Cause And Effect Essay On Teenage Sexting

967 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Media influence on sexuality

Teenage sexting is a growing epidemic amongst girls in today’s society. Sexting is sending any sexually explicit photos, videos, or messages via cell phone. According to internetsafety101.org, “20% of teens have sent or posted nude or seminude photographs or videos of themselves and 49% of teens believe sending and receiving sexts is very common at their age.” Teenage girls’ low self-esteem, peer pressure, and media’s promotion of hyper-sexuality are the causes of teenage sexting that lead to guilt, bullying, and in most extreme cases criminal charges. One of the most significant causes of teenage sexting is low-esteem. During the second semester of my 7th grade year, my friend sexted her boyfriend for the first time. When I asked her why …show more content…

Young people are bombarded with sexual images on a daily basis from media. Hollywood paints the picture that being a woman means being sexy. One of America’s top selling magazines, Cosmopolitan’s February 2016 issue has phrases like, “Look Hotter Naked” and “5 Ways to Keep Lust Alive”, plastered on the cover. Pop recording artist, Demi Lovato, recently posed for a nude photoshoot to showcase her new found confidence after suffering with an eating disorder and low self-esteem. Racy magazines and risqué celebrity photoshoots have a major effect on teenage girls, because it shapes their perception of womanhood.
An additional result of teenage sexting is guilt. A girl can feel ashamed about sexting, because it goes against her morals and/or she knows it would disappoint the people she is closest to her like her parents. In extreme cases, boys will use nude photos as blackmail against girls to keep them in a relationship by threatening to send the pictures elsewhere or post the pictures on social media. This leaves girls with lower self-esteem than before, because they will feel guilty about leaving their boyfriends on top of being ashamed of sexting in the first

Show More
Related

  • Beauty: The Media Profits by Making Girls Hate Themselves

    1166 Words  | 3 Pages

    Female beauty ideals are an overwhelming force in teen media. Approximately 37% of articles in leading magazines for teen girls emphasize a focus on physical appearance. This is none to surprising considering two of the top contenders in this media genre are Seventeen and Teen Vogue. CosmoGIRL and Elle Girl were among the ranks of popular teen magazines, but in recent years have become exclusively online publications. Add in a dash of publications Tiger Beat and Bop, and it becomes glaringly obvious that girls are charged with the prime directive of looking good to get the guy. The story becomes more disturbing when the actual audience, which includes girls at least as young as eleven years old, is considered. In a stage when girls are trying for the first time to establish their identities, top selling publications are telling them that their exteriors should be their primary concern of focus. Of course, this trend doesn’t stop with magazines. A study conducted in 1996 found a direct correlation between the “amount of time an adolescent watches soaps, movies and music videos” a...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Article 'Little Girls Gone Wild'

    880 Words  | 2 Pages

    Erica Zhang Professor Nelson Intro to Mass Media & Communications 3/11/2013 Media Analysis Assignment In today’s media, the sexualisation of women has unfortunately also extended to young preteen girls, through a myriad of detrimental social constructs and internalized prejudices spanning centuries. The commodification of their sexuality is unnerving, as it encourages predators to project their fantasies onto unwilling participants that are too young to understand the nature of these harmful actions, and know how to escape or refuse them. In an attempt to shed light onto this issue as a concerned parent, Rachael Combe wrote the article Little Girls Gone Wild as a response to this sudden boom in increasingly sexualised behavior among and towards preteens. While her intentions remain sincere and her concerns as a mother legitimate, the article is flawed in the sense that she is not delving deeper into the causes behind this phenomenon, shaming the young girls for indulging in their outward appearances and for participating in a role that society has forced them into, instead of the predators that reinforce this sexualised image and make it something to be desired and aspired to.

