THIS week, I want to deal with a specific issue; that of the phenomenon called ‘sexting.’ I suppose the best point of entry I can conceive of for this piece is an e-mail a friend sent me, the main point of which was to bring my attention to a segment of some show aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) which dealt with this most recent of ‘techno-social’ issues.The term — an obvious contraction or
bringing together of ‘sex’ and ‘texting’ — has recently become mainstream, for reasons both relatively run-of-the-mill and notorious.
For example, it’s not uncommon for the celebrity pages of our local newspapers — this one included — to carry some story about some movie star and musician ‘sexting’ each other. According to the Online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, arguably the most reliable source for most things to do with the technology that this generation thrives on, “Sexting is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, primarily between mobile phones.”
In a previous article, I mentioned a story surrounding an incident at an otherwise reputable senior secondary school, where two young people recorded some sexual activity using a mobile phone.
‘As a parent, all I can say is that the two things that have worked for good parenting throughout history, namely, vigilance and understanding, need to be applied here, granted with much greater intensity’
While it was said that the video was accessed on the young man’s computer, reports were that it was spread among other students by way of mobile phone. This represents the more notorious side to the phenomenon, both in terms of degree of graphicness as well as the persons involved. Two adults engaging in what is decidedly adult behaviour is one thing; but it’s different if two minors are involved.
In researching this article, I found a rather interesting report Online on the CBS website:
“While it may be shocking,” the piece begins, “the practice of ‘sexting’ — sending nude pictures via text message — is not unusual, especially for high schoolers around the country.
Some time ago, three teenage girls, who allegedly sent nude or semi-nude cell-phone pictures of themselves and three male classmates in a western Pennsylvania high school who received them, were charged with child pornography.
In October 2010, a Texas eighth-grader spent the night in a juvenile detention centre after his football coach found a nude picture on his cell-phone that a fellow student sent him. Roughly 20 per cent of teens admit to participating in ‘sexting’, according to a nationwide survey by the National Campaign to Support Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Now, I am the last person to take data from another jurisdiction and simply transplant it here to prove some point about correlation, even in the light of relevant data here being absent.
That said, I think it’s reasonable to expect that, in light of the fact that American culture so heavily influences our own, and because of the level of penetration of cheap mobile phone technology in Guyana, it can be reasonably safe to speculate that a significant number of local teenagers either have been involved in ‘sexting’ themselves or have been exposed to ‘sexted’ material.
While I made the point in my previous article that our reaction to the effects of the new technology needs to be reasoned and objective; that we need to respond to these developments within the context of the generational gap, there are things that need to be dealt with ‘swiftly and condignly’, even as we are keeping an open mind.
The advent of ‘sexting’ is a particularly dangerous trend when it comes to the moral decline — and there has been, as even the most liberal of people would admit, a decline — that is affecting our society.
In my formative years in the early 1980s, if you found a pornographic magazine, that was like a treasure for teenage boys, and even a few girls if I remember correctly. I’m not saying me, mind you, but someone in possession of one would make it last for years.
In the late 1980s, even among adults, pornographic VHS tapes were probably worth their weight in silver or some other semi-precious metal at least.
In the late 1990s, teens were able to access some pornographic websites, and then suddenly a lot more as the millennium changed. Now, worse than even the access to pornography online, our teenagers now have the means of pornographic production as well as its dissemination, literally at their fingertips.
Literally, any teenage child with a camera-phone is a potential porn director and actor or actress, and that — in a culture bombarded by sex and sexual messages — cannot be a good thing.
Again, I can’t offer any detailed solution to this problem. I frankly think nothing short of fanatical religious fundamentalist type oppression has a chance of slowing it down, not stopping it, mind you.
As a parent, all I can say is that the two things that have worked for good parenting throughout history namely, vigilance and understanding, need to be applied here, granted with much greater intensity.
Written By Keith Burrowes