High-tech foreplay

Jessica Coate

Are taking nude or provocative pictures for your boyfriend or girlfriend a special treat for them or a joke for all of his or her friends and the whole world?Sexting – sending nude pictures via cellphone text messages – has grown more and more popular in the last few years with celebrities like Brett Favre and Tiger Woods getting caught sexting with women who are not their wives.

Dozens of Web sites like www.loveisrespect.org and MTV have discussed the issues students go through after their pictures are forwarded and shown by the recipients.

Sexting is becoming such a problem in schools that you can actually be charged with child pornography when sending or receiving sexting texts if the picture is of someone who is under the age of 18.

In this day and age when everyone is so technologically savvy, computers and cellphones are the lifelines of the generation.

With one click of a button, you can have access to the Internet or snap a picture. What we don’t realize is once these pictures or texts are sent by our phones theres no way to ever get them back.

We can only hope that the person we are sending these sexting messages to are trustworthy and won’t spread them.

People are braver over a text than in person. Adam Shaw, 23, said people can be braver sending a text than talking to someone face-to-face.

“You can say how you really feel without having to see the other person’s face,” Shaw said. “You can send pictures of yourself as a joke to a friend or someone you are dating. I personally think it’s neat, kind of like a new-age flirting.”

When asked how he would feel if a picture he sent to somebody got spread around his friends and school, Shaw said, “Hey, as long as I look good. I’m kidding. I would be very embarrassed, but life moves on. You can only learn from your mistakes I guess.”

Jeremy Finnegan, 20, had his picture spread around his now ex-girlfriend’s friends.

“One day we were fooling around and we took pictures. Next thing I know I’m the gossip of all her friends,” Finnegan said. “I learned my lesson. It was very embarrassing. Don’t trust girls.”

Anja Schmidt’s 22-year-old ex-boyfriend sent pictures to her because they were in a long distance relationship.

“He usually sent pictures to me, it made me uncomfortable. I would usually act like I didn’t receive the picture,” Schmidt said. “I think it’s dumb. I think that it escalates things too much. It makes the relationship based on sex.”

On the parents’ side, Donna Magrini, a parent of two, 15 and 18, said, “I don’t think my kids would ever do that. My son is 18 years old, so what I can do? . My daughter, on the other hand, would get a talking too.”

“It’s gross and you really have no idea where those pictures go once they leave your phone,” she said.

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

Welcome to the Mesa Legend! Subscribe to know more about what goes on at Mesa Community College!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *