Rosalind Wiseman

Family Circle Magazine
January 2010

In the name of fun and flirtation, girls and boys alike are sending one another explicit photos and messages on their cell phones, with potentially lifelong consequences. It’s tech-sharing-gone-wild that parents cannot ignore.

It’s a normal Monday evening. You’re making dinner while your husband helps your 9-year-old son with his homework at the kitchen table and your 14-year-old daughter sits nearby texting on her cell. A few minutes later she goes to her room, flips open her phone, pulls up her shirt, takes a picture, adds a text that says, “u like?” and pushes send. She deletes the photo from her phone’s memory card, comes back out and starts setting the table. It’s taken all of two minutes and you don’t have a clue what she just did.

This scenario, or something like it, is happening all over the country. Every day, tweens and teens are sexting—using cell phones to take, send and forward photographs and videos of themselves seminaked, totally naked or in sexually suggestive poses. Thirty percent of girls 9 to 15 said they’ve sent explicit messages or photos of themselves, according to a survey conducted by the research and marketing group AK Tweens. In 2008 the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that 20% of kids 13 to 19 had sent partially or completely nude pictures of themselves or someone they knew.

I first encountered sexting four years ago. I’d just taught an eighth grade class a lesson from my Owning Up Curriculum (Research Press) on cyberbullying and gossiping. As the other students filed out of the room, a girl approached me in tears and told me that she’d sent a photo of herself, sitting topless on her bed, in response to a request from a boy she liked. Though he’d promised not to, he had forwarded it to all his friends. Now she was feeling humiliated, angry and stupid for trusting him—and so embarrassed she could barely hold her head up.

And that’s how it starts. The simple if inappropriate exchange between two kids turns into an out-of-control and often devastating event. In one school where I worked, a picture was forwarded over 1,500 times in a week. Forty-four percent of teens in one study said it’s common for sexts to be shared with someone other than the intended recipient.

You have to ask yourself, as I did that day while consoling the eighth-grader, why on earth would kids voluntarily send graphic pictures of themselves? I mean, a reasonable 14-year-old wouldn’t stand in front of a guy she likes, take off her clothes and ask, “Now do you like me?” And she certainly wouldn’t risk letting that boy invite all of his friends to weigh in on the decision.

The quick answer is immaturity, inability to foresee consequences and a craving for attention fed by our celebrity-obsessed culture. Beyond that, technology—71% of kids 12 to 17 own cell phones—means normal developmental tasks get pushed to the max. Tweens, at the stage when they’re first moving beyond the family, are forming peer bonds that involve a certain amount of experimentation and social risk-taking. Do you remember playing Truth or Dare with your friends at a slumber party? A girl would challenge someone to make a crank call to a boy she liked. When it was over it was over. Now girls dare one another to take pictures in their underwear and send them to a boy, and create an image that lives on forever.

For many teens, sexting is flirting on steroids. “My 16-year-old son met a girl at a party,” says Alice, a Cleveland mother who like other parents in the story didn’t want her real name used. “She started sending him pictures of herself half-dressed in sexy positions as well as links to porn sites. He talked about it with his father but was too mortified to tell me. Finally he and my husband figured out a way to block her messages.” Most likely the girl who sexted Alice’s son believed her behavior would make her seem confident and fun, says Rachel Simmons, author of The Curse of the Good Girl (Penguin Press).

“Girls are socialized to think that showing off their sexuality makes them powerful,” she adds. “A cell phone with a camera is a loudspeaker to communicate that.”

Boys and girls are sexting in equal numbers, but in my experience their motives differ dramatically. While girls tend to pose provocatively to get a guy’s attention, a boy will take a close-up of his penis as a way to be funny or to upgrade his social status with his friends. Girls are more likely to be upset by these very graphic sexts, and will go to an adult sooner—which means the event stays private. Boys, in contrast, freely solicit and forward sexts from girls. In a world where pornography is so accessible that having it is no big deal, a boy’s ability to convince a classmate to send sexual pictures becomes the newest way to prove his masculinity to his peers.

Either way, a huge problem with sexting, says Simmons, is that it turns kids into objects to be marketed, which can interfere with their ability to form rewarding relationships. “Teens caught up in sexting are focusing on what other people want and think instead of what they authentically feel,” she says. Out of touch with emotions, they miss out on a basic task of growing up: deciding for themselves what they like and value, and who they really are as a person.

The consequences of sexting can involve widespread public embarrassment and humiliation that’s tough to live down, says Susan Lipkins, Ph.D., a psychologist specializing in kids’ social issues. And the overall experience can be devastating.

“When you’re in the heat of adolescence, one thing happens and you mistakenly think it represents your entire life,” says Sharon Maxwell, Ph.D., author of The Talk (Avery). “You think, ‘I’m a loser. I’m a slut.’ And you have no sense that this is just a chapter in your life, not the whole book.”

In one especially tragic case, Jessica Logan, a senior at Sycamore High School in Cincinnati, was so overwhelmed by public harassment after her ex-boyfriend forwarded a nude picture of her that she hung herself. An extreme case, yes, but it’s what can happen because kids’ brains aren’t yet capable of taking the long view.

