have.”
“This girl sent pictures to her boyfriend,” wrote one older high school boy. “Then they broke up and he sent them to his friend, who sent them to like everyone in my school. Then she was supposed to come to my school because she got kicked out of her school because it was a Catholic school … it ruined high school for her.”
And the most bullshit answer I’ve ever heard, something that only a kid who is afraid of his mother would say: “Well one time this crazy girl who had liked me sent me a nude picture of her for no reason. This was the only time. It was someone I knew for a while but we began to not be friends. [Sending the images was] over the line because they were graphic and completely uncalled for.”
I have to quote Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, who gave this speech at Le Web and Supernova:
“One of the reasons why people fear the technologies we make are because they make thing visible that we don’t like. Parents aren’t comfortable seeing the bullying and harassment that happens everyday in schools around the country. So they blame the technology for making what has always been there more visible. Bullying isn’t radically on the rise, but it is most distinctly more visible now than ever before.”
Replace bullying with sexting and you get the exact idea of how I feel. Sexting is simply the 21st century version of “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine”.
Leave kids alone. Let them be kids.