Teens view sex information with a critical eye

A new report from Guttmacher staff (summarized here) finds that teens do not consider the internet to be a main source of sexual health information. However, I do want to point out that the sample only consisted of 58 youth, some of whom came from New York, where arguably the access to information from other venues (health clinics, sex ed classrooms, community centers) may be higher than in more remote areas.

Nevertheless, the fact seems to remain that teens prefer more personal sources for information about sex. These include family members (voted number one again as has been found in previous research), school, medical professionals, and friends. While I commend youth for reaching out to more human resources, this fact does concern me because both in the literature and in the community, I have found time and again that the adults mentioned in this previous list are extremely hesitant to talk about sex -- which leaves youth to rely on each other for information. Many parents, doctors, teachers, and other trusted adults express discomfort at the very idea of having "the talk" with youth in their care (note: the idea of "the talk" is not really accurate, as a sex conversation is hardly a one-time thing, but more of a process over many years!).

How can we best reach adults and support them so that they are more comfortable to talk about sex? What resources do they need? I don't fault adults for not starting conversations -- many of them were raised in ignorance and didn't have role models of adults whom spoke openly with them. Adults can't simply start talking about something without guidance -- especially something so value-ridden and complicated as sexual relationships and health.

So the question becomes -- who teaches the teachers? Maybe there are some good online resources...

Actually, there are a few places that have some good basic tips:
Mayo Clinic
Families Are Talking
Children Now

California Law Targets Cyberbullying

Happy New Year to All!

'Tis the season for all things new --resolutions, calendars, and laws! In California, there is a new law on the books that makes it illegal to create a fake social networking profile "to harm others." Violation of the law can result in a year jail time and/or up to a $1000 fine.

Will be interesting to see if something like this makes a difference -- probably not until it is tested in courts and people become more aware of it.

CA schools could possibly take advantage of this by connecting it to safe school policies to strengthen those. It's difficult to enforce a bullying policy if the actual bullying takes place either off campus and/or through the use of personal devices such as computers or cell phones. But, perhaps, with this impersonation law, schools can demonstrate that the bullying of students is still against school regulations even if it happens after the bell rings. I'm no lawyer (though I do love me some SVU!), but perhaps this logic will help build a case against a serious offender?

Cyber self-harm?

This recent post by internet relationship extraordinaire danah boyd has attracted a lot of attention -- and with good reason. There has been extensive media coverage on cyberbulling these days; just a quick search on google news brought me stories from Montana, New York, and even Spain posted in just the last few hours. But what boyd and online quiz builder Formspring have uncovered (or at least made public) is something alarming, but perhaps not that surprising:

There are teens out there that bullying themselves online.

boyd as dubbed this "digital self-harm" but comments from readers criticize this term because physical self-harm is often motivated by the relief that follows after experiencing actual pain, clearly not happening online. But, no matter the term used, people are starting to come up with motivations/rationales as to why such behavior would occur. boyd's reasons from her article include a cry for help, to be cool, and to trigger compliments. Anne Collier, in her most recent issue of Net Family News appears to support the "cry for help" theory more strongly than the others.

However, to me, this behavior is somewhat parallel to some of the behaviors found in some persons who deal with borderline personality disorder, or some other personality disorder. These conditions affect approximately 2% of US adults, typically young women, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Such mental health conditions are characterized by unstable, volatile social relationships, and impulsiveness. My Mayo Clinic introduces personality disorders with this explanation:

"A personality disorder is a type of mental illness in which you have trouble perceiving and relating to situations and to people — including yourself."

To me, there is a lot of commonality between someone with personality disorder and someone who would post negative comments about herself and await either verification or contradiction.

Now, I am not saying that all persons who engage in "digital self harm" have personality disorder, or any mental health diagnosis for that matter. But, what I do want to bring to light is that this phenomenon might not be the representation of something new, but instead a new way for someone with a certain mental health issue to express herself. Why the need to differentiate? Because it may shape the way we approach this problem (and I do see it as a problem, no matter its cause) and its solutions.

Whatever comes of this issue, you can be sure that this might be the first, but it certainly is not the last, time we will come across this.

Texting or stalking?

OK, after a REALLY long break, I am trying to start writing again. I still care a lot about this issue, but so many others have been grabbing my attention, that it has been difficult to get back into the swing of things. I shall do my best, but perhaps I will be expanding what I write about, as different things related to youth catch my eye...

