L
K MAKE CLICK HERE... (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24758231/)Teen Trend: Exchanging Nude Cell Phone Photos
ChannelCincinnati.com
updated 3:20 p.m. ET, Wed., May. 21, 2008
CINCINNATI, Ohio - Forget the internet. One of the most dangerous tools your kids have now might be their cell phone. Police say teenagers are taking nude pictures with the camera on their phone and sending them to friends; and too often those pictures are being forwarded on for hundreds of other kids to see.
"I know someone kept sending me a picture of this guy's private parts and I didn't even know the guy," said high school student Emily Stanton
Montgomery Police Officer Paul Payne said he's seeing it first-hand.
"I got over 30 responses from resource officers around the Tri-State who are experiencing the same thing that I am, in epidemic proportions," Payne said.
It's no longer just peer pressure to have sex, there's peer pressure to have proof.
"It's like a digital trophy, proving that you did something or you got someone to show you something personal of theirs and you can parade it around and make sure everyone knows. And it's more satisfying than word of mouth," said one teenager, who did not want to be identified.
There's another aspect that parents could face if their children are doing this: Sending a nude picture of a minor is a felony. So is possessing one.
Remember, Kids, It's Summertime, So Don't Let Your MEAT LOAF
...AND MAKE CLICK HERE... (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24993253/)
Kids find paradise by cell phone light?
Ack! Now those hormone-raging adolescents are "sexting” each other!
By Helen A.S. Popkin
MSNBC
updated 8:02 a.m. ET, Fri., June. 6, 2008
Is anybody else creeped out by that AT&T GoPhone commercial starring chart-topping American rock singer Meat Loaf? You know, the one where he’s out working in the garage or something and actor Adam Cagley (in the role of Meat Loaf’s beefy teenage son) starts whining about wanting a GoPhone.
Apparently the viewer is to assume the kid’s been doing it for a while, because his nagging quickly pushes Papa Loaf into a rock and roll fugue. Throwing flash bombs, Meat concedes via the music behind one of his biggest hits, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” singing that “As long as there's no surprise bills to pay, we're gonna go get you a GoPhone today!”
Then, if a dad communicating with his son to the tune of a racy song about two high school kids negotiating their impending sexual congress isn’t weird enough, ’80s pop sensation Tiffany (in the role of “Mom”) enters in all her buxom red-haired glory, catching the harmony while carrying an enormous hunk of raw, unwrapped meat. Meanwhile, Meat Jr. is totally down with the family jam, biting his lip and bobbing his neck ‘Rock Band’ style before joining “Dad and Mom’s” wailing.
This commercial is so wrong on so many levels, it’s all I can do to wrap my brain around it. Every time it comes on (often TWICE during one commercial break) I’m certainly incapable of changing the channel, let alone looking away. Sex? Rock and roll? Cell phones? Teenagers? What does this commercial mean? Okay, I know, it’s about selling cell phones to the youth market by charming paying parents are old enough to remember this song which — once considered scandalous — is again, about teenage sex. But it’s just wrong … right?
I don’t even know anymore. Sigh.
Then this trend story pops up in the news, and it all starts coming together. Apparently, teenagers are taking nude photos of themselves via their cell phone cameras, and texting (or ‘sexting’ as the kids call it) to their significant others. If that isn’t crazy enough, you’ll never see this next part coming … the nudie shots somehow end up on the Internet for all the world — including their classmates — to see.
The original Associated Press story quotes a woman whose sons attend a Colorado middle school where 18 kids got busted last year for texting their nudie shots. "I just don't understand why kids would do a stupid thing like that," she said. According to the report, like cases popped up in New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut.
Shocking. I guess.
Except no. Not really. And not just because I keep seeing kids plus sex plus cell phones pop up as plot points on all my “Law & Order” permutations. Kids do stupid things. No need to stop the presses here. Even the quoted Colorado mom agrees. "We did dumb things when we were kids, but not like that," she said in the original story.
Well of course not. The big difference now is that kids have more and better tools to be dumb with. Also, there’s that whole disintegration between private and public, thanks to the Internet. You know, the whole Zen koan about if a kid posts a MySpace profile, and nobody sees it, does that kid really exist? Not as far as other kids are concerned.
But rather than ripping the cell phones from the greasy paws of the young and innocent and declaring Internet Prohibition (yeah, that’d work), probably us grown-ups should try and wrap our heads around an age-old fact that was true when our parents were stupid brats, not to mention us.
