All the Hype About Teens and Their Cell Phones

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We’ve seen a bunch of articles lately about teenagers and cell phone use. The biggest concern… teenagers browsing porn or forwarding racy pics to each other.

Call me biased, but my favorite article I’ve read about this topic so far is David’s informative summary about many of these concerns in this week’s YOUTH CULTURE WINDOW article titled, Mobile Porn.

Here’s just a snippet:

Recently, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy conducted a study on exactly what kind of pictures (and messages) teens have stored on their cell phones. Here are a few of their disappointing findings:

• 20% of teenagers say they’ve sent (or posted) naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves, mostly to be “fun or flirtatious,” (33% of 20-26 year olds have done the same)
• 33% of teenage boys say they’ve seen nude or semi-nude images sent to someone else (about 25% of teenage girls have done the same)
• 39% of teenagers say they’ve sent suggestive text messages (59% of those ages 20-26 admit to it as well)
• 48% of teens have received sexually suggestive text messages (64% of young adults also have)

In spite of these risqué behaviors, most of those surveyed (73%) said they knew sending sexually suggestive content “can have serious negative consequences.” Several teenagers already know this to be true; just ask these 15 year old cheerleaders who are facing child pornography charges for snapping nude pics of themselves and sending them to high school friends.

I love this article because it combines research with youth ministry experience. As always… we link every source so you can see the research yourself.

This is the second time our YOUTH CULTURE WINDOW articles have covered the topic of cell phones. Earlier this year David wrote an article about when texting becomes “Sexting.”