In today’s generation, teenagers have not known a life without technology. To them, it is second nature. Teenagers, with their raging hormones and access to technology, are inevitably going to discover sexting especially since it is growing due to its popularity in social media. It is more common than people may think. To minors it may seem like a harmless act to explore their sexuality. However, the law says otherwise. If they engage in sexting, adolescents can find themselves with a criminal charge. To gain a clearer understanding of the controversial issue on teen sexting, it is essential to know the development of adolescents, the impact sexting has on teens, and finally the sex laws set that relate to sexting. Adolescence is a time …show more content…
“Unlike physical pictures, they’re endlessly easy to copy, save” and “they’re immediately and personally identifiable” (Dewey). In addition, a lot of teens think as long as their face is not in it that they are safe. However, even with no face, the sext holds other information such as a phone number, location, or even your cell phone carrier (Dewey). By sending a sext, a teenager is trusting that person to keep their information private, but unfortunately, that is not always the case. In the common case where a sext is distributed without consent, there are negative consequences for the teen who essentially produced the sext. This consists bullying, sexual harassment (“US Sexting Laws”), and even stalking, especially if the sext falls into the hands of a sexual predator (La Mance). Moreover, it damages an adolescent’s reputation, this includes harsh outcomes if it goes against a social idea such as religion (Mello) and it may cause difficulties with a potential school or employer (“US Sexting Laws”). Even if the sext is not distributed there is always the risk of manipulation in a relationship, which puts the sender in a difficult situation because they do not want any of the negative institutional effects. As a result of these potential scenarios, the developing teen’s emotional state is susceptible to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, fear, loss of self-esteem and …show more content…
In the United States, a minor can be tried as an adult starting at thirteen years of age, depending on the crime and in certain circumstances, almost every state now allows for youths below the age of 18 to be tried as adults (Hollingsworth). Although these rules vary from state to state. In addition thirty four states in the United States including District of Columbia have adopted a revenge porn law (). Revenge porn is “nonconsensual pornography, defined as the distribution of sexually graphic images of individuals without their consent. This includes both images originally obtained without consent (e.g. by using hidden cameras, hacking phones, or recording sexual assaults) as well as images consensually obtained within the context of an intimate relationship” (). One of the major risks of sexting is the uncertainty that the person receiving the sext can distribute it without the sender’s consent and ultimately ruin the sender’s reputation. While sharing naked photos of adults is often times a misdemeanor, sharing any nude or sexual images of children under the age of 18 is considered child
Parents also need to educate themselves about the problem of "sexting", including the potential issues of this behavior, and the resources which can help them address the issue with their children. (Social Policy Law, 2015)
Americans recently discovered an emerging trend known as adolescent sexting. Sexting has been defined as the sending or receiving of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images, messages, or video through a cellphone or the Internet. Sexting can also be referred to as sending nudes. As Guidance Counselors at a High School it is imperative that we educate ourselves and our students on the consequences sexting may have. Many students fail to realize that once the photos or messages are sent, there is no turning back. Those images/messages may be forwarded to audiences via the internet and various social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat etc, causing humiliation, depression and in some cases even causing suicide.
She explains that the girls she interviewed were not as much devastated or surprised, but betrayed and embarrassed. She highlights the difference between whether the teens are exploring their sexuality or being exploited. She stresses that parents need not overreact, otherwise causing a bigger disaster than the one in the first place. With a rise in the use of technology, the issue of sexting is going to become an even bigger issue. She even brought up the double standard that girls face; if they send pictures, they are a “slut”, but if they do not, they are a “prude”, while boys are not judged whether they sext or
Sexting is imprudent, untoward, and unfortunately - not all that uncommon. In a recent study of college freshmen, thirty-one percent of the participants reported sending a sexting image of themselves in high school to someone else using a cell phone (Martinez-Prather, 28).This action is a felony crime in Kansas, punishable by up to thirty-four years in jail, a substantial fine, and inclusion on the registered sexual offender list for life (Mobile Media Guard). While this may seem like excessive punishment for sexting, this punishment in not specifically for sexing. Since Kansas has no laws directly related to sexting, when minors are involved in sexting, the laws they have broken are those
In this article it explains how two teenagers were criminally charged for sending nudes to each other showing the consequences many states face when they prosecute sexting. Like most states, North Carolina has yet to update child pornography laws used to charge minors who are caught sexting and the laws can carry stiff penalties including prison time. The North Carolina case began when nude photos were found on the boy’s phone in late 2014. It led to a year of uncertainty for the teens, who are now 17, until they struck deals in recent weeks to reduce the charges and give them a pathway to clearing their records.
Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t… If You’re A Girl: Relational and Normative Contexts of Adolescent Sexting in the United States is a study by which researchers Julia R. Lippman and Scott W. Campbell investigate the teenage phenomenon of sexting. Their study looks at the
In the US today Americans recently discovered an emerging trend known as adolescent sexting. Sexting has been defined as the sending or receiving of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images, messages, or video through a cellphone or the Internet; sexting can also be referred to as sending nudes. As Guidance Counselors at a High School it is imperative that we educate ourselves and our students on the consequences sexting may have. Many students fail to realize that once the photos or messages are sent there is no turning back. Those images/messages may be forwarded to audiences via the internet and various social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat etc. causing humiliation, depression and in some cases even causing suicide.
Sexting has been all over the news. Of course its normal for someone to want to send a naughty picture to the significant other, but now we have teens (and even pre-teens) sending nude pictures to get attention from someone of the opposite sex. The pictures usually end up all over the teens school. We live in a new day and age, but most adults would be mortified if a nude picture of them was seen by someone that wasn’t
This course has been an eye opening and empowering experience. It has encouraged me and reaffirmed my thoughts on debt, but it has also brought to my awareness that although saving money is great, not investing any of it is a great mistake.
Social media has become an outlet for teenagers to communicate constantly, monitor each other’s lives, and control what they want others to see. As social media is becoming more and more popular, more teenage moral panics are occurring. A moral panic is defined as the “fear of a new technology’s or cultural form’s negative impact outside of parental control.” (Jackson) Throughout these past few years, there have been an endless amount of teenage moral panics. Snapchat is an application that has caused a great amount of controversy. With the Snapchat application, you get to control how long the person you send a photo to can view that photo before it disappears. The problem with this is that you can take a snapshot of the photo before it disappears. Snapchat has become to be a teenage moral panic; more specifically Snapchat “sexting”, which is “the act of sending sexual messages and pictures to another person through phones or the internet.”(Klower) On Snapchat parents cannot control what their teenagers are sending and to who their teenagers are sending pictures and videos to. Therefore, teenagers feel a sense of privacy, and use the application to sext, which can lead to various negative behaviors.
This request is to backfill a position left open by the termination of Chandies Williamson. Chandies was terminated due to personnel issues around customer service.
Even with the dangerous developments in social media over the past several years, many parents have chosen to allow their children to use these sites despite age restrictions. There are three reasons to argue for age restrictions on social media sites: lack of supervision by parents, targeting of children by pedophiles, and the prevalence of children falsifying their age. The ability of pedophiles to conceivably target children with social media proves that this is an issue that parents need to examine so that they may better protect their children. The threat from pedophiles causes an enormous problem for millions of children on social media sites. Unfortunately, Western Daily Press states that “Pedophiles can get away with grooming young teenagers on social media sites.” My essay will argue that age restrictions need to be in place, and additional regulations should ensure that law enforcement agencies have the tools required to supervise underage children 's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Quoting from Business Wire, “three out of four parents feel that social network sites are not protecting children.” According to Irish Independent, “four out of ten children falsify their age” when using social media. I will also argue that additional research on this topic can be used to raise the awareness of parents, and can also help to alert the children themselves to the danger. My essay will also examine questions, such as: How can social media sites protect
Although sexting is a bigger issue if underage teens are participating, it’s not just teens that are getting in trouble with the law for sexting. A psychologist and New York author has conducted a survey of 323 anonymous volunteers to explore their attitudes toward the sexting experience. “Basically, sexters feel very positively towards sexting, whereas non-sexters think it’s a terrible idea” “People [aged] 13 to 19 are actively involved in sexting, but those [between] 20 to 26 are even more involved.” In June
Cyberbullying is one of the main issues overtaking society today in the opinions of seventy six percent of people from the ages of fourteen to twenty four. Fifty six percent of the people in this age group are the victims of cyberbullying through both digital and social media. Another problem, according to seventy one percent of people, is sexting, when a person receives or sends inappropriate sexual messages. One out of every three people suffers from sexting habits, and fifty one percent of people from the ages of fourteen to twenty four have admitted to it. Ten percent of these people had not met the recipient of the messages in person, and about half of the people were under pressure to send these violating messages. Digital abuse in relationships is a problem that reaches forty-one percent of couples. Three in ten people are checked on through the media by their partner, and twenty seven percent of the people who are in a relationship have been forced to share the messages they have sent or received with their partner. Last but not least, one out of every two people has observed discrimination through language on social networks. Fifty one percent of people think this is wrong, but forty-six percent of people think it is okay as long as the sender makes it clear that they are joking. Similarly, fifty four percent of people believe close friends can
It was a rainy Monday morning. I was fast asleep in my bed and suddenly there was a loud rumbling noise as if there was an earthquake and all the vessels were falling off the shelf.