Technology Is Your Friend

'Sexting'…are your kids doing it?

I've gotten to the point where nothing surprises me anymore. It's just become another fact of life to me that common sense isn't all that common.

In the past five years we've blamed pretty much every part of popular culture and every new technology for…well…everything.

We develop these elaborate fantasies about how everything is dangerous and everything is ultimately a tool of the terrorists, the pedophiles, muslims or whoever we don't like that particular week. The worst part is that it doesn't matter how ridiculous or implausible the 'threat' is, even if five seconds of actual thought can disprove every part of it, we don't care because we love being terrified.

The latest thing is 'sexting'. Basically kids sending dirty messages to each other. Sexting is following hot on the heels of e-bullying, or how kids are vandalizing each other's myspace pages and sending bullying text messages to the unpopular kids.

I'm getting to the point where I feel like the only sane person left in the nuthouse.

How can people not get that teens sending sexy messages to each other or bullying each other is nothing new?

Here's the deal. Some dumbass parent finds a message on his son's phone from a girl in his class that uses some fairly explicit language. What does he do? Have a talk with his son? Call the girl's parents?

No…He blames it on the phone. This devil-technology that's leading his son astray.

Of course, teens have sent each other dirty messages for as long as teenage boys and girls have found themselves in the same place. They certainly did when I was at school. The only difference is that we wrote them on slips of paper and passed them in class or shoved them through the gap into each other's lockers. Bullying certainly isn't a new thing.

Ah, but with 'sexting', these teens can send dirty pictures to each other. That's totally new!

Ok, they have me on that one. Kids sending pictures of their dicks and boobs to each other is totally new. When I was a teen we just got together and said "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Here's the deal. Think. It's not that hard.