New research published last week in the journal Pediatrics shows that more than one in five middle-school aged children with behavioural or emotional problems have recently engaged in “sexting.”
This study builds on previous research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project which found that nearly a third of all seventeen-year olds have received a ‘sext’ at some time in their life.
In 2012 researchers at the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine studied 948 teenagers and found that 28 percent reported sending a naked picture of themselves via text or e-mail, while 31 percent had asked for explicit photos to be sent to them.
In Romans Paul warned us that when men cease glorifying God, they are given over to sinful lusts (Romans 1:21-24), and one of the results of these lusts is that they will invent new ways of doing evil. (1:30). We see this outworked today, as new technologies are providing sinful men and women with opportunities to devise new forms of sinning. Often these newly invented sins require new words to describe the deviant actions.
The evilness of sexting should be immediately apparent from scriptures such as Galatians 5:19, which condemns impurity and sensuality, or Romans 13:13 which commands us to not only avoid sexual promiscuity, but also sensuality.
In addition to the obvious lewdness and sensuality of sexting, the practice also reveals a deeper culture-wide pathology that is often overlooked. At a time when our digital technologies allow relationships without presence, many people are increasingly coming to view flesh and blood encounters as an unnecessary inconvenience. If co-habitation promises the pleasures of intimacy without the obligations of commitment, sexting promises the excitement of a sexual relationship without the encumbrances of actual intimacy. As such, it is the full flowering of the truly misogynist trajectory of the sexual revolution.
In this sense, sexting works on the same principle on which pornography has always hinged. But there is a crucial difference. The women who become victims of the porn industry are lured primarily by money and prestige; by contrast, women who participate in ‘sexting’ are lured by what promises to be a quick and easy substitute to the vulnerability and fragility attached to embodied relationships.
It may come as a surprise that women are sexting more than men. In one sense, of course, sexting makes women more vulnerable: a man who has no scruples when it comes to receiving or asking for explicit pictures is probably going to have no scruples when it comes to forwarding those pictures to his mates. A woman who engages in sexting thus sets herself up for the worst sort of public exploitation and is forever under the power of the man she trusted. But in another sense, sexting makes women less vulnerable, because a girl can experience the excitement of giving her body to a man without ever having to do business with him as an embodied person, without having to approach him in all her vulnerability, fragility and humanness. For many women, this is precisely the appeal of sexting. Sexting is thus seen as liberating sex from the problem that has dogged it from the beginning, namely having to deal with real people. An article in Sans Magazine was exuberant about sexting’s potential to free sexual relationships from the constraints that come with physical presence:
No longer do we actually have to commit to a single task of actually physically undressing, warming up our partner and then engaging in the carnal act of intercourse…. Plus, we don’t ever have to actually see the person.
This quote demonstrates how sexting is the culmination of the dehumanizing principles behind the sexual revolution. The promise of the sexual revolution was that intimacy could be fulfilling outside the obligations of marriage, a promise that researchers have now discovered to be false. The lie of the 21st century is that sex can be fulfilling without actual intimacy. This too will be found to be a lie. In the meantime, the problem is that by coupling sexual pathologies with extremely addictive digital technologies, that brain is being rewired to think differently about sex, relationships and what it means to be human.
The solution is a return to the Biblical understanding of what it means to love and what it means to be human. As Christians we recognize that it is God who created the powerful urge to physically connect with members of the opposite sex. But God also created the context in which that desire for physical connection can flourish and achieve its proper end.
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[…] New research published last week in the journal Pediatrics shows that more than one in five middle-school aged children with behavioural or emotional problems have recently engaged in “sexting.” This study builds on previous research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project which found that nearly a third of all seventeen-year olds have received a ‘sext’ at some time in their life. Research Uncovers Sexting Epidemic […]
Presumably this is one in five “middle-school aged” children in the USA, but I think that ought to made clear. Moreover, “middle-school aged” should be defined ! When some local authorities I know of in England did have “middle schools”, the age range was 9 – 13 , but it might well be different in the USA. and this would be relevant.
Nonetheless, this activity does go on in England to a considerable extent, I am told.
It has often happened over the decades, and presumably centuries, that young people have a good look at each other for information, perhaps particularly aged around 9 and 10 . There have been a number of semi-autobiographical novels which describe such activities, and in much more puritanical times they were even depicted on seaside postcards. I heard of one such encounter a couple of years ago, which the parents wisely chose to ignore. Is texting so very much worse ? I don’t know that it is.
If you are complaining that flesh and blood encounters have become an unnecessary inconvenience, two unforeseen and quite unfortunate conclusions might be said to follow :
1) actual “face to face” genital examination by young people is better than sexting
2) it is wrong to send photographs of the face by mobile phone or email —- perhaps it is ?
I quoted various studies, applying to various ages in various locations, which establish that there is a sexting epidemic.
Yes, sexting is much worse than looking at seaside postcards because it involves much more people in this immoral practice. If a seaside postcard of a model in a semi-nude or nude condition is bad, then (a fortiori) millions of girls posing semi-nude or nude is even worse.
With regard to the “two unforeseen and quite unfortunate conclusions”, you would need to establish through argumentation that those conclusions followed from what I wrote, but you have not done that so there is not really anything to respond to. Having said that, I would say that actual ‘face to face’ genital examination *in marriage* is better than sexting. At one time, the urge to undress in front of a member of the opposite sex would have been a powerful incentive to get married.
British readers might like to know that “Middle Schools” in the USA usually take the age range 11 – 14, whereas where they still exist in the UK it is usually 9 – 13, sometimes even 8 – 12 . This obviously makes a lot of difference.
American readers might like to know that British seaside postcards (where not actually pictures of the scenery) are merely “saucy” with exaggerated cartoons and suggestive captions, not photographs of naked models ! I was referring to a particular cartoon subject with two small children (dressed).