We are living in a digital era and keeping the teens safe in the world is not a piece of cake for every parent. It’s quite hard to keep kids safe from the virtual world, addiction towards screen and disconnection with the real world. All these issues may affect teens negatively. Today, one of the growing digital trends among teens is SEXTING. Today, we discuss what it is, what the consequences and why teens do. Let’s start understanding topics one by one.
What Is Sexting?
It’s an ace of sending nude or seminude photos, videos or text through digital gadgets like laptop, desktop and smartphones. The use of smartphones had led to increasing people on social media sites to share information and chat with strangers. So, teens love to do it regularly. But they do not know that such platforms are used for sexting in teens. Normally, such activity starts with a normal joke and flirting.
Believe it or not, more than 80% of teens have performed sexting who are under 18 and 12% of girls are pressurized to send nudes.
Why Do Teens do? Here are Reasons:
1. Girls are pressurized by the guys to send nude pics and explicit messages. However, some teen boys say that they’ve been pressurized by girls.
2. Teens think that getting explicit photos from the partner is a great achievement and proof about their relationship. Some send the nude picture just to get the compliment from the partner.
3. Teens believe that sharing nude pics will help them to establish a strong relationship bond.
The Consequences of Sexting:
Bullying: If a nude picture is leaked to fellow students in school, they will start ridicule & humiliate the teen whose pic is leaked.
Revenge Porn: it takes place when the relationship between two partners doesn’t last. For example, a girl sends her nudes to his boyfriend and after a few months or years, they both get breakup. As revenge, a boy shares the nude pictures to their friends and sometimes on social media sites. No need to explain further about a girl’s mental condition when she finds her explicit pictures on the internet.
When It Goes Online, It Stays forever: Sending nude to partner is common nowadays but when a partner cheats and uploads the nude pictures online once, it never disappears. There is always a chance that someone has downloaded or taken a screenshot and share it online again even if it’s removed from the Internet. The situation goes worse if the pictures get uploaded on porn websites.
What’s Parental Role to Prevent Sexting?
The better solution is to install a phone monitoring app to keep an eye on each internet activity. You can prevent your kids from indulging in such harmful activities. This is a secret way, what other things they should do:
Portray a Crystal-Clear Picture of Sexing Consequences: Aware your teens how sexting can ruin your life if it is shared on the Internet. Explain how it can be dangerous not only in present but also in the future.
Today, the best parental control apps for android are available in the market which allows parents to see every mobile activity and control the kid’s smartphone remotely. The internet parental controls are quite effective to keep a track record of every internet activity.
Don’t hesitate to purchase internet monitoring software for parents; after all, it’s your kid’s safety.
