Re: Generation sexting: What teenage girls really get up to on the internet should chill every parent

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:20:53 -0700 (PDT), Webmanager_CritEst
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Generation sexting: What teenage girls really get up to on the
internet should chill every parent

By Penny Marshall

Last updated at 10:33 AM on 18th March 2009

Like a real porn star, Becky is heavily made up and lying naked on the
bed as the camera flashes. She could be just another glamorous model
as she poses provocatively with practised moves. But she isn't.
Shockingly, Becky is just 17 and still at school. She's filming
herself in a friend's bedroom in a large, detached house in leafy
suburbia as her schoolfriends party downstairs.

Becky has not been coerced into this degrading behaviour. She is
posing on her own, taking photographs of herself not for profit - but
for attention. Welcome to the deeply alarming new world of privileged
British teenagers who have a growing obsession with pornography.

I discovered this trend - one which will horrify parents everywhere -
during a BBC Radio 4 investigation into online pornography.
Generation sexting: More girls are posing provocatively - just for
'harmless fun'

Generation sexting: More girls are posing provocatively - just for
'harmless fun' (picture posed by model)

As a mother of three daughters aged 15, 14 and 12, I am well aware of
the pressures children face online, and the problems adults confront
trying to help them navigate their way through them.

Indeed, it was my concerns about my children's online exposure that
made me take a closer look at this secretive teenage social world.

It's a world - as I was to discover - where boys often boast about the
size of their manhood and their ability to drink alcohol, while girls
flaunt themselves shamelessly, apeing the adult behaviour they see
around them on TV and in magazines.

My guide into this disturbing universe was a pretty A-level student.
I'd come to talk to her and a group of sixth-formers - boys as well as
girls - at their prestigious school about the impact that watching
pornography may be having on today's youngsters.

I certainly was not prepared to hear they were also producing it.

Talking to leading academics, I had already found out that our
children are watching a great deal of porn online - some of it hard-
core - and that its long-term effects could be damaging. I had also
discovered that they are watching it at a very early age, sometimes as
young as eight, as the internet beams it into their bedrooms.

Even taking into account the obvious fact that teenagers are prone to
exaggeration, it became alarmingly clear to me that most of these
teenagers were not exaggerating their involvement with pornography.

'Everyone makes porn - more people than you would expect,' an
articulate sixth-former told me matter-of-factly, before describing
how her 17-year-old friend had photographed herself.

'Over the holidays, I went to a party with people from my old school
and one of the girls was on her bed with nothing on. She had loads and
loads of makeup on, so you could see that she'd thought about it.'

This girl had used her mobile phone to capture her provocative poses
and sent them on afterwards, sometimes unsolicited, to boys - a
disturbing trend that has been dubbed 'sexting'.

'I'm not sure exactly who she sent the photos to, but one of the boys
at this school now has it.'

I asked how usual it was for girls to pose provocatively, or even
pornographically.

'Oh, it's really common,' she told me brightly. 'Most people who have
got a social networking account will have a provocative picture.'
Jessica Logan
Jessica Logan hanged herself after nude pictures were sent around her
school. Her mother Cynthia (right) spoke movingly on American TV about
her tragic loss

Jessica Logan hanged herself after nude pictures were sent around her
school. Her mother Cynthia (right) spoke movingly on American TV about
her tragic loss

Provocative, I learned from talking to teenagers and looking at their
pages, means scantily clad or semi-naked (usually in underwear),
sometimes posing sexually, and always pouting suggestively.

'And there's nudity,' the girl continued. 'And it's not normally the
sluttier girls who do this - it's more likely to be the shy type of
girl who wants to be popular.

'They're the ones who will get easily swayed by boys, because boys
want to see them naked, and they think that if they show them
themselves naked...'

Several girls told me they were often pestered to send explicit photos
of themselves to boys.

'I said no to that,' one confided. 'But I know girls who give in
really easily.'

'It's horrifying and illegal'

For the Radio 4 programme, I spoke to children from a range of public
and state schools. It is certainly not the case that this behaviour is
being perpetrated by those from a deprived background or those who
lack intelligence. In fact, it's the privileged, supposedly brightest
youngsters who are most at risk.

