I really didn't know what this meant until this past few months - guess that is what happens when you are no longer 'in the loop' and have older children. Doesn't each generation always seem to have something attached to it? According to my kids, since I was in high school during the 'drug hippie time', they think automatically I was a hippie, did drugs, and lived in a commune. When I explained that it was only a part of my generation, it didn't mean all of us did it. I tried to compare it to their generation - where they grew up with pagers therefore they were a drug dealer. They finally saw the comparison.
When I think back to when my daughter was in high school, the girls called boys and there was a time all girls go through that boy crazy stage and it seemed like the boys were returning the feelings and used the girls. It wasn't my son got to that age when I realized that although some boys might be a bit more advanced in their sexual feelings, they were much more interested in the video games, playing sports, etc. I noticed that even those boys who seemed more advanced, still were into the video games and playing sports more than they were really into the girls.
I know that was how it was during my generation - the girls were definitely more 'into' boys than the boys were into the girls.
So trying to understand the sexting problem in today's youth, does this mean this generation has to use sex or portray themselves naked in some way in order to gain the attention of a boy?
People, this isn't teens or juniors or seniors. The kids caught sexting are in junior high. Take the recent case in northwest Indiana - 2 middle school age kids (12 year old boy and 13 year old girl) were accused of sexual texting where they allegedly used their cell phones to exchange photos of themselves to each other.
Then there is the case in a suburb south of Chicago where a 15 year old girl send a nude photo of herself to boy who then sent it to another boy. It ended up being seen by over half the school's kids. In another case, they are posted to their MySpace or Facebook accounts or even to their blogs.
Kinda scary if you ask me. Kinda glad I don't have to deal with that. Much like the cartoon above, I would probably do what I did to their email accounts - sent a copy of either what was sent to them or they sent to my email account. They could be on the one computer we had - appropriately placed in the family area. I would also do the cell phone parental protection that is offered to most cell phone accounts or do as I did back then - no pager or cell or tattoo until you were 18 and I wasn't paying any of those bills.
