Teen Sexting II

Please see “Teen Sexting, Texting, and Suicide,” published on March 11, 2009: http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=906.

The primary subject of that article was 18 year old Cincinnati area girl, Jessica Logan, who had made a grievous mistake, a mistake being made by millions of other teenagers, predominantly by teen girls: She had texted, “sexted” is the popular term, compromising pictures of herself to a boyfriend and, after their breakup, he and/or five of her “friends” forwarded the pictures to hundreds of other girls.

The result for Jessica was a living hell. She was shunned, expelled from parties, taunted and bullied on Facebook and MySpace, and received endless, random phone calls accusing her of being a slut. She ended that hell by resorting to what she felt was her only recourse. Jessie hanged herself in her bedroom last July 3rd.

To her parent’s great credit, only months after that horrific event, they are now speaking out in hopes of forestalling “copycat” suicides by other teens as a consequence of such sexting. Following their daughter’s lead–Jessica had gone public on Cincinnatti television in May, “to make sure no one else will have to go through this again”–Cynthia and Albert Logan have launched a nationwide effort to help curb sexting by children: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090322/NEWS01/903220312/-1/TODAY.

Jessie, an only child, was a typical Ohio teenage girl, vivacious, compassionate, artistic, outgoing, all of which traits were thrown into reverse when she learned that what she had thought were her private pictures had been widely disseminated.

She was subjected to relentless harassment, called a ”slut, porn queen, whore,” quite possibly by many peers who had engaged in similar acts of sexting indiscreet pictures. There is no definitive study on precisely how many teens actually do engage in the dangerous practice. One national estimate says 22%, although some high schools report that up to 50% have “inappropriate” pictures on cell phones. Still other stats suggest that 39% of teens have sexted and 48% admit to receiving such messages: http://www.momlogic.com/2009/03/when_sexting_leads_to_suicide.php.

“Inappropriate” was not defined but . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com.)