The number of kids who are sexting should concern parents enough to make them talk to their kids about the dangers of sexting, but should not cause them to panic, he said. Any behavior, including sexting, that contributes to a culture of casual sexual encounters should be of concern to parents, he said.
He urged parents not to blame cell phones for the trend.
"To me, blaming the technology is like blaming an automobile for drunk driving," he said. "It is not the product, it is not the technology that is the problem. It is the judgment of the people using the technology."
article about sexting, the ease of cyberbullying, the prevalence of both, the dire consequences
There are two schools of thought about how to treat sexting and its more broadly defined cousin, cyber-bullying, which covers everything from hate e-mail to nasty MySpace postings. One is that it's a mistake to focus on the technology at issue, because the hype about it obscures the underlying, long-term trouble: Kids can be incredibly cruel to each other in all kinds of ways. The Internet and the cell phone are just their latest tools. The tactics for addressing cyber-bullying should be the same as the tactics for reducing bullying of all kinds: teach kids to empathize and make sure they have a trustworthy adult to talk to if trouble is brewing.
This makes sense to me. But it's also clear that e-mails and texts and social media have some traits of their own, as the writer danah boyd explains. The bar for becoming a cyber-bully, or even a cyber-bully's accomplice, is much lower than the bar for becoming an actual bully. To torment a girl with a nude photo via sexting, you don't have to Xerox her photo and pass it around, or yell a taunt in the cafeteria, or even whisper about it over the phone, explains Robert King, a psychiatrist at the Yale Child Study Center. You can just press one button and forward the message to lots of other kids. And then those kids, one more step removed from the human being at the center of the flaying, can catch the contagion and spread it.
Digiteens videos about Internet Safety issues and texting; on video from 1:45-4:00 is good student presentation on driving while texting.
Good comic style presentation of cyberbullying and ways to handle it. Best for older students (MS/HS).
Links on the page for Parents, Students and Teachers
UK site of resources for internet safety
Includes lesson plans for 5th through 12th grades.
NetSmartz animated video about profiles and privacy for teens.
Internet Safety links and resources from middle schools in Harrisonburg.
information for schools on prevention, legal issues, and suggested actions