    Read More

  • Sexting Law Reform

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    Such was the case of Ohio high school student, Jesse Logan, who sent nude photos to her boyfriend who then sent them to other students who harassed her until she committed suicide.2 Currently, there are laws in place against minors sexting and sexting to minors and they fall under the child pornography category. While the laws are intended to protect minors from sexual predators, what most minors do not understand is that they are subject to them as well. This means that, if fifteen-year-old Timmy decides to sext his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Sarah, a naked picture of himself, both Timmy and Sarah could be tried in court on charges of disseminating child pornography and possessing child pornography. These serious charges can result in having to register as a sex offender for several years, although the message may have been sent and received consensually by both parties. This was the case for an 18-year-old Iowa boy who sent a nude picture of himself to a fourteen-year-old girl after she asked him repeatedly to do so.

    Read More

  • The Media's Effect on Women

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    You can see in the media in almost all occasions women being sexualized. From beer to burger commercials women in the media are portrayed as sexual beings. If they are thin and meet society’s standards of beautiful they are considered marketable. Over the...

    Read More

  • Social Media Has a Negative Effect on Body Image and Self Esteem

    1204 Words  | 3 Pages

    To begin, social media has created unrealistic standards for young people, especially females. Being bombarded by pictures of females wearing bikinis or minimal clothing that exemplifies their “perfect” bodies, squatting an unimaginable amount of weight at a gym while being gawked at by the opposite sex or of supermodels posing with some of life’s most desirable things has created a standard that many young people feel they need to live up to. If this standard isn’t reached, then it is assumed that they themselves are not living up to the norms or the “standards” and then therefore, they are not beautiful. The article Culture, Beauty and Therapeutic Alliance discusses the way in which females are bombarded with media messages star...

    Read More

  • Access to Birth Control Pills for Teenage Girls: A Necessity

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    The reality that must be faced is that teenagers will continue to be sexually active notwithstanding any risk or consequences. Whether it is because they’re uninformed, “in love,” hormonal, bored, or looking for approval

    Read More

  • When We Dead Awaken: Writing As Re-Vision

    664 Words  | 2 Pages

    I can recall a time when the media was influencing my life and actions. The week after I graduated high school, my girlfriends and I took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, where the MTV beach house was located that summer. As I look back on the week of drunken partying and sexy guys, I can only wonder how I made it home alive. How could any young woman find this behavior acceptable? Every young woman there was flaunting their bodies to the young men around them. They were proud to be sexual objects. Where did they learn such debauchery? This is the kind of woman that is portrayed throughout MTV and various other aspects of the media. They have even coined the term “midriff”—the highly sexual character pitched at teenage girls that increasingly populates today’s television shows—in order to hook the teen customer. Teenage women increasingly look to the media to provide them with a ready-made identity predicated on today’s version of what’s “cool.” The media is always telling us that we are not thin enough, we’re not pretty enough, we don’t have the right friends, or we have the wrong friends… we’re losers unless we’re cool. We must follow their example and show as much skin as possible. The type of imagery depicted by MTV-- as well as people like Howard Stern, the famous “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and various Hip Hop songs—glorifies sex and the provocative woman.

    Read More

  • Sex and the City

    1099 Words  | 3 Pages

    Media has been filled with exaggerated scrutinies and trashed with unreasonable criticisms. It deserves a break. This is the generation of Information Technology. Danger is just around the corner, where a click from a mouse or a remote control and all sex-related garbage can pop out of the monitor. Truly, a vulnerable teenager can easily get lost to temptations. As an adolescent, I can empathize how these sweet girls feel about how horrible their body shapes are, how ugly their face is, and how brands in fashion seem to be worth more than anything in the world. Fashion labels, tiny bodies, and sexual activities are all characterized in Sex and the City. From th...

    Read More

  • Teens and Sexting

    1688 Words  | 4 Pages

    Teen’s today face serious criminal charges when they get in trouble for sexting. Sexting is an exchange of nude or seminude images via a telecommunication device. When teens are engaging in sexting, they are not thinking of the possible criminal charges they can face. Sexting among teens is a common issue that we face today in our highly technological world. Laws are not able to keep up with the rate of technology advancements. Teacher, parents, and Louisiana law makers need to be more aware of this issue to try and protect teens from endangering themselves and their future.