That said, I have had this story open on my desktop for some time. This Washington Post article addresses "textual harassment," to harass or stalk someone through text messages. Texting, frankly, makes it easier to experience abuse in a relationship. A person can constantly write messages -- threatening or not -- to their "significant other" to the point of where they are constantly reminded of the relationship. A person can feel controlled, followed, or lose their individuality if enough messages come through their phone on a daily basis (some of the stories featured allude to more than 100 a day).

This is one of the ways that technology has changed relationships for the worse. Before texting, it would have been nearly impossible to stay in such close touch with someone without physically being there. Now, with just a few button pushes, a person can infiltrate someone else's life constantly.

Understandably, little has been done to more thoroughly investigate the repercussions of such behavior. But the perspective of the stalker has been examined even less. Given the young ages of these textual harassers, do they really realize what they are doing? Is it possible that their lack of perspective really doesn't allow them to see how much is "too much?" While not wanting to defend their behavior, it would be interesting to see how the harassers themselves explain their actions.

Teachers in need of instruction?

Thanks Jeff for pointing out this story about a teacher who somehow thought it was a good idea to send naked photos of herself to a 15-year-old student!

I find this incident very hard to wrap my head around. Outside of the obvious inappropriateness of the act, did the teacher honestly think that a teenage boy would keep naked pictures of a teacher a secret? Imagine being in high school and getting a hold of some compromising pics of a teacher. Imagine your classmates getting their hands on them. What percentage of them would just keep those photos to themselves as opposed to having some sort of "fun" with them?

That's what I thought.

I was in Teacher Education for a while, and I don't recall ever covering the inappropriateness of sexual relationships with students. I am sure it was covered elsewhere, but not in the classes I taught. Perhaps during those ethics classes (or wherever they talk about such issues) we need to address the fact that sexting counts as acting inappropriately? Show news stories such as this to scare the heck out of those even tempted to do so? Again, I find it odd that it would even be necessary, but given the viral nature of texts and other digital communication, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to offer these gentle reminders to instructors.

Update on blog management

Hi folks! Just so you know, I have now defaulted to moderating all comments in order to block spamming, which has gotten out of control. Mind you, I WILL post all comments that are sincere, even if they are just to say you liked the post or want to say "hi."

I also implemented a mandatory typing of a word to avoid macros as spam.

Thanks to all of you for your patience in this matter. Now, on to our regularly scheduled programming :-).

Still struggling with SPAM

Hello out there in Reader Land!

I am working on the best way to deal with all the SPAM responses to this blog. I think some solutions I have developed are going to be good ones. One is that, unfortunately, I deleted a post that seemed to attract most of the junk. I am also working on other strategies.

Thank you for your patience! Not monitoring this blog is a sign of disrespect to you all -- something I do not want to convey.

Internet communities: Strengthening the global or local?

I found this post (please excuse the numerous editing issues, as recognized in its own disclaimer) extremely interesting in the way it challenged how young people use the internet to form community. I have read quite a bit speculating (there is so little research and not much anecdotal information either) on how sexual and gender minority are reaching out online to form community. Most of this information discovers how these youth use the internet to reach out of their isolated communities to find others "like them" in other places.

This is not the case here.

Mary Gray, of the Communication and Culture dept. at Indiana University, gives an example of how rural youth use the internet to strengthen their LOCAL community of LGBTQ youth. It's a neat case study that makes me wonder how widespread it is.

Another point I appreciate: the fact that these youth feel safer in public venues rather than hidden in their own identities, or online. To me, a supporter of these youth, it is reassuring that they are trying to make themselves visible and part of the community.

Huge increases in media use reported

A recent article in the New York Times highlights that teens are spending more time with media than ever before -- an average of 7.5 hours a day. And, given that they can use several different types of media at once (listen to music while playing a video game or posting on Facebook), teens actually manage to bend time and get in nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

Heavy media use (defined as more than 16 hours a day!) was found to be associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades. So, the increase in media, at least in its extreme, may be cause for concern.

The study was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, who has a strong history of researching media use and content. KFF is also known for its thorough analysis of the sexual content on television (the Sex on TV series). Major findings there include that the amount of sexual content on TV continues to increase, and that references to safer sex or sexual risks and responsibilities are rare (about 14% of sexual content alludes to them). The last Sex on TV report I could find was from 2005.

But maybe KFF realizes that those studies are outdated, and it's time to look more closely at the sexual content of the digital media teens consume instead. I look forward to it!

A look at adult priorities on dating sites

Nerd alert: This blog posting by the staff at OKCupid is full of statistics, but ultimately interesting. It demonstrates how much looks (i.e., your photo) matters when it comes to getting any hits on your online dating post. In fact, they determine that your picture matters more than anything else you post on the site.

