5 ms·

The dark side of teen texting

9 points by sonabinu 14y ago

SonicSoul 14y ago
tl;dr teens still use texting quite a bit (even though they were not around when it was invented). girls use it more than boys. reason? because it's easier than calling. there is also an infographic. fascinating!
ollysb 14y ago
Another mobile site fail, forced to use portrait mode and then you can't scroll down. I really wish I could block mobile sites on my iPhone.
sek 14y ago
> For parents, there's a pretty serious downside to all this teen texting, however. A full 28 percent of polled teens said they had sent fully nude photos of themselves over SMS. About a quarter of American teenagers participate in "sexting," according to Wilson's sources, which include research firms like Nielsen and Pew, as well as media and government organizations. What is the "serious downside" for parents now? I convinced two girls when I was 14 to show me their boobs. We didn't have smartphones back then. You think about nothing else when you hit puberty and is totally normal behavior. Btw how do you send a full nude picture over SMS?
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  "serious downside" may be that the pictures can remain around forever, and can get shared with 10,000 people in 2 seconds. The two girls you chatted up were exposed just to you for a short period of time, and had you not told us, no one except the 3 of you would ever have known.
- theorique 14y ago
  The big difference is, sending a picture puts it out into the world where it can be forwarded, saved, uploaded to the web, shared with the entire school ... It can get way out of hand. It's much more of a Pandora's box than the private "show me yours" that you describe.
  - Shorel 14y ago
    Well, this seem to be a good case for the use of DRM. But it's users the ones who will hold the keys for the kingdom, not corporations.
    - theorique 14y ago
      DRM only needs to fail once. Then an image is in the wild and can be endlessly replicated (think Streisand effect / network effect).
      - Shorel 14y ago
        For a movie, or for the pictures of someone famous? Yes, lots of people will be trying to break that DRM. For a random no-one in some small country? Out of millions of random no-ones? It's a lot better than the current no-protection-at-all scheme.
- tokenizer 14y ago
  He must have meant MMS, where you can send photos, which functions almost exactly like SMS. Agreed on this being a terrible article, but it does highlight one thing; punishing teens for this is not the way to go. I think diluting the sex criminal database with a quarter of the upcoming generation is a little counter productive.
  - sek 14y ago
    I removed it, i try to be less judgmental. I am not in the US, but I would probably have done "sexting" instead while being at that age. Looking at these percentages, it seems like the laws don't display the reality. At least they should make exceptions when the other part is at a similar age.
    - tokenizer 14y ago
      Agreed. An interesting article on the subject that was posted a few months ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4495914 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4495914 Cheers
- chiquitabacana 14y ago
  He implies that the security of a teenage sexual experience is responsibility of their parents.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
Aren't all of those sexting teenagers "sex offenders" according to the inexcusable USA laws? Which really makes me want to stand up and go burn a church or two.
- jerf 14y ago
  While I'm sure you can find many church members who would say it's wrong for teens to send nude photos to each other, I doubt you're going to find a lot of support for harsh, punitive government actions in response. For that matter, I suspect you can find a lot of non-church members who would agree on one level or another its wrong (or at the very least a bad idea), but also would not agree to harsh punitive government actions. This is out of control government and policians fearful to be seen being even remotely soft on child porn lest they get smeared by their opponents in the next election, not the ever-less-Puritan American public or any portion thereof.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    The peoblem is, we have an out of control situation and an utter lack of people to blame for this. Everyone it kind of not supporting the shit but nobody actively prevents the shit from happening. The people to blame for this is the people not to blame for this.
    - jerf 14y ago
      No, I'm pretty comfortable blaming lawmakers for this. It's their job to keep the laws up-to-date, and they've failed in this case. It isn't random people on the street locking these kids up, except by a very extended and tenuous (albeit real, but still, small) connection, it's the lawmakers who keep it illegal without regard to human costs, who would rather send teens to prison and blaze them with the closest thing our society has to a Scarlet A (and ours is in many ways worse, certainly harder to escape), rather than risk their reelection prospects, who are to blame. It may feel more gratifying to blame it on $DUMB_YOKELS, but given that this problem seems to exist everywhere regardless of their influence, it would seem to be an emotionally-driven decision, not a logical one.
sareon 14y ago
They mention that texting is on the decline. I wonder how much of that comes from iMessage on the iPhones, which as I recall, doesn't use SMS but rather data to send messages.
j2kun 14y ago
Also, the dark side of infographics. Bar charts with just one bar make me giggle. :)

