What to Worry About

Recently in Northern Virginia, police arrested three boys — two 16-year-olds and a 15-year-old, for their alleged attempts at becoming the Mitchell Brothers 2.0. Apparently, they are the teen porn kings of the suburbs. These sophomore boys were charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. The boys made the sex videos with at least six teenage girls from their own high school and two other nearby high schools.

For decades, parents worried about underage drinking and teen sex.  Now parents have a new thing to throw on top of this…underage drinking, teen sex AND smartphone cameras. But wait, there’s more to worry about.  On top of everything, this current generation of teens has been raised on reality TV and research shows that they want to be famous more than anything.  The more exposure, the better. A perfect example of this is the Teen Generation Porn.

“Quantitative analysis revealed that fame was the number one value, selected as the most important value for participants’ future goals,” according to a study done by psychology professors at the University of California at Los Angeles.    According to a similar UCLA study, the top five values emphasized in television shows popular with children in 2007 were fame, achievement, popularity, image and financial success.  In 1997, the top five were community feeling, benevolence (being kind and helping others), image, tradition and self-acceptance. In 2007, benevolence dropped to the 12th spot and community feeling fell to 11th.  Sounds like it most likely would not make even the list now.

Should we really be that surprised?  Look at all the attention Snooki from The Jersey Shores gets!  Even her dad was quoted wanting to ask one of her fans, “What draws you to my daughter?  Be honest.’ Because it’s very hard for me to see what it is. She don’t sing. She don’t dance.”

This generation of teens will do a lot of crazy things for exposure.  They live for Twitter and Facebook.   Did you hear about the young teenage girl from upstate New York who made a video that went totally viral…it was of her eating her own feminine protection.  Do yourself a favor, and do NOT Google it.  My point is, in the effort to be famous, morals and self-respect are getting completely lost.

What You Can Do

Parents. Please. Wake Up.

• Take action today to find out what your kids are doing online and on their phones.
• Talk to them frankly about this new trend of teen porn.
• Show them the consequences if they make it (they may not realize they can be prosecuted under child pornography laws for taking video of minors.)
• Stress the importance of the dangers of putting themselves into compromising situations, where they can be taken advantage of…the risk of not talking to them could horrifying.  And permanent.

To see the complete story in the Washington Post, see below:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/teenage-quest-for-fame-produces-scary-consequences/2013/02/04/6c6396f0-6f0a-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.ht

AUTHOR OVERVIEW

Lisa Shaw Senior Director, Child Online Safety and Protection at SpectorSoft

What do five kids ranging in age from kindergarten to high school, a Harvard MBA and years of protecting kids online get you? It gets you Lisa Shaw, COO of her very busy household, and a Senior Director at SpectorSoft, the number one leader in monitoring and protecting your kids online. She's an expert on the technology and trends that you need to arm yourself with to be the best parent you can be in today’s digital world.

Tags: fame seeking, generation porn