Wednesday, 01 April 2009

  • Sexting!

    I just finished an article for the Opinions section of my school newspaper about "sexting." I'm pretty happy with it, but I'd like to know what my fellow Xangans think. I'm crossing out names of people and schools, but otherwise, this is the actual article. Feedback, por favor?

    Before you get too far into this article, let’s play pretend. Imagine that you are standing in front of a mirror with your cell phone. You pout, you smile, you act seductive, snapping photos of each new pose with your phone. Aww, how cute—you should definitely set one as your profile picture on Facebook. Maybe you can even send one of the photos to your boyfriend, with a little smiley face to brighten his day. No big deal. Girls take pictures of themselves all the time, right?

                Oh, wait. I forgot to tell you. You’re naked. As in, completely clothes-less in all of the photos. Everything is on display. Are you going to press that Send button now?

                This new trend of “sexting,” or sending nude photos of oneself to other people, has become alarmingly common as of late. Some of you may remember a story from the summer of 2008—an eighteen-year-old girl from ******* high school hanged herself in her bedroom, soon after another student had killed himself. But did you know that this girl committed suicide partly because of her experience with sexting? That she had sent a nude photo of herself to her boyfriend, and soon the entire school had a copy of the picture? That she was brutally harassed and abused every day, the words “whore,” “slut,” and “skank” snarled at her from every direction? One photo, and her life was destroyed. She killed herself because of one photo, one press of the Send button. One mistake.
                Another recent story involves a fifteen-year-old boy from *****, who was caught with nude photographs of female classmates on his cell phone. Even though he’s only fifteen, he is going to court and may be slammed with child pornography charges. And the girls in the pictures will have to live with horrible shame and insults, because everyone knows that they were the ones who sent naked pictures of themselves to a freshman boy.

                The statistics of sexting are alarming, and have risen dramatically in the past year or so. Thirty-nine percent of teenagers are sending sexually-charged messages or photos to other people. Forty-eight percent of teenagers have received such pictures and messages. I have to wonder: do these teens know what they are getting themselves into?

    There are plenty of serious consequences that come along with sexting. A person who possesses nude photos can be charged with felony-level offenses. If other people obtain the photos, the photographed girl or boy may soon be known as “that **** who sent the naked picture,” and could be mocked, harassed and abused because of it. And if, God forbid, the photos are posted on the internet, they may very well stay there forever—and be drooled over by internet creepers and sex offenders.

    M.M. ’10 finds this particularly alarming. “Those pictures can get around to anyone,” she says. “I mean, everyone has cell phones now, so it’s easy. If you send a picture to someone, he or she could send it to someone else, and then it can just keep going until it reaches your uncle or your cousin or your mom or something. And I just don’t understand why girls would want to expose themselves like that…it’s like they have no respect for themselves.”

    S.M. ’10 agrees. “If you send content depicting yourself in that way, you are not respecting yourself. You are no longer a person who deserves respect; you’re an object. It’s just so degrading.”

                It’s pretty obvious, to me and to many others, that sexting is a just a bad, bad idea. What good comes out of it? Better self-esteem? The ability to blow your boyfriend’s mind? That doesn’t sound particularly appealing…and definitely not worth the risk. Why put so much on the line for one photo? Sexting has ruined the reputations—and even lives—of dozens of people. So think twice before punching that button and sending that picture over the airwaves. Soon, everyone else might be seeing it.

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