TWO Sunshine Coast teenage girls who sent naked photographs to a male student have become part of a "frightening" trend sweeping through schools. Police say the problem of "sexting" is widespread among young students at some Sunshine Coast schools, with most unaware of the criminal nature of their actions. Any digital image, distributed or taken, of a child under the age of 17 is classified as child-exploitation material. Police were made aware of an incident where two girls, who were under 17 years of age, from St Andrew's Anglican College at Peregian Springs had allegedly sent naked photographs to a male student, who shared the pictures on social media, although no official complaint was made to police. Child Investigation Unit member Michael Duff said the use of social media to share illegal sexual material was becoming more prevalent at schools. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have been identified as the main smart phone applications used to share racy pictures. St Andrew's deputy principal Paul Sjogren declined to comment directly on the incident but said the school would discipline any students involved in sharing pornographic images. Renee Barnes, a social media expert and senior journalism lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, said sexting was becoming more common among teens. Health For 15 seconds, popular Sunshine Coast school teacher John Blunden was all alone, stuck on his side in the dirt with no feeling from his waist down.
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Sexting defined as sending someone sexually explicit photographs or messages via cell phone is the new norm for teenagers today, specifically high school age teenagers. Why may you ask is this more common today than in recent generations? One theory has been linked to all of the mature material that adolescents have access to on the social media websites and apps today. Did you know that most apps contain pornography that is not even blocked? Some of the reasons that teenagers partake in sexting via the cell phone include: popularity, low self-esteem, the need for instant gratification, and peer pressure. These are apps that appear to look like an ordinary photo on the device the calculator icon was the most common one , but low and behold a password is needed to unlock these apps which contain pictures usually nudes or some photos that teenagers want to hide from their parents. These are also known as vault apps and are ready to be downloaded through the apple store.
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Print article. Your tween daughter is so self-conscious about her body that getting her into a dressing room to try on her first bra required the slippery recruiting skills of a veteran MI5 spy. In a logical world, there would be no reason to imagine that any of these kids is snapping photos of their nascent naked naughty bits and texting them to others. Sexting in middle school sounds crazy. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention anonymously surveyed more than 1, middle school students in Los Angeles, 20 percent reported having received a sext. And a random sampling of 1, users of the Internet safety tool Bark found that 5 percent of sixth through eighth graders exchanged sexually explicit material electronically with another person.
Don't have an account yet? Get the most out of your experience with a personalized all-access pass to everything local on events, music, restaurants, news and more. A football game was cancelled after reports about the widespread nature of sexting among students was made public — the fear being that there wouldn't have been enough uninvolved players to field a full squad — and the school's administration floated threats of felony charges against participants. Hasinoff is critical of law enforcement attempts to criminalize behavior like sexting, deeming it counter-productive for, among other things, the way it treats potential perpetrators and victims in the same way. In this case, however, cooler heads appear to have prevailed. Even though the sexting reports went national, district attorney Thom LeDoux has decided against charging any of the participants with a crime. At a press conference covered by KRDO , LeDoux revealed that photos featuring at least identified students were found on three confiscated phones. LeDoux noted that some of the students referred to the photos as "Pokemon cards" because of the way they were being traded. However, LeDoux added that the investigation failed to reveal aggravating factors that would have led to criminal charges.
