Last week, GeekyMom blogged about sexting and the Oprah show on sex. Both topics have been hot topics around here lately. I suppose the chattering class is all on the same page again.
A boy sent a neighbor girl a picture of a naked woman and a picture of himself without a shirt on. Later, another boy left her a phone message that said that he wanted to f@ck her. She's ten.
Our town has had some problems with pictures of teenage boys sending around pictures of their naked girlfriends using the server for the school district. There was a lot of outrage and threats that the school could be charged with the distribution of child pornography.
A student recently handed in a term paper with a highly inappropriate paragraph buried within a seemingly normal paper on political theory. He claims that a friend wrote it without his knowledge. My mom stopped by after school, and I showed her the paragraph. She was shocked that anybody could write something like that. She referenced the Oprah show and said that teenagers were being robbed of their childhoods by the experts on Oprah and that it was leading to all types of deviant behavior.
Mom was particularly upset about the sexologist who advised women to buy vibrators for their teenager daughters.
I'm more concerned about these incidents than GeekyMom, but less concerned than my mom. Sexting is harassment. It is done to intimidate and frighten the recipient. The person who sends it gets off on intimidating the other. And technology has opened up new doors for harassment. I'm not sure if this is a widespread problem, as my mom believes. After watching that Oprah show, Mom was so upset that she offered to pay for my kids to attend Catholic schools.
We discussed this issue in the past, but these incidents have made me concerned again.