'What some of today's youngsters are doing is, by any civilised,
contemporary standards, obscene,' says John Carr of the UK's
Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety.

'It also happens to be illegal. It's a genuinely new problem which is
the result of the emergence of new technology together with an
increasing cultural tolerance of pornography.

'It's horrifying, and we are only now becoming aware of the full
extent of the problem.

'Publishing any photograph of a child - that's anyone under 18 - which
is of a sexual nature is illegal. So children who put pornographic
photographs of themselves online or share the material via their
mobile phones are, technically, breaking the law.'

So far, 90 children in the UK have been cautioned as a result of
posting sexual material of themselves or their underage friends online
or on their mobile phones.

This is the first generation to become sexually active with the
internet, and the internet is playing its part in the process -
sometimes with horrifying consequences.

'There was a notorious case not so long ago where a 13-year-old girl
took a picture of herself touching herself in an intimate sexual
manner,' says Mr Carr.

'She sent it to her boyfriend, who thought it would be smart to send
it to five of his friends. Within a few hours, the police reckon, it
was on about 1,000 different screens.

'The police managed to trace the girl through the school because she
was wearing her uniform. They treated the case very seriously; but in
the end they didn't prosecute her.'
Jessica Logan posing in happier days. The teenager was a victim of
'sexting'

Jessica Logan posing in happier days. The teenager was a victim of
'sexting'

One of the teenage boys I spoke to described the online humiliation of
a young friend.

'It can really backfire on you, that sort of stuff,' he told me.
'Recently, a friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend. The boy was
very upset and, as a result, sent a video of her to all her friends.

'Obviously she's very upset about this. I think that this sort of
thing happens very often nowadays.'

In the U.S., teenagers filming themselves having sex or posing
provocatively are considered to be a legitimate target for prosecution
by the authorities.

Dr Samuel McQuade, from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New
York, is one the leading world experts on internet safety. He is
alarmed by the rapid rise in what he calls 'peer pseudo-pornography'.

'In Connecticut last autumn, a decision was made to prosecute a 12-
year-old girl for allegedly having taken pictures of herself without
clothes on and sending them to boys of a similar age,' says Dr
McQuade.

'And this is not an isolated case. In the U.S., there have been other
children who have been prosecuted. And empirical data suggests that
hundreds, perhaps thousands, and maybe even more, are getting involved
in this.

'Children, who are not educated about the implications of this type of
behaviour, are slipping into these kinds of activities. They are egged
on by their friends.'

'Not for the faint hearted'

Today's digital youth culture is not a place for the faint-hearted. As
I talked to teenagers, I began to realise that there was more than a
digital divide separating us.

What I see as soft pornography, totally inappropriate and disturbing
for children to make or pose for, some of them see as harmless, if
provocative, teenage fun.

The 'sexting' craze is affecting teenage girls from all walks of lives

The 'sexting' craze is affecting teenage girls from all walks of lives

When boys told me they had been sent pictures by girls of themselves
posing topless and even naked, it seemed to most of them a bit of a
joke - until I told them that looking at such material of underage
girls was illegal.

In the past year, there have been at least two cases where police have
been called into schools after footage of pupils performing sex acts
has been discovered on their phones. One involved youngsters as young
as 13. One of the teenagers I spoke to acknowledged that filming sex
sessions does happen.

'It's nothing to do with how you are brought up,' she said. 'It's just
out there now.'

David Wright is a leading online child protection officer who was
called in to investigate computer use in schools after the Soham
murders. He tours the South-West of England talking to parents,
teachers and pupils.

He believes that it's often the most well-off children - those with
laptops in their bedrooms, digital cameras and wireless access in
their homes - who are the most at risk.

'Up to 39 per cent of parents say they have never spoken to their
children about how the internet should be used,' he says.

'Police forces tell us that children at most risk online are 11 to 14-
year-olds from professional families, all with internet access in
their bedroom.

'You might not necessarily classify those as society's most
vulnerable, but they're the ones that the police are dealing with on a
weekly basis.'

It usually starts at around 11 or 12 years of age. Parents who buy
their children computers to help them study at secondary school often
recoil in horror as they see them pout, preen and pose for that first
all-important 'profile picture' for their networking site.

