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Sexting and Facebook Can Be Dangerous to your Mental Health
Ho or not?
Sexting, texting, Facebook, social media. Tweeners and Teenagers are usually the ones that don't think ahead about the consequences of their actions. It IS their age. As they get older, have more skills, they will think before they act, but until that "magic" happens, they act impulsively, usually thinking it is "cool".
Take the most recent example of a girl in 8th grade. The 7th and 8th grades are usually when the sex and sexting thing firest appears. Some things change like sexting, but other things, like sex, is age old. French kissing, making out and other maneuvers all are "firsts" in Junior High or Middle school.
Sexting and Facebook have added a new dimension to age old dilemmas. The 8th grade girl innocently (so she thought) snapped a photo of herself in the mirror naked using her cell phone. She just wanted to impress her new boyfriend. Maybe she felt insecure about her looks. He got it and smiled but their relationship crashed and burned not long afterwards. Weeks passed. Everyone was doing their thing, then, the boy decided it would be cool to send it to a few buddies, including some girls. One girl, a former friend of the girl in the mirror, thought "revenge". She sent the nude photo with a title of: "Ho alert! If you think this girl is a whore, then text it to all your friends".
24 hours passed. Electronically, the photo and email zipped into hundreds of other middle schoolers in four other schools! When the girl in the mirror went to school, it was like a catwalk with glares, snickers, comments. Soon, the principals were aware of the situation. Soon, the police and then the local District Attorney, who charged three of the students with a felony for creating the viral outbreak. The girl in the mirror was not charged because of the distress she had gone through.
Although sexting is NOT illegal, it becomes so if the perpatrators are under 18 yrs. under the murky child pornography laws. As to the girl in the mirror, her parents cut off all cell phone, Internet, and TV. For her, this was a severe punishment.
Facebook can be dangerous to a teenager's mental state. If you FB, but don't have hundreds of so called "friends" listed, not doing much as revealed in your "status" updates and pictures with friends, you may become depressed according to medical professionals. FB is like a big popularity contest. How true. Look at your own "friends" people you really do no know or communicate with much, yet they are a "friend"? The person on FB seeks to get the most friend requests or the most photos tagged. It is also a place where enemies can post derogatory comments for all of your friends to read.
Thus, if your teenager seems depressed or sad, FB may be the reason and you need to have them open their page and investigate what has been going on with them in their viral world. FB provides a very skewed view of what is really going on, who's popular, etc. I am sure that your tweener or teenager who has 200 "friends" on FB is just adding friends of friends of friends to appear popular.