    Read More

  • Young People´s Sexuality and Sexting

    1452 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sexting can be referred to as sexual content communicated through text messages, smart phones, or visual and web 2.0 activities such as social networking sites. It has been defined as the ‘exchange of sexual messages or images’ (Livingstone et al., 2011) and ‘the creating, sharing and forwarding of sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images’ (Lenhart, 2009) through mobile phones and/or the internet. There are many factors associated with sexting. This includes that fact that it is coercive, this means that sexting does not refer to a single activity but rather to a range of activities which may be motivated by sexual pleasure but are often linked to harassment, bullying and even violence. (Ringrose, Gill, Livingstone and Harvey, 2012, pp 7).

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Privacy On Facebook

    1832 Words  | 4 Pages

    However the faulty policies that are made by the sites are potentially putting users at a high risk which consequently leads to the affection of their social impressions. Evidently, Facebook likely is not the most appropriate entity to be the arbiter of whether or not academic researchers should obtain consent from individuals to collect their information (Solberg, 2014, p. 800). The terms and condition legalities notwithstanding, users can and should question the terms and conditions of the platforms on which they contribute content, conduct exchanges, socialize, communicate, and otherwise interact. Understanding the conditions of use on these sites allows users to better assess, and advocate for, the levels of influence and control they consider acceptable on the sites they use (Stein, 2013, p. 368). Some of the consequences of sexting are prioritizing humiliation as ‘the worst’ consequence for girls, and criminalization as the most important consequence facing boys (Karaian, 2014, p. 288). As a whole, social media are inevitable in terms of a daily entertainment for teenagers however they usually become victims as of misunderstanding certain terms and conditions offered by the sites; and they might become sexually abusive by offending a victim through sexting (does not matter which gender; heterosexual or

    Read More

  • Teenager’s Social Media Obsession Is Not Good: Being a Teen by Jane Fonda

    1986 Words  | 4 Pages

    What good can possibly come from teenagers spending so much time on social media sites and at times communicating with complete strangers? To many people social media has several benefits such as building confidence and socializing skills. But, as technology continues to advance rapidly, social media becomes a huge part of our daily lives and changes the means of communication by far. Technology and social media exposes teenagers to so much unwanted and unmonitored content. Part of what they are getting exposed to is great amounts of sexual content and violence. Consequently, creating several negative effects that now outweigh the positives ones. Teenagers today are at a higher risk of cyber bullying through online shaming, exposure to uncensored sexual content, and affecting the development of self-character. Even so, if social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and many others might have some positive influences, social media is also known to have serious negative effects on the psychological development of teenagers’ self-character formation, which should be a huge concern in today’s society.

    Read More

  • Comprehensive Sex Education

    2011 Words  | 5 Pages

    Sex is a very common topic, yet very sensitive when it comes to teens. There are many ways that teens can obtain the wrong information about sex and its consequences. The old myths and misconceptions are the culprits of most teen pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). It is through sex education that many teen pregnancies and STDs can be avoided. Teens need to be informed about sex and its consequences by professionals. Comprehensive sex education in schools should be available or even mandatory for all teens. It is through education that our teen parent population and STD rate will decrease.

    Read More

  • Essay On Teenagers And Social Media

    1183 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the twenty -first century, teenagers live in a life of social networking and life’s online. It’s hard to believe how much the world has changed over the decades, especially in technology. Technology helps people to contact relatives and friends from long distance more easily and conveniently. People can now talk to each other from everywhere in the world simply through chat and video calls. By time, internet connections have spread throughout households and social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram has increased gradually. However, the internet and several modern technologies have wasted many times and has hurt the society. Social media plays such a big role in people’s lives that some people couldn’t even imagine

    Read More

  • Effects of The Internet On Teenagers

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    Internet has become a new equipment to improve violence and disobedience. Teenagers can have easy access to the pornography sites or adult’s chartrooms. As a matter of fact recent researches has shown that Despite the potential negative effects on children using the Internet, more than 30% of surveyed parents had not discussed the downside of Internet use with their children (Internet Advisory Board, 2001), and 62% of parents of teenagers did not realize that their children had visited inappropriate Web sites (Yankelovich Partner...

    Read More

More about Cause And Effect Essay On Teenage Sexting

Open Document