These pictures are then uploaded to illustrate their pages on
networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo. Though these sites have a
minimum age requirement of 13, many parents, and most sites, appear
unable to enforce this.

And then there's the avalanche of pornographic material beamed onto
every computer screen unless it is actively blocked. According to one
U.S. software producer, 25 per cent of all the daily search engine
requests are for pornographic material, and it's estimated that one in
ten of all websites is pornographic.

Much of the internet's professionally produced porn is available free.
What was once the subject of an obscenity trial is now just two clicks
away.

'Stomach-turning material'

Some of the children I spoke to - girls as well as boys - were
accessing porn.

Disturbingly, some were deliberately seeking out some of the most
stomach-churning material I have ever heard of - material I hope I
shall never see - and sending links to each other to view it. As a
joke.

It was material that made even this hardened foreign correspondent
feel ill. While some of the worse stuff, involving extreme sexual
violence, has been outlawed following a change in the law in January,
much of it remains free-to-view and perfectly legal.

In the light of this, the 'sexualisation' of young teenage and even
pre-teen girls through clothes, videos and music lyrics, and a
possible link with sexual abuse and violence, is to be the focus of a
fact-finding review ordered by the Home Secretary.

If children see this material around them, is it any wonder that they
ape it when left to create their own content?

Search for the words 'porn star' on the popular networking site Bebo
and the results include the profiles of more than 21,000 members. That
represents the number of children and adults using those words on
their sites.

Geoff Barton is the headmaster of King Edward VI School in Bury St
Edmunds. He believes that children are living in a society with far
too low a tolerance threshold for pornography.

Children are being sexualised far too young, he believes. This is
contributing to the emergence of their online sexual behaviour.

'Any school that says it is not an issue for them is putting their
heads in the sand,' he says.

'Parents are at a loss. We need to rewrite the parenting handbook.'

At one of his school assemblies, their head of IT reproduced some of
the more provocative but clothed online images he could find of some
of their pupils in order to shock them.

'We removed their heads from the pictures first to protect their
identities, but they knew who they were,' says Geoff Barton.

'What they are doing is very, very reckless and dangerous. But it's
all part of the "pornification" of a generation for whom the language
and imagery of porn is used to sell everything.

'In a world where even Pot Noodle is sold with sex'

'In a world where even an ad for Pot Noodle has to be banned for its
sexual suggestiveness, how can you expect children to behave?

'It's as if we've decided to give up on the traditional demarcation
between adult life and childhood. In the process, we've ditched some
of our adult responsibilities.

'We need to teach children how to behave online, how to navigate the
architecture of the net.'

John Carr says teenagers who behave inappropriately or obscenely and
post their material online could do lasting and irreversible damage to
their future chances of success.

'Children feel invincible online. They believe the material they are
producing is private. But they are wrong on both counts.

'We've had documented accounts of employers, and universities and
colleges, trawling the net looking for information about prospective
candidates. This behaviour can have longlasting effects. What goes
online stays online - for ever.'

There is so much to lose for these youngsters - from their dignity to
their job prospects. So much, in fact, that every parent reading this
should check their child's social networking site. If they won't let
you take a look at their photos, ask them why.

But perhaps the most precious thing of all has been lost already. And
that is our children's innocence.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1162777/Generation-sexting-What-teenage-girls-really-internet-chill-parent.html?ITO=1490

***
WM
www.critest.com

Oh, it's all so "man-in-front-with-a-red-flag", isn't it? The old
codgers still haven't worked out that they ain't gonna get the
internet genie back in the bottle - unless the internet be uninvented,
an impossibility. Right now, I expect the likes of John Carr, Michele
Elliot and many others are feverishly clamouring for the internet to
be heavily censored in some way, but they might as well explain how to
get water to run uphill. The problem is, the kids don't see such
behaviour as wrong and so long as the older generation keep telling
them it *is* wrong, they will dig in their heels. Imagine ten thousand
school-age children all deliberately sticking up two fingers to the
authorities by organising group sexting, like the group love-ins that
so enraged the older generation in the Swinging Sixties.

MM
.