Don't believe anything you hear about sexting causing an increase in teen pregnancy. There is no way it can be true. How can I say that? Because teen pregnancy in the US has plummeted since 2007. "For five years now, America's teen birth rate has plummeted at an unprecedented rate, falling faster and faster. Between 2007 and 2013, the number of babies born to teens annually fell by 38.4%," … [Read more...] about Sexting & the plummeting teen pregnancy rate
sexting
About our strange way of understanding teen sexting (guest post)
By Nina Funnell Based on her many thoughtful conversations with youth and adults about sexting over several years, Australian researcher and author Nina Funnell – who I met and heard speak at an Internet safety conference in Sydney last year – offers adults the rare opportunity to step outside the box of conditioned, fearful and often legalistic thinking about technology and sexuality. Here is … [Read more...] about About our strange way of understanding teen sexting (guest post)
Enabling peer protection: Knowledge is empowerment
From infancy on up we learn what's right and wrong, based on our families' and, later, peers' values. That's important. It develops that inner guidance system – or "moral compass," as it's sometimes called – that makes for safer, smoother navigation through life. But that isn't all kids need as they grow and find their own way online and offline. In order to be safe, keep peers safe and make … [Read more...] about Enabling peer protection: Knowledge is empowerment
Virginia teen sexting case: (Somewhat) reduced injustice
It was a picture-perfect example of how a law intended to protect children can be used to victimize them. But the juvenile judge didn't comment on the perversion of justice – or the prosecution's victimization of a teenager by ordering police to photograph the boy's genitals and threatening even more abusive treatment. He just eased the punishment meted out to the boy (his girlfriend was not … [Read more...] about Virginia teen sexting case: (Somewhat) reduced injustice
‘Revenge porn’: Exposing cruel disclosure
This is a sidebar to my earlier post about social norms as one of the solutions to social cruelty online, zooming in on one form of it. "Revenge porn" needs to be understood and exposed for what it is so it can be neutralized. Its power to harm will lessen as we stigmatize the shaming rather than its victims. So let's be completely clear about what revenge porn is: malicious distribution of … [Read more...] about ‘Revenge porn’: Exposing cruel disclosure