Once the hormones kick in, kids are going to do stuff we’d rather not think about, even without access to technology. And since they do have access to technology, we need to wrap our heads around the newish fact that the Internet is basically a giant, seething, voyeuristic swinger’s party … and that cell phones are part of the Internet.
The best we can do is teach every sprog circling adolescence how to use both their cell phones and their bodies responsibly as you would with any other tool, such as a car or a chainsaw. And don’t freak out too much. Not every kid, probably not even most kids, are texting themselves in their birthday suits. Note that the story pretty much covers the outrageous exceptions to the rules, and is unaccompanied by any hard numbers from the CDC.
Still, it’s something to talk about. Perhaps it’s not so messed up that Meat Loaf is using a song about teenage sexual experimentation and its possible negative fallout to negotiate his “son’s” cell phone acquisition. Meanwhile, if this thing turns epidemic, there is one easy cure. Parents everywhere, start “sexting” your own nudist colony outings not just to your kids, but to their friends as well. That’ll stop this nonsense right quick.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive
MAKE CLICK HERE... (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24970829/)
Teens sending nude photos via cell phonesPictures meant for boyfriend or girlfriend are ending up on the Internet
By Stephanie Reitz
updated 1:39 p.m. ET, Wed., June. 4, 2008
HARTFORD, Conn. - Passing notes in study hall or getting your best friend to ask a boy if he likes you or, you know, LIKES you, is so last century. Nowadays, teenagers are snapping naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones and sending them to their boyfriends and girlfriends.
Many of these pictures are falling into the wrong hands — or worse, everyone's hands, via the Internet — and leading to criminal charges.
Some parents are aghast. "I just don't understand why kids would do a stupid thing like that," said Rochelle Hoins of Castle Rock, Colo., where 18 students in her twin sons' middle school sent around nude pictures of themselves last year. "We did dumb things when we were kids, but not like that," said Hoins, whose sons were not involved.
Similar cases have been reported in New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut.
"It used to be that kids would make mistakes, and it was local and singular and everyone knew it was part of growing up," said Catherine Davis, a PTA co-president in Westport, Conn., who had a frank talk with her two sons after several students' nude self-portraits recently spread through the wealthy New York City bedroom community. "Now a stupid adolescent mistake can take on major implications and go on their record for the rest of their lives."
School administrators in Santa Fe, Texas, confiscated dozens of cell phones from students in May after nude photos of two junior high girls began circulating. The girls had sent the photos to their boyfriends, who forwarded them to others, officials said.
In La Crosse, Wis., a 17-year-old boy recently was charged with child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child and defamation for allegedly posting nude photos of his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend on his MySpace page. The girl had taken the pictures with her cell phone at her mother's home and e-mailed them to the boyfriend, authorities said.
"They were pretty graphic," said sheriff's Sgt. Mark Yehle. "I think they just do it to impress their boyfriends. When he breaks up, he 'vents,' in his words, by posting them. He apparently didn't think there was anything wrong with it. He didn't know it was illegal."
Psychologists said the phenomenon reflects typical teenage hormones and lack of judgment, with technology multiplying the potential for mischief. It also may reflect a teenage penchant for exhibitionism, as demonstrated on MySpace and countless other Web sites and blogs.
Brianna Moran, 15, who attends the same school as the girl in the La Crosse case, said she is not surprised by such behavior. "They probably think they're hot or something. If you look at people's MySpace, all the pictures are slutty," she said.
In suburban Syracuse, N.Y., several teenage girls sent naked pictures on their phones to their boyfriends, only to learn that another boy had collected them from the Web and was trying to sell a DVD of them.
Some boys are photographing themselves, too. In Utah, a 16-year-old boy was charged with a felony for sending nude photos of himself over a cell phone to several girls. Four middle school students — two boys and two girls — in Daphne, Ala., took photos of themselves on their cell phones and traded the images back and forth, authorities said.
Some nude photos have even turned up in parents' e-mail inboxes.
The images are complicating the work of investigators whose job is to find exploited children. Authorities trying to identify youngsters in naked photos are increasingly discovering that the teens themselves took the shots, said John Shehan, a director at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Connecticut police Sgt. Jim Smith, who investigates cybercrime and online child pornography, conducts seminars in which he warns parents about the use of cell phones to send nude pictures.
"It's often so spur of the moment that they're not thinking about where those images might end up," Smith said. "They might think it's just fun and games at the time they do it, but these images can really spread like wildfire."
Associated Press correspondents Todd Richmond in Janesville, Wis., Robert Imrie in Wausau, Wis., and Don Mitchell in Denver contributed to this story.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
COMMENTS?
