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Sexting and Teens

October 29, 2009 6:03 AM

"Sexting" is the act of sending sexually explicit content by using digital technology. Psychologist Susan Lipkins talks with Dr. Jon LaPook about its influence on teens.

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by mckinnonk1 November 10, 2009 9:42 AM EST
I don't think the problem is what we are teaching our children. Today's day and age is all about technology, and if we can find newer and better ways to invade each other's privacy we will. :(... I have posted a blog on this topic recently, please view it.
http://kaitymaefaith.blogspot.com/
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by androidboy November 1, 2009 4:21 PM EST
Back in the 1980's I was a teenager and I had sex with teenage girls. Does that make me a child molester? I had a few racy polaroids...was that child pornography? There's a context people. These kids are probably having REAL sex--so concentrate on the pictures they take of themselves...way to be "with it" mom.
As for the objectification of girls/boys...I can't say what's going on with the kids today, but for me and my parters it was about having a closeness we lacked in our daily lives. (I'm looking at you, 2 income family.) A relationship? Hardly. That would be an unnecessary complication for a life too complicated already.
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by rboothmd October 31, 2009 5:02 PM EDT
Excellent, thought provoking segment! As a gynecologist who sees several teens a week I agree that many phenomenon are practically "unstoppable" after a critical tipping point is reached due to "peer participation," as opposed to peer pressure. I will say that the majority of girls I see still feel very concerned about their relationships, and are not as casual as the many reality shows on television portray. Thank you Drs. LaPook and Lipkins.
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by Virgil-1 October 30, 2009 7:46 PM EDT
Some will awake too late,some won't.How would you like these two
teaching your children?
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by Maria-Ashot October 29, 2009 5:02 PM EDT
i am very surprised that "child & adolescent psychologist Susan Lipkins" is the specific "authority" CBS would turn to in this explosive subject. Obviously, she does not think it is ever a problem when a minor child sends MY minor child a picture of a young girl tied up in some grotesque way with a grotesque foreign object protruding from her hindquarters. Yes this is precisely the kind of imagery that "sexting" all too often contains. What about the person being humiliated, often bullied, drugged, tormented into posing for these pictures? According to Lipkins, "kids" are only sending basically images of their own body parts or themselves naked. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are downloading free porn from websites -- when they are not tormenting even younger children, or animals, in these kinds of disgusting ways. How is this not a problem? it is taking away from their time that should be spent on classes. it is disrupting classrooms and creating a hostile schoolplace just as much as porn in the lunchroom creates a hostile workplace for women. And why should energy resources be spent on this garbage? Why should families be paying for gadgets and phone accounts that are being polluted in this way? My teen son won't participate, but he has received these messages, unsolicited, from peers, as has my daughter. By the way, her "famous" high school had a major teen prostitution problem, mostly run by adolescent pimps many of whom were undocumented immigrants...Oh, did i just cross a line? is that something we are also not allowed to criticize? that our communities are protecting populations who view women as less than human and consider any girl fair game for the most brutal & degrading kind of sexual assaults? Lipkins has no credibility with me. Obviously, no one she knows has ever been raped. She thinks porn is just dandy and "kids are just being kids" when they turn into smut distributors & spend hours on end finding, creating & sending obscene content "because relationships are too hard." People like Lipkins are trying to push an agenda, one in which every human being is basically reduced to selling themselves sexually for the gratification of someone more powerful, with more money -- while the kinds of tenderness, concern for another human being and desire to work together on a lifelong journey that is commonly understood to underpin positive adult unions is dismissed as some kind of vestige of earlier times. We are turning our young girls into the equivalent of village pimps. Hooray for progress, CBS!
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by billpl-2009 October 29, 2009 4:30 PM EDT
talked about sexting to my two teens

they said there's no such word

the term "sexting" is a word made up by the media and shrinks
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by CMW85 October 29, 2009 3:22 PM EDT
First of all, part of my job is to go to schools to talk to teens about sexting. They are doing it a lot more than you think. The problem is that they are so sexualized that they don't see anything wrong with it. Which brings me to my second point. Most of them are doing it because they have pressure either coming from their friends or significant others or from the media. I have yet to hear from the females that they are doing this because they want to use men the same way men have used women...or whatever that mess was that Susan Lipkins was saying. They are bombarded by images in the media that constantly remind them that they have to act a certain way and look a certain way in order to be liked or desirable. What is the media telling us about men? That if you can't get him by personality or regular good looks, if you show him something sexual/sensual, he'll definitely accept you! So why, then, are guys sending these pictures? For the most part, they think it's a funny joke. But there are some guys who send it because they think females get turned on the same way they do. And if they send a picture of their private parts, maybe the favor will be returned!

The way to handle this is not punishment by sticking an offender label on them. They need education!! Do the same thing you do to students who get caught smoking at school... make them take an educational course on what sexting is and why it's not good. Actually, do them a favor and add this info to their sex education in fifth grade! Kids as young as 11, not 13, are sexting. Help them understand it before they think to do it.
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by SEXTINGISSTUPID October 29, 2009 2:27 PM EDT
Talking to users of digital technology about sexting is like talking to a smoker about asthma, neglecting to communicate the myriad of other health risks associated with smoking.

If you are NOT one of the almost 100,000 digital citizens to date that understand 21st Century Digital Safety, Responsibility and Awareness or 2.1C, you better learn quickly through the nationally acclaimed nonprofit www.iroc2.org.

Keep reacting to sexting and only sex related issues with digital technology as opposed to communicating overall digital responsibility, and our digital society will fall into a very dark place.
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by mjlewis6 October 29, 2009 1:23 PM EDT
The logical prosecution tool is simply one of possession.

Abesent the intent is irrelevant. While that is good for prosecution to get more jail time for the defendant...possession has always been used as the primary HOOK for prosecution, be it alcohol, guns, large sums of money, drugs.... nude or sex images of underage persons is illegal. Ask any policeman. Better yet, show him and see what happens.

And if just nude....have one with a gun....and then one with alcohol...and with drugs.... ALL THOSE are criminal.

If you want a protected class....make all porn legal and all persons are protected. It is just like pot, if you make it legal, there are a lot of people who will not be criminalized.
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by skeetchamp October 29, 2009 11:37 AM EDT
we should not be criminalizing teenage sexting. would we rather kids didn't do it? of course! but this behavior is children acting childishly and they shouldn't be made registered sex offenders because of it. otherwise, we'd have to criminalize the act of a teenager "touching" themselves on the grounds that that too is child sex exploitation.
there are plenty of laws on the books to punish adults possessing child pornography, we don't need to apply those laws to kids.
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