More generally, sexting creates mayhem for education. Of the 53 schools I visited in the last year, most had struggled with it, sending administrators and teachers scrambling to respond effectively. In the worst case, by the time I got to the school, six kids had been suspended and the entire student body had seen the photos. Everybody was affected. “I can guarantee that if a student has a sext ripping through the building she’s going to be too freaked out to learn anything,” says Julia Taylor, a counselor at Apex High School in North Carolina. As schools become environments where students’ sexual pictures are used to humiliate and entertain, even kids who aren’t directly participating have to deal with the fallout.

“My daughter is so not ready for this,” says Liz, the mother of a 12-year-old middle schooler. “A girl we know got a photo where a boy exposed himself and my daughter heard about it. ‘Mom, it’s gross,’ she told me.”

Another frightening scenario is when a sexter gets caught up in the legal system. Sexting is so new that the only laws available to prosecutors, ironically, are those intended to protect children from child pornography. Right now laws don’t distinguish between a 14-year-old who sends a photo of her breasts to someone her age, and a pedophile. Either, if convicted, could have to register as a sex offender. Recent arrests in the headlines have involved three Pennsylvania high school girls who sent photos and the three boys who received them; a Florida 18-year-old who forwarded pictures of his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend; and a 13-year-old Texas boy caught with a photo someone had sent to his phone.

Some lawmakers are already working to decriminalize sexting or allow officials more discretion regarding how a young offender is charged. And, fortunately, sexting prosecutions are pretty rare, which puts the issue back where all but the most egregious cases belong—with the responsible adults in kids’ everyday lives. “It’s not somebody else’s tweens and teens who are doing this,” says Denise Restauri, founder and CEO of AK Tweens. “It’s happening in homes where parents are responsible and involved. Denial is not an option.” The good news is that as kids learn more about the problems, they’ll probably be less likely to hit that send button. “That’s the usual pattern,” says Restauri. “New tech starts out like the Wild West for kids, then settles down when parents help them reel in the behavior.”

Damage Control

Since you can’t just cross your fingers and hope kids will do the right thing, you’d better be prepared for anything.

Your first defense is general surveillance. Scanning your child’s phone every night before you go to bed isn’t necessary, but you should periodically check what she’s getting and sending. Some service providers allow you to monitor privately from your computer, which keeps kids cautious because they don’t know when you’re looking.

Beyond that, spell out your sexting rules and the consequences for breaking them. Don’t just say, “I better not hear about you sexting.” Instead, start a conversation by asking your child, in private, what kinds of things he’s seen or heard. If he’s not willing to spill, say, “It’s easy to convince yourself it’s okay to send sexual pictures to get attention. If you do, know that you’ll lose control of how public it becomes. But we’ve raised you to respect your body and to treat other people decently. Sending graphic pictures goes against that, so if you do it, I’ll take away your phone until I feel that you can use one responsibly.”

And if the sext has already left the phone? It’s never too late to intervene.

Sexting trouble #1

» The send

Usually a parent discovers from public gossip that her child has sexted. A teen who’s done this feels humiliated and paranoid that everyone knows about it.

Don’t make things worse by saying, “What were you thinking?” Do say, “I’m really sorry this is happening to you. The first thing we’re going to do is contact all the people who might have the picture, tell them your parents know and ask them to delete it.”

After your initial shock wears off, talk to her about why she sent it. If it was simply a mindless impulse, remind her of the rules. But if she desperately wanted to get a boy’s attention, you need to give her guidance to build her sense of self apart from the reactions she gets from males. If your child seems to feel too uncomfortable to talk with you, ask whether she’d rather speak to another adult you both trust.

Then take away her phone for a month. This is not just a natural consequence—it’s also the only way to stop the gossip mill. She’ll probably protest that she needs her phone to try to make the whole thing go away. Tell her that anything she attempts will only make things worse, and the best fix is to hold her head high in real life and detach herself from what people are saying. If they tease, suggest she respond, “I made a big mistake. By bringing it up you’re making me feel bad. I wouldn’t do that to you if you were in my situation.”

Sexting trouble #2

» The forward

If your tween or teen received a sext and sent it on to friends, he knowingly participated in someone’s embarrassment.

Say, “I know you didn’t originally send the picture, but I’m holding you responsible because your actions contributed to someone’s humiliation. You will delete the picture from your phone and wherever you posted it, and you will tell everyone you sent it to that your parents know who they are. You have to apologize to everybody affected and you will lose cell phone and computer privileges for two weeks.”

Sexting trouble #3

» The pressure

If you find out your son or daughter manipulated someone into sending a picture, say, “We’ve got a big problem. It seems you think you can exploit someone’s need for attention. First, I want you to write a letter apologizing to the person and another letter to the parents. You will also lose all phone and computer privileges for a month, and forget about going to that concert. Depending on how maturely you take responsibility, I will evaluate returning your privileges after the month is over.”

No matter what, do not back down. You haven’t invested so much time and energy in your kids to lose your moral authority and credibility now.

This article originially appeared in the January 2010 Edition of Family Circle Magazine