9 points by sonabinu 14y ago

tl;dr teens still use texting quite a bit (even though they were not around when it was invented). girls use it more than boys. reason? because it's easier than calling. there is also an infographic. fascinating!

ollysb 14y ago

Another mobile site fail, forced to use portrait mode and then you can't scroll down. I really wish I could block mobile sites on my iPhone.

sek 14y ago

> For parents, there's a pretty serious downside to all this teen texting, however. A full 28 percent of polled teens said they had sent fully nude photos of themselves over SMS. About a quarter of American teenagers participate in "sexting," according to Wilson's sources, which include research firms like Nielsen and Pew, as well as media and government organizations. What is the "serious downside" for parents now? I convinced two girls when I was 14 to show me their boobs. We didn't have smartphones back then. You think about nothing else when you hit puberty and is totally normal behavior. Btw how do you send a full nude picture over SMS?

mgkimsal 14y ago
"serious downside" may be that the pictures can remain around forever, and can get shared with 10,000 people in 2 seconds. The two girls you chatted up were exposed just to you for a short period of time, and had you not told us, no one except the 3 of you would ever have known.
theorique 14y ago
The big difference is, sending a picture puts it out into the world where it can be forwarded, saved, uploaded to the web, shared with the entire school ... It can get way out of hand. It's much more of a Pandora's box than the private "show me yours" that you describe.
- Shorel 14y ago
  Well, this seem to be a good case for the use of DRM. But it's users the ones who will hold the keys for the kingdom, not corporations.
  - theorique 14y ago
    DRM only needs to fail once. Then an image is in the wild and can be endlessly replicated (think Streisand effect / network effect).
    - Shorel 14y ago
      For a movie, or for the pictures of someone famous? Yes, lots of people will be trying to break that DRM. For a random no-one in some small country? Out of millions of random no-ones? It's a lot better than the current no-protection-at-all scheme.
tokenizer 14y ago
He must have meant MMS, where you can send photos, which functions almost exactly like SMS. Agreed on this being a terrible article, but it does highlight one thing; punishing teens for this is not the way to go. I think diluting the sex criminal database with a quarter of the upcoming generation is a little counter productive.
- sek 14y ago
  I removed it, i try to be less judgmental. I am not in the US, but I would probably have done "sexting" instead while being at that age. Looking at these percentages, it seems like the laws don't display the reality. At least they should make exceptions when the other part is at a similar age.
  - tokenizer 14y ago
    Agreed. An interesting article on the subject that was posted a few months ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4495914 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4495914 Cheers
chiquitabacana 14y ago
He implies that the security of a teenage sexual experience is responsibility of their parents.

guard-of-terra 14y ago

Aren't all of those sexting teenagers "sex offenders" according to the inexcusable USA laws? Which really makes me want to stand up and go burn a church or two.

jerf 14y ago
While I'm sure you can find many church members who would say it's wrong for teens to send nude photos to each other, I doubt you're going to find a lot of support for harsh, punitive government actions in response. For that matter, I suspect you can find a lot of non-church members who would agree on one level or another its wrong (or at the very least a bad idea), but also would not agree to harsh punitive government actions. This is out of control government and policians fearful to be seen being even remotely soft on child porn lest they get smeared by their opponents in the next election, not the ever-less-Puritan American public or any portion thereof.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  The peoblem is, we have an out of control situation and an utter lack of people to blame for this. Everyone it kind of not supporting the shit but nobody actively prevents the shit from happening. The people to blame for this is the people not to blame for this.
  - jerf 14y ago
    No, I'm pretty comfortable blaming lawmakers for this. It's their job to keep the laws up-to-date, and they've failed in this case. It isn't random people on the street locking these kids up, except by a very extended and tenuous (albeit real, but still, small) connection, it's the lawmakers who keep it illegal without regard to human costs, who would rather send teens to prison and blaze them with the closest thing our society has to a Scarlet A (and ours is in many ways worse, certainly harder to escape), rather than risk their reelection prospects, who are to blame. It may feel more gratifying to blame it on $DUMB_YOKELS, but given that this problem seems to exist everywhere regardless of their influence, it would seem to be an emotionally-driven decision, not a logical one.

sareon 14y ago

They mention that texting is on the decline. I wonder how much of that comes from iMessage on the iPhones, which as I recall, doesn't use SMS but rather data to send messages.

j2kun 14y ago

Also, the dark side of infographics. Bar charts with just one bar make me giggle. :)