Last night, I watched the news and one of the headlines was a new technology in high schools. I thought, wow, maybe I can learn something. When the time arrived that the segment was shown, it turns out that it was about "sexting." I have not heard about this before, but apparently it is nude pictures sent via text message. The story began with a police woman talking about her daughter, and that she was looking through her text messages and found a nude picture. The idea here was that if a police woman's child is doing this, then other kids will also be likely suspects. Their advice to parents is to check their child's phone for text messages sent and received.
The reporter conducted a survey in a high school and found that only 40% of students let their parents check their text messages on their phone when asked, and 75% did not even have their parents ask to check their phone.
I was trying to think about how this could be included in our course discussion, and couldn't relate to teaching environment until I searched their website trying to find a contact person (The Jacob Wetterling Foundation). It turns out that an instructor had sent a nude picture to two teenage girls. So, I think it does have some presence in classrooms and education environments.
The more I think about it, technology is out there to put your life so people can fiew it (MySpace, Facebook, blogs, etc.) yet the individuals who post to these sites use their personal discretion as to what they want to share with the world. In connecting to sexting, the individuals who are taking and sending the photos are using their discretion in what is appropriate at that time. However, they do not think about what could happen in the future. One student was brought up on Fox9 that she sent the pictures to her boyfriend at the time. When they broke up, however, the guy sent the photos to all of his friends along with a message saying she was a slut, among other names. She was so mortified that she committed suicide.
Technology will always need some kind of supervision (take the boxes that you must check saying you are over 13 or 18 years of age to continue to the website or to purchase something online). These provisions are there for age-appropriate behavior to know what you are doing and the consequences. But to check a phone for nude pictures, I guess I never would have thought to check for something like that (if my daughter were old enough to have a cell phone). So, perhaps parents do need to monitor their children's behavior with cell phones, but oftentimes it is new technology that parents do not know about and thus the parent doesn't know what to look for. I feel it just goes in circles.
TORTA DI MELE E MASCARPONE
5 years ago
Yuck.
ReplyDeleteI brought this up in class the other night, so I'm glad you wrote about it in your Blog.
ReplyDeleteI had to talk about sexting with my 9th grade homeroom, and there were a variety of repsonses among the students. Initially many thought it was silly that we were talking about it in school- they already know what sexting is, so why would we (meaning teachers) be teaching them (they are SO knowledgeable you know!!).
But when I started clarifying to them what types of consequences can ensue if they participate in sexting- they students took it a bit more seriously. It's one of our jobs as teachers to prepare kids for the long term. They need to know what being a "registered sex offender" means: how they can be charged, and what this does to your life if you are found guilty of it.
But most of our conversation I spent trying to tell the girls about how they just need to respect their body. Boys might ask for a nude picture of them, but they should just "Say No." Have respect for themselves. And the boys- I "scolded" them and told them to have some respect for girls-and not ask in the first place.
I hope something I said got through to some of them, anyway!!