This time, BBC has picked it up again in two stories (first, second), just in time for parents to start thinking about back to school (at least in North America). While many of the other stories that I’ve brought up here talk about how it is essentially no different than passing notes in terms of a “classic behavior”. The difference now however is that where in the past, the innuendo might have been limited to doodles, texts or perhaps a single poorly shot Polaroid, now with tools that can create high quality images with ease, the notes that get passed back and forth are essentially no different than commercial material. Topping that, as this content is now digital, it can be reproduced with ease and once it escapes from creator, there is no way to contain it (as an aside, this might be a way to get kids to understand what the IP owners out there are trying to do with regards to DRM).
The valuable learning piece from these two articles, comes from the second story where a young victim “Helen” talks about why she took pictures and sent them to her then boyfriend:
“I thought if I did it for him, everything would be happy as larry and we’d be a happy couple. Obviously that didn’t happen. I was a bit naive at the time, I was only 14 years old.
“When you are young and have your first boyfriend, all you want is for the relationship to work. You’ll do anything to make that happen.”
Hormones and power relationships are dangerous things and when it comes to teen aged boys, the two certainly do not lead to logical or responsible behaviour. I can’t speak for the side of teen aged girls (though I know that I’ll have to deal with that soon enough), but I’m assuming that is it the same. But regardless of the mix of reactants, we can likely do something to help mitigate the problems before they start. It seems logical to me that if there is some way that we can start teaching kids earlier about respect for each other and how to have healthy relationships, we’d be well on our way to containing this problem. The problem here is, at least from what I can foresee, is that if we tell kids that they will likely have more than one relationship before marriage, we’ll be annoying those who advocate for no pre-marital relations and only ever one marriage. And regardless of other opinions, that group is still a very strong voice in many communities. On the other hand, if we teach kids that many of their early relationships will fail as they learn about themselves and others, we might go down the road suggesting that they are free to think of relationships as being disposable. These are the two extremes of course, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. Schools of course, are stuck in the middle. Schools are supposed to teach what is “right”, but they should also teach “what is real”, doing either will get them in hot water.
I think the only way that schools can get around annoying the various parties that will get annoyed is to “teach around the subject” and hope that whatever they leave in the middle will take care of itself.
Leave a Reply