Parents: A Word about Sexting

If I had a chance to finish the book draft I began writing about social media before it flew off the hood of my car never to be seen again, I probably would have made the tagline something like,

“It’s not an app problem, it’s a heart problem.”

So often we latch on to platforms instead of behaviors when it comes to social media, yet we don’t operate this way in the physical realm.

To put it hypothetically:

Imagine that when you pick your daughter up from school this afternoon, you’re met with a tear-stained face. After a beat of silence, the verbal floodgates open and you find out that a mean girl cornered your daughter in a hallway on the way from Geometry to English. The girl said some terrible things. She did her best to stick some proverbial labels on your daughter that were simply not hers to wear.

Stupid.

Ugly.

Undesirable.

You hear this story, heart breaking inside your chest, and reply,

“Which hallway was this? Was it the one by the south entrance? I HATE that hallway. I wish you never had to walk down it. In fact, back when I was in school, we only had the hallway by the north entrance.”

……………….um. nope.

Of course you wouldn’t say that!

You’d look her in the eyes and begin peeling her accuser’s labels off, one by one. “My sweet daughter. These are not who you are. You are worth so much more than her words, and here’s what you can do next time.”

You would address the heart, not the location.

And yet, we do the opposite online.

We read about online bullying and we blame Instagram. We hear about nude photos being sent and received and we blame Snapchat. We see news reports about kids not getting enough sleep and we blame the Youtube autoplay feature.

That’s not to say those apps don’t have seriously concerning pitfalls (hello, example in the middle of this post), but sometimes we use these as a copout.

After all, it’s much easier to point a finger there than evaluate our parenting here.

Much easier to yell from the sidelines than get in and coach.

ALL THAT SAID,

can we talk about something without everyone freaking out? An area where we need to get in and coach a bit?

Sexting.

It’s a thing. Do you know that it’s a thing, parents?

By “thing”, I don’t mean a thing for current culture. Or a thing for someone else’s problem child over there.

I mean it’s a thing for your kid.

The good kid who’d “never in a million years…”.

That kid.

It’s a temptation for all kids, because it’s “just how relationships work today”.

(*It’ll henceforth be “sending nudes”, by the way. Nobody says the word “sexting” anymore. Just FYI.)

How did we get here?

How did this become normal teenage relationship behavior?

Well, this was on my Snapchat “discover” page yesterday. Check the top left picture:

An entire Snapchat story about P O R N!

It included fun facts about how many videos you can access through Porn Hub, interesting tidbits about the “cutting edge, newfangled tech” implemented in pornography these days, information about how to pay for exclusive content using “cryptocurrency” because “the web is getting even more accepting of emerging currencies”….YAY, PORN!

I didn’t go searching for this; I accidentally swiped left.

(If I’ve already lost you at “swipe”, below is a really high level overview of the app. There are essentially 3 screens to swipe between, the last of which is all regulated by Snapchat – which, as you can imagine, isn’t filtered with innocence and wholesomeness in mind.)

sex is everywhere

Teens today are absolutely, suffocatingly, enormously BOMBARDED with sex, every day of their lives.

I mean…if 75% of teens ages 13-17 are on Snapchat, and THOSE are the kinds of stories and information being pushed to them?

We can hardly be surprised relationships are taking a hit. We cannot be shocked their view of normalcy is skewed.

You see the shrapnel of this when you hear young adults talk about how much easier it is to hook up with a stranger than ask someone on a date. When flirting over the internet is easier than fumbling through eye contact.

• • •

I fear our teens have been tossed into a world we know nothing about and have done a crap job helping them navigate.

They have a lot of unlearning to do, and we have a lot of things to be coaching – about healthy relationships, about sexual boundaries online AND offline, about the normalcy of awkwardness in relationship.

You with me so far?

I hope so.

Because sexualization of teen culture is a massive issue and epidemic that needs far more conversations than this one, but I want to hone in on the “sending nudes” piece for now.

This is where I spend a lot of my time with good, sweet kids, wanting to make wise choices but struggling with this aspect of being a teenager.

It’s just so normal and expected in relationships today.

As parents, we often either

a) don’t recognize how big of a challenge this is or

b) approach the subject with scare tactics.

We say, “DON’T SEND NUDES because…

• “It’s against the law!!” (Which is true, it is. Anyone in possession of a nude photo of a minor can be criminally charged.)

Quick question: when you were 14 and stole a cigarette from your friend’s dad’s stash and smoked it behind the bleachers at school, did you care that smoking was against the law?

No.

And neither do your kids.

“But this is a way bigger deal!” you reply.

Sure. But everything in the whole world is a bigger deal today. How can this be perceived as a Big Deal when things like Red Food Dye #6 are causing mass hysteria?

We’re the culture who has cried “BIG DEAL!” one too many times. They’re immune to this argument.

• “Those pictures will be out there forever!!” 

Also true. Then again, our kids have no concept of a world in which things can be shredded. All they’ve known is digital. The only social life they know is public and worldwide.

Still not an effective argument.

Scare tactics rarely work. And if they do work, it’s not for the reason we want.

Scare tactics work for behavior modification, they don’t work for heart transformation.

And we’re in it for their hearts, not their actions.

So here’s where I’m headed in heart conversations, and I invite you to join me:

don’t send nudes because…

1. You are valuable. 

Valuable items aren’t cheap, they are sought after and treasured. Once someone falls in love with your heart, they will pursue it day after day.

If you are offering your body instead, it is your body that will bear the weight of expectation and allure day after day. That’s not freedom, that’s torture.

There will come a day when your body cannot allure like it used to. And when that day comes, you’ll want someone who wants your heart, not your parts.

2. Pixels are not people.

There is so much more to you than pixels can portray. There is a heart and a soul and passions and personality. There are the ways your eyes light up when you see a sunrise and the way you snort a little bit when you laugh. Things your friends adore about you that will never be portrayed through a pixel.

Don’t mistake lust for beauty. And don’t trade the beauty of being deeply known for the ease of a cheap and shallow thrill.

3. If it wouldn’t happen in person, it shouldn’t happen online.

More often than not, teenagers don’t know what makes a relationship healthy. One of the easiest ways to spot an unhealthy relationship is if the communication is secretive.

If he or she is snapping you at night but not talking to you in the hallway during the day, ABORT. That person is not worth your time.

• • •

I asked a teen friend the other day, “If you could tell a room full of parents one thing, what would you say?”

She replied,

“I’d tell them they have no idea how many toxic relationships happen behind this screen.”

Well, now we do.

So let’s jump in and coach.