Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Teen Sexting: Insights and Solutions

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Join us as we speak with Holly Jean from The Parenting Place about the risks teens face with cellphones and discover practical strategies parents can use to help keep their children safe.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hits, with the Jono and Ben podcast. Cheers to Dilma, making the world a better tea. Thank you, nice to be here. Holly, sexting, big topic. And Ben, just as we were about to start talking to you, a jaw-dropping statistic. Yeah, 40%. On your article I'm reading on The Parenting Place,

40% of young people on a survey last year said they'd done it. Yeah, so that was informal research. 40% of young people on a survey last year said they'd done it. Yeah. Yeah, so that was informal research. I was just looking at research today in Australia. There was some research done in 2021 that said 14 to 18-year-olds have found sex being ordinary practice. 86% have received sex and 70% have seen them.

86% have received? That is a wild figure. Super high number. So what do we do? Sorry, just to use the term strip it back, which seems like a weird term to use. But when you say sexting, what do you exactly mean? Like I know some of it.

I'm not an idiot. But I mean, is it all types of like? So sexting involves taking self-made naked or partially naked sexual photos, videos, or explicit text messages and sending them online or via text message. So they're often referred to as nudes or a little bit more crudely as dick pics. As you know from the stats, it's an increasing kind of more normalized thing that is happening. And so I think as parents, it's really important that we are aware. I know it's so cringy to think about our children being involved with this,

but we need to front foot it so that we can help prepare them for it if they're asked to send a nude or they're sent one. Because what are those conversations that you do need to have? Because I know that, not necessarily even just with, when it comes to rude messages, but I know that, and this probably comes from years of me having embarrassing sketches and skits online that, you know, things that I've done.

But once you send something, I keep saying to the kids, once you send, even if it's to your friend or whatever it is, you've kind of lost control of that image or whatever it is you've sent, that is now gone. You know, even if you trust them. Oh, totally.

And I think this is such a key point is that we have, like our kids are growing up in such a different era than we were when I was growing up in the 80s. I didn't even know what the internet was. Honestly, if I wanted to see any images of genitals, I'd have to go to a toilet wall and draw them on there. It is crazy. It really is.

It is. And so, you know, okay, what we're finding is that a lot of parents find this such an awkward, uncomfortable topic to talk about with their kids because it is. It's really awkward. And we don't want to imagine that our kids could be involved in this, but we don't prepare them for it. And we don't have the kind of, the conversation is an open thing that they can know that we know about it and they can come to us they could get themselves into a risky situation so here's an example i heard last week from a counsellor in new zealand it's a really upsetting story as a about a young girl under under 16 her boyfriend asked her to send a nude she didn't want to pressured her told her that everyone's doing it so eventually she sent him a nude he

edited the nude and sent it an assembly by airdrop to everybody it was really just in the school in the assembly and for a year she didn't tell her parents she didn't tell any teachers and he continued to after after that event, he started to pressure her to send more nudes and threatening her and it became this kind of escalating issue. She kept it to herself and she was so embarrassed about it. She ended up getting

to a point where she was self-harming, really depressed and suicidal and after a year told her mum and then was able to see a counsellor and get some help. But this is such a, this's not a unique situation. I hear these stories regularly and this is why we do have to have conversations with our kids and we can be guided by them. You know, it's not happening to every child, but what we want is for, you know, if our child was asked to send a note or they see one or they're getting pressured, we want them to know they can come to us we're not going to freak out we're not going to be angry at them we're going

to support them and help them to know how to how to handle it yeah that's a that is a heartbreaking story and you know if there are if there are kids listening to this or parents listening to this once you get over that initial embarrassment once it's open and out there and you're having a conversation that disappears that embarrassment yeah that's right and out there and you're having a conversation, that disappears, that embarrassment. Yeah, that's right. And I think what is awesome for parents to be able to do for their kids, we've got a great article on our website, but we love the what would you do question. So it's just being a little bit curious about what your kids know about nudes

and then asking, hey, so what would you do if someone asked you for a nude? This is a really great way to help your kids think kind of critically about what they would do in the situation before it actually happened. So they've got some kind of tools in their kitty so that they have the language, they know how to respond. They might still kind of freeze and be a bit unsure

but they've had the conversation and they know that they can come to you and say, hey mum, this thing happened, or hey dad. I've just always applied by the rule, just don't put my genitals on the internet. We don't want to see them. No, no, no. I don't even want to see my own genitals.

They're like everyone else. I was just doing a market test there to see. That's a message for our boys, too. No one wants to see your dick pics. No, they're horrendous looking things. Okay, so that's a worst-case scenario. It has happened. I know you deal with this in the

article as well. It's out there in the world. There are some steps you can do to try and get it removed in some ways. Yeah, absolutely. We want to contact the social media platform immediately with an image shared. It might not have been social media. It might have been airdropped in

assembly. It could have been WhatsApp or text message. So if it is social media, you want to report it, contact NetSafe and make a report. They operate the Harmful Digital Communications Act, and they are able to help you navigate the process of getting access to that image blocked. There's also a really great website called Take It Down, which basically puts like a hashing kind of code onto the image and it will constantly call the internet to find that image and take it down.

It's not foolproof, but yeah, NetSafe and Take It Down and reporting it, if it's on social media, reporting it to that platform is really important. We might really run Take It Down over a couple of our old bits of content there, Ben Boyce. Exactly. Me too. And you know, you flip the other side,

you were just telling that story of what that boyfriend was doing to that girl and he's clearly got a lot of learning to do in life. But if you find one of your kids is sharing the images, that would be devastating. How would you approach that? Well, do you know it's really important for our kids to know it's actually illegal? You're officially sending,

you're distributing child sex abuse material. So that's a really important message that our kids need to know, our boys and our girls, because there is a bit of a culture developing where kids are sharing this type of content thinking it's funny, it's entertaining, it's amusing, and it's illegal. So you could have a policeman knock on your

door, you could be investigated, it's a crime, and that's an important message we need to tell our kids. Well that's really good. we need to tell our kids. Well, that's really good. Holly, Jane, this has been very interesting. Thank you so much, and we'll hope to catch up with you shortly. Yeah, you too.