warning about phones and bebo sites

I dont have children but i do work in a secondary school with 300 teenagers in it, I am not a teacher and i work closely with the students

What I have come across in the last 2 years worries me greatly

The students both male and female have a huge assortment of pornography on their phones, and i mean it is pure filth, one student had a picture of a naked girl doing horrible stuff and she was young herself,
PLEASE check your childs phones for these images and more

Also bebo can be very dangerous if your child is not on private as anyone can see there profile and check out there photos, need i say more
Also some of the photos that students are putting on there sites are very revealing and dont leave much to the imagination .....

Also the atudents seen to have this new thing where they take any males number from a friends phone and text him all sorts, because of the free texts that meter are giving these students are spending every minute of the day texting friends and strangers for free.... now that can led to all sorts of trouble

Im not saying that your kids are doing this but over 80% of the kids i know and work with are and besides whats the harm in checking up on your child as it is your duty to see that they are safe.

Nevyn

I would thik that this being an internet bulletin forum that most of the posters here how are parents would be pretty tech savy.

telecaster

That's a pretty cold response Thaedydal. It's interesting to get the experience of someone who is working closely with kids everyday. I didn't think that 80% of kids would be carrying porn on their phones.

Tails142

I work with youths (scout leader) and can back this up - they show me this stuff cause they think I'll think its cool - nyalllll right! giggity giggity

mad stuff on there phones - there was a video of some girl who got drunk at a party and passed out and was taken advantage of... I think it was staged though

apart from the serious stuff like videos of rape I dont think there's too much trouble with adolescent youths having pitures of girls on there phones and teenage girls stringing the poor clueless boys along thinking they're gonna get somewhere.

To be honest I do be more worried about the development of 13-15 year olds who DONT have these things or any interest in them. Probably weirdos!!

seamus

telecaster wrote: »

That's a pretty cold response Thaedydal. It's interesting to get the experience of someone who is working closely with kids everyday. I didn't think that 80% of kids would be carrying porn on their phones.

While the image is pornographic, the stuff is distributed more because the students (particularly the male ones) would find it funny and love being able to show their mates. Because it's "naughty", moreso than because it's sexually exciting. Exactly the same as finding dirty mags down the back of your Dad's wardrobe and showing your mates just to be cool. Not that I ever did that.

What I'm saying is that there's nothing inherently "wrong" with pornographic images on the phone - most young males will get them one way or another. It's just that the medium has changed. They probably get a few hundred in their email too.
I'd be more worried about violent videos (such as happy slapping) as distributing them is basically encouraging them to be made.

I would definitely encourage keeping an eye on your kids' internet usage, at least until they're 16 or so - old enough to make relatively sensible choices or get themselves out of situations caused by stupid choices.
Technology should actually be a part of the curriculum under the science banner. Using phones, PCs and the web (and their safe usage) is almost at the point of being a critical basic skill for living in the modern world.

Parents should be with their children while they surf the web during their early years - you wouldn't send your 8 year old to a shopping centre on their own to buy clothes, so you shouldn't do it on the web.

Jaden

Teenage boys look at porn, no real shock there. It's simply that porn has matured over the years, and the medium of delivery is now far more widespread. Accessing such materials is trivial to do, even for kids. There are two choices we can make:

1. Snoop around their social networking sites, and spy on their mobile phones,
or
2. Sit down with them and discuss the issue.

All illicit things have appeal to teenagers - alcohol, porn etc. They are "adult" things, and therefore to be desired as a mechanism for proving one's maturity. They drink alcohol and look at porn, because they're not *supposed* to. Remove this stigma, and you remove the desire. Just hope they don't start smoking crack instead (j/k).

If a child's wellbeing is really what concerns you, don't slink around in the background looking to see what they're at, - ask them straight out. A little direction and advice is worth a tonne of spying.

Just my take.