What is sort of interesting, however, is how men and women respond to the attractiveness of the photo. Men will judge most women to be of "average" attractiveness -- very few will be found to be decidedly unattractive and, likewise, few will be seen as extremely attractive. In somewhat surprising contrast, women are MUCH more likely to rate men as unattractive to average attractiveness.

However -- how men and women react to that information differs. Men, despite there only being (in their eyes) very few attractive women will only write to those women. Women, who perhaps because they know there are so few (in their eyes) prime men, are more likely to write to those they find less attractive. The result? A highly attractive woman gets 5 times as many messages as an average woman and 28 times as many messages as an unattractive woman. These differences aren't as great the other way around where the most attractive guys get 11 times the messages the least attractive do.

Just another way to point out that even though we discourage our youth to post pictures of themselves that will gain "this sort of attention" we have to be honest with ourselves -- this sort of attention works in the adult world, too.

MTV's Take on Online Safety

MTV has released its A Thin Line campaign to stop the spread of digital abuse. Interestingly, in the "about us" section, it specifically mentions "forced sexting" as opposed to sexting in general. An interesting distinction considering even voluntary sexting covers its own risks such as unwanted forwarding of the picture (more than a third of teens report getting pictures meant for someone else according to the infamous sexting study by CosmoGirl) and even charges of child pornography.

Meanwhile, MTV has released its own data about digital abuse in youth and young adults through age 24. While I wish they reported the age categories separately, some interesting findings include:

• 1/4 of respondents state they know about an incident where somone took a picture or video of another doing "embarrassing or private things without that person knowing" and then shared them without permission.
• 18% received naked images of another on their cell or over email
• 11% were "pressured" to send a naked pic or video of themselves
• 3% reported posting naked pictures of themselves

While interesting, I look forward to a more thorough analysis of the data. Stay tuned!

Sexting -- get the facts right!

This article from a smaller Minnesota paper highlights the same sexting research that all other news stories cover. However, I am calling this one out because of the inaccuracies of its reporting.

For example, the article quotes the following statistics:

• One in five teen girls ages 13 to 16 say they have electronically sent or posted nude or semi-nude photos of themselves online
• 33 percent of teenage boys ages 13 to 16 and 25 percent of teenage girls have had nude or semi-nude images – that were meant to be private – shared with them

Looking more closely at the survey itself, the numbers in this article are flat-out misreported. According to the actual report, 11% of 13-16 year-old girls have electronically sent or posted nude or semi-nude photos of themselves online. I can't find within the report the parallel number for boys, but for all teen boys, the rate is 18% (compared to 22% of all teen girls, not just the younger ones).

The 33% of boys and 25% of girls who are sharing pictures is for all teens, aged 13-19, not for those aged 13-16. I could not find a separate statistic for the younger teens.

So, once again, news trumps accuracy in its attempts to send readers into panics. While I am not saying that the true numbers are to be ignored, I am saying that honest reporting of the issue would be a helpful step towards framing our approach to working constructively with youth to encourage safe and smart technology use.

International POV on sex education and the internet

I often complain about the lack of quality, accurate sex education in the US, but at least there is some sex ed here. This article out of India notes that teens get most of their information about sex education from media sources, including the internet compared to only o.5% from their parents and 4.5% from teachers.

Wow

Viruses that plant child pornography on your computer?

A recent case in which a man was accused of possessing child pornography was dropped, as it was discovered during the investigation that his computer had a virus that downloaded the illegal images onto his computer.

Stories like this beg the question -- could this happen to you?

Answer from Larry Magid, internet software and safety extraordinaire: "It is indeed possible for malicious software to plant child pornography--or any other type of file, for that matter--on an innocent person's computer, but being possible doesn't mean it's likely. And forensics experts can detect intention."

Translation: Possible? Yes -- Likely? No way.

Still, there are things you can do to protect yourself (though experts stress not to lose sleep over this):
1. Clean out your cache and cookies early and often
2. Clean out your Temp file in your C Drive too
3. Pay attention to the sites you visit and try to go to only trusted sources
4. Note times when your computer is acting sluggish and try to determine if something is being downloaded during those times (use Ctrl-Alt-Delete to look at programs that are currently running and do some searches on them if you do not recognize what they are)

But again, although charges of child pornography are indeed serious, this is not something that should cause panic given its high unlikelihood.

