Posted on 12/10/2008 11:26:19 AM PST by Fractal Trader
The high school in Salem, N.H., was abuzz last month as a photograph of a topless 15-year-old girl was sent from cellphone to cellphone.
School staff intervened, and by the time they met with students in assemblies the next day they had discovered another compromising cellphone photo, this one of an eighth-grade girl. They soon found two more photos of naked or nearly naked girls on students' phones. Two weeks later, a similar incident occurred at nearby Sanborn Regional High School. The photograph in question was of a teenage boy.
A report being released today shows that these were not isolated incidents but part of a national trend. One-fifth of teenagers surveyed have sent or posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves, usually to a boyfriend or girlfriend, and almost a third have received such images, according to "Sex and Tech," a new study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com.
Among young adults (ages 20-26), the numbers are higher: One-third said they have posted or sent racy images of themselves, and almost half have received them. TRU, a company that specializes in youth research, conducted the survey online with 1,280 teenagers and young adults selected from its database of research participants.
A spokesman for the National Campaign, a nonprofit group that advocates for sex education and access to contraceptives, said he is concerned about the link between what happens online and what happens in real life.
"What young people report is that this sort of online behavior contributes to a casual hookup culture," said Bill Albert, the group's chief program officer. "The overwhelming majority of teens and young adults don't do this, but when you get numbers like 20 percent and higher for young adults, that passes the threshhold of concern."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
This is why I don’t allow my daughter to have a cell phone with a camera in it.
This type of stuff is illegal.
I say the schools need to have a strict no cell phone policy.
In emergencies, parents can always call the school. That’s what they did when I was a kid.
My daughter is still a half a dozen years to young to be participating in behavior like this, but I can only imagine the mortification a parent must feel when confronted with this.
That being said, where would one go to view pictures such as this? For informational purposes of course.
Owl_Eagle
When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didnt just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
Look, heres what happened."
-Slow Joe Biden
She can’t send but can receive................
Is this the one where some parents are actually suing the school for ‘passing around’ the pictures to other teachers to try to determine who was in the pic?
if it is kids sending to kids is it still considered child porno as it would relate to being passed between adults or adults taking the pics....??...then again this was northen new england right...??...nuff said...
Well sure ... but apparently it's the kids themselves who are posting the pictures and videos. Can you call them "criminals" in the same sense as a NAMBLA mouth-breather?
I think that the threshold of concern is a bit lower, some where around 2 to 5 percent.
20 percent is pandemic neighborhood.
How do you control all of her friends and associates, who probably Do have a phone with a camera. Or a digital camera. Or a webcam.
If your kid wants to post nudie pics, he/she will, and there's little other than good parenting (and even that won't always work), you can do to stop it.
not knocking you, just saying...
Some schools do have such a policy. Making it work is the problem. Even requiring parents to pay a fine to get them back does not limit them.
County jail.
What was that the Pope said about technology?
She’ll always be too young...
Under New Hampshire law, [Rockingham County Attorney Jim Reams] said, students disseminating an inappropriate photo of someone under 16 can be considered to be distributing child pornography. Come January, the threshhold in New Hampshire goes to 18.
I'm quite surprised that kids today would do this. I thought they were supposed to be "tech savvy". I mean, isn't it pretty easy for those cellphone pics to get on the Internet?
Aren't they worried about that?
I don’t want my kid to be tempted to smoke so I don’t let him carry matches.
Where my wife teaches (Forest Park..arruughh..) they have the no phones policy but it doesn’t stop the kids, every time I’m up there I count dozens of kids with bluetooth headsets or phones to their ears. They will call friends in class and if she tries to take the phone, they will call their parents (which backfires 90% of the time)...and this is a middle school...
I have email and text messaging blocked on my daughters cell phone.
Can you actually buy a cell phone with out a camera these days?
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