School_Impact

First and foremost, the impact on public schools is that, legally, all "sexting" must be treated as bullying and dealt with accordingly. I am posting a website - http://tangerinetimes.com/2009/03/sexting-gone-awry/ - that addresses this issue in the case of a sixteen year old, Ohioan girl, named Jesse, who had sent nude photos of herself to her boyfriend. The boyfriend then sent these pictures to other girls in the high school creating a lynch-mob attitude towards Jesse, calling her "whore" on campus and in the classroom ("There goes the whore who sent those pictures," students would say as she walked by.). Jesse's mother claims that school officials were aware of the harassment but did not take "sufficient action" to stop it. The mother said that officials offered to go to one of the girl's houses who had the pictures and tell her to delete them off of her phone and not to speak to Jesse again, but that was it.

Some of the main points addressed in the article are that the school had no policy on "sexting" and "cyberbullying." Consequently, school officials did not treat it as such and failed to call all the parents involved, which is mandated when dealing with harassment and bullying.

Unless schools have these policies and act accordingly, they will be held responsible in the future and litigations will run rampant. I see not only security and police officers on campuses in the future, but "cybercops" employed as well.

Another case in Massachusetts, has nine teenagers all up for child pornography charges, which is a felony. The story goes, the initial senders were boyfriend and girlfriend at the time sending each other pictures of their private parts through their phones. Then, when the two broke up, the girl sent the pictures to her girlfriends and the boyfriend to his friends. The article poses the question, "Who's guilty in this scenario?" The case stands as a message for other teens as to the seriousness of these actions and that teens' cellphones should have those functions disabled. Good luck with that!