Great Piece From Wired on "Raising an Internet-Savvy Child"

Although I pretty much love this whole article from Wired, The First Email Address: Raising an Internet Savvy Child," here are the highlights for me:
1. "The same approach to have towards teaching them to know right and wrong offline applies to their activities online. "
-- I support the idea that although the internet has many "new" aspects, responsible and ethical use really is all about learning how to treat others and yourself with respect and good will. Know that offline, and it will happen more readily online;

2. The New York Times stated it first, but it's repeated in this article (and should be repeated several times): "you ,the parent> should practice the same guidelines in posting and e-mailing personal information like photos, birth dates and addresses as you would want from your kids. Just as you wouldn’t want them giving out information online about your family that would put the entire household at risk, you must guard their information as well to ensure that your privacy practices online don’t put them in danger."
-- If we don't practice safety common sense, why should we expect our children to do so?

Seriously -- read this article, especially if you are a parent. It will be one of the smartest things you will do to support healthy internet safety.

New web site in Colorado

A new site, "Teen Clinic," was set up to provide a safe space for teens to ask questions about sex and sexuality. They have a Twitter account, a means for youth to text in questions, a web platform for question asking and, of course, MySpace and Facebook pages. Question: How is this site going to be any different than all the others out there (of which Teen Wire and Sex Etc seem to be the most popular)? Is anyone going to start keeping track of how many youth use these sites to get their specific questions answered? And, if they already do that, will they let the rest of us know how useful these sites are?

The TRULY Wordwide Web: My dilemma

First of all, thanks for your patience concerning my absence. I have flooded with grant-writing, but the overall good news is that I have had many successes. I hope to resume some semblance of regularity in posting soon.

Meanwhile, I have noticed that many comments have been posted on my blog entries as of late. They are not in English, so I honestly have no idea what they say. Using Google's translating option, I tried to figure out their meanings -- with little success. Of course, these posts are about sex; after all, this is what this blog is about! But my question always was: were these posts genuine, or created by a SPAM bot and filled with invitations to view adult-related material? There were times when I thought the former, but ultimately I decided they were more the latter. As a result, I have deleted most of these posts.

I bring this up, because it really posed an ethical dilemma for me. Do I assume the worst or hope for the best? Did I censor the disingenuous to create a safe environment for honest visitors, or by deleting expression did I shut down rarely-articulated dialog about an issue? Sadly, I will never know. But one thing I do know is this: the internet is a place where every language is spoken and all topics are discussed. At this point in time, however, my blog is not a specific outlet for certain people and I feel somewhat apprehensive about that decision.

Early sex education: Inquiring minds want to know

Today, September 4th, 2009, the top question asked by kids on AskKids.com is "What is love?"

Interesting Debate on Sexting

On a listserv comprised of the top sex educators and counselors in the US, if not the world, there is an intense debate going on as to the potential harm of sexting, More specifically, the discussion revolves around a case in which a teenager (read: a legal minor) is engaging in some form of sexting (not clear from the original post) with an out-of-state adult (again, age unknown, but not a minor). The simple question posed to the listerv: What should this counselor do?

Clearly, there is no easy answer. And thus the debate. Some say it's a form of sexual abuse. Some say it may be harmless. Some insist on contacting Child Protective Services due to the poster's status as a mandatory reporter, while others say no as there is no clear and immediate danger. One person suggests the minor contact a rape crisis center.

Others are asking whether there are any laws to draw from. Other than ones about distributing child pornography (which potentially would only get the minor, not the adult in trouble), we come up empty.

And, as I said at the beginning of this post, this debate is going on amongst the cream of the crop experts on issues related to sexuality. If they don't know the answer, who will? How are we going to figure out the best way to react to this situation? Because it probably happens a lot. But is a sexting relationship between a teenager and adult as potentially harmful as a face-to-face one between the same parties? An intereting question to ponder, if only it were hypothetical.

Reaching Teens

A question for the marketing people, who spend millions of dollars answering this question: How best to reach teens online with good information about their sexual health? Of course teens use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and others, but do they want to get information there? Would they "fan" or "friend" a site? For example, Sex Etc. has over 6,000 fans on its Facebook page. But as I scroll through them, a lot of them are older (indeed, I am one of them!). And when you consider that teens often average 100s of friends as an individual, you can see that Sex Etc.'s outreach is far from overwhelming.

It appears they do not use Twitter, so that is probably out. ISIS is trying to use cell phones/texts to deliver its messages about sexual health -- so are others.

As someone who is supposedly an expert at reaching youth, I find that I (and others) still struggle with the best ways to reach out.