Sexting - fears as teens targeted

An explosion of teenage sex texting is alarming Australian teachers, police and youth counsellors.

The new mobile phone phenomenon, dubbed "sexting", led to 32 Victorian teenagers being charged with child pornography offences last year.

Cyber-bullying expert Kate McCaffrey warns that most parents remain oblivious to the threat to children, while school principals describe phone-based bullying as "explosive".

The full extent of sexting has not been quantified, but a survey by a teenage girls' magazine found 40 per cent of respondents had been asked to send sexual images of themselves.

Police say sexting rates are already high, while Kids Help Line says nearly half their bullying-related calls can be attributed to cyber-bullying.

Sexting involves taking or sending an explicit photo of oneself and forwarding it to friends or potential suitors.

Detective Sergeant Campbell Davis, of the Victoria Police internet child exploitation team, said girls were especially targeted, and the third-generation of mobile phone technology, or 3G, which can send large image files straight to the internet, was exacerbating the problem.

"It is a very powerful technology and we need to teach our children how quickly images can be forwarded," he said.

Any image that depicts a minor in a sexual activity or indecent manner is considered child pornography, and anyone who passes on or receives those images is liable to face criminal charges.

A survey by Australia's Girlfriend magazine found that four in 10 readers had been asked to forward a nude photo of themselves.

Fred Ackerman, president of the Victorian Principals Association, said schools could confiscate mobile phones but could not stop torrents of text messages.

"Mobile technology has upped the ante," he said.

And teenagers who voluntarily pose for images can become victims. Bacchus Marsh police recently sought help from the FBI in the US to help shut down a fake MySpace page displaying sexualised images of a 13-year-old girl, which had been accessed after the victim sent images to her boyfriend.

Kate McCaffrey, a high school English teacher and author, said young girls sent images because they craved peer approval, but adults were blind to the trend.

"The generation gap is getting wider ... because we are more and more disconnected from the kids around us," she said.

"Kids are saturated with images that they see on the internet. Nobody is sitting with them, there is no moral arbiter there."

Some young people were approached to see how common sexting is in Melbourne.

Three 15-year-old-girls said girls enjoyed the positive reaction sexting creates. "Girls feel like they can't get attention without putting themselves out there like that," they said.

Two males, aged 21 and 17, said they often received and sent images "because we can, and we can get away with it".

General manager of counselling services at Australia's Kids Help Line, Wendy Protheroe, said of 3000 bullying-related calls, 1200 were mobile phone and cyber-bullying related.

- © Fairfax NZ News