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Emma has returned after a nearly 3-month hiatus from the Family Time Q&A Podcast. After a short catch up, we dive right into the following:

Emma’s question to Jerry – What do you want your legacy to be? (Special thanks to Maddie for the question.)

Jerry’s question to Emma – How would you respond if you found out that someone you know from school sent or posted a sexting image(s)?

Sadly, I learned during my work experience with a rape crisis center that teen sexting happens a lot more often than we’d like to imagine.

Teen Sexting, Controlling Relationships, and Cyberbullying

A lot of focus is placed on the girls sending these images, and little focus on the boys who ask for and pressure girls for those images, use those images to pressure her into staying in a relationship or even having sex, and even use those images for revenge after a break up. Cyberbullying comes into the picture as bystanders learn about the image, help spread the image, and go on to shame the person in the image. My hope in this discussion was in the least to raise awareness to the issue with Emma, and also talk about extending grace to those who make the mistake of sexting.

Our response to teen sexting, and those who make the mistake of doing it, plays a role in showing grace while not condoning the social media phenomenon among teens.

Comment Below

After listening to our episode, how are we doing as parents? Are we hovering too much or not enough? How do you keep tabs on your teen’s social media use, while allowing breathing room?

Teen sexting is a crime in Texas!

Before You Text.com created a course that includes the social and legal impacts of teen sexting. In 2011, Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 407 that created laws regarding teen sexting. Rather than charging teenagers with felony charges of creating, possessing and distributing child pornography, lighter repercussions were put into law so courts would have a legal recourse to address teen sexting without having to label our youth as sex offenders.

Keep in mind this is very different from an adult over 17 years of age who is in possession of a nude minor. That is called possession of child pornography. Don’t be that guy, of course.

Snapchat Articles

Five Facts About Evan Spiegel: Snapchat’s Often Controversial Co-Founder (Entrepreneur)

Confirmed: Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel is Kind of an [Bleep] (TechCrunch)

Argh! There’s something called Snapkeep that let’s you download Snapchat files before they get deleted?!

This Hack Lets People Save Your Snapchats for All of Eternity (Business Insider)

Bottom line: Anything we put on the Internet is not safe. There’s always a back door, and hack, and when we think we’ve deleted it forever, it pops back up like a bad Congressman Wiener habit. That was bad. Sorry.

Resources and Links

Love Is Respect.org Is This Abuse? Texting and Sexting.

The Pressure to Sext: What You Need to Know About Sexting Coercion from Love Is Respect.

NetSmartz.org resources for parents, teens, kids, law enforcement and more. This has a lot more information about sex predators, and I share it because the Amanda Todd story was one that started with sexting on social media and turned out to possibly be one of a sexual predator.

Helicopter Parents 2.0 with Di Murphy, Dad Mode Podcast, Episode 36. I included this episode because I want to be sure we are allowing our youth some leeway to grow, yet not so hands off that we have allowed them to fall off a cliff. There’s a fine balancing act in the teen years of allowing our kids to become responsible, productive adults and also protecting them from themselves and others with catastrophic mistakes.