Sexting is a form of texting where cell-phone users exchange pictures or videos of a graphic, sexual nature.
Here are some of the reality today’s families are facing:
• 75 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds own cell phones, and 88 percent of those use text messaging. Teens send an average of 3146 texts per month, and kids ages 9 to 12 send 1146 texts a month.1 While these statistics are shocking, they are not surprising. Cell phones are glued to the hands of kids everywhere, at school, at home, at the mall, and so on. And they are the technological tool used in “sexting.” Did you know that:
• 20 percent of teens have sent or posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves.
• 39 percent of teens have sent or posted sexually suggestive messages.
Of those who have sent or posted sexually suggestive messages:
• 71 percent of teen girls and 67 percent of teen boys say they sent or posted this content to a boyfriend or girlfriend.
• 21 percent of teen girls and 39 percent of teen boys say they have sent such content to someone they wanted to date.
• 66 percent of teen girls and 60 percent of teen boys say they did so to be “fun or flirtatious.”
• 40 percent of teen girls say they sent sexually suggestive messages or images as “a joke.”2
While teens may think sexting is just “flirty fun,” it is actually considered a felony. Over the last few years, numerous teens have been prosecuted as sex offenders for sending and receiving sexual images on their phones. Legally, sexting is creating child pornography, and forwarding images is seen as trafficking in child pornography. Teens tend to think that sexting is a private thing, that no one else will see, but images are easily and commonly shared among their friends.
Youth specialist Al Menconi provides us with five practical ideas and suggestions:
• Carefully evaluate whether or not your kids need texting on their cell phones.
• Make rules about when and where. No texting during meals, during class, on family outings. Oh, and turn the phone off at night!
• No texting while they should be concentrating on something else. This includes driving—nearly half of teens admit to texting while driving, walking, or having a conversation with someone else. In several states, texting while driving is against the law.
• Establish consequences for misuse—for example, cheating, inappropriate messages, sexual communication, and so on. These are all no-go’s. Want to make your point? Take your kid’s phone away for a week.
• If you suspect your kids aren’t texting appropriately, you can always look at their messages. Yes, it feels like snooping, but our first job as parents is to ensure that our kids use powerful technologies safely and responsibly.3
God has created human beings as sexual beings. Our kids are going to express their sexuality, either in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. Sex educator Logan Levkoff says, “Kids are looking for ways to express their sexuality, especially when they’re told, ‘Don’t go out and do it.’ It’s not a real surprise that teens use technology to express their sexuality…without doing anything physically.”4
Rather than just giving our kids do’s and don’ts, we can use the topic of sexting to engage them in a conversation about this phenomenon. Take these opportunities to teach your kids about God’s design for sexuality. The two reasons our kids are most likely engaging in sexting in the first place is to express their sexuality and to fit in with their peers. In this vulnerable stage of life, they are longing to be accepted, just as we all long to be accepted. As you teach your kids about sex you are actually guiding them through their newly emerging sexual feelings. And, as you do, they will learn to express those feelings in healthy ways rather than expressing them inappropriately as it is so often done at school, on TV, or on the Internet.