A piece Tuesday morning on “Good Morning America” suggests, correctly, that sexting is on the rise among teenagers. They also note that, with the advent of smart phones that can make video segments, sexting of racy video is increasingly insidious. The host of the piece, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, suggests that parents “keep the conversation going” with their children. Good advice, to be sure, but wholly insufficient given the gravity of the sexting issue, and the potential for unforeseen consequences.

So what should parents do? One of my mantras is “Lectures never work.” And I truly believe it. Teens and tweens tune out during lectures. But we need to talk about it, as sexting, though, is an important issue, and it may well have implications beyond what our children know, or think they know.

I found myself attempting to lecture a very intelligent teenage girl a few months back, for example, who became angry and defensive. She sold her sexting to me as harmless fun with her boyfriend. She even accused ‘my generation’ of being hypocritical, enjoying our own forms of heavy flirtation, and that her generation was simply more creative about it.When asked, though, she recognized the possibility that her boyfriend may share her videos with other people, and that the video will not simply disappear when they break up.

So we want on to talk about the long-range implications, that everything you put “out there”, words or images, stay “out there.” That it may affect future relationships, getting into college,
getting a job, and so on.

If you can get this far with your teenager, you can then begin to talk about the other personal implications. Openness to sexting in teens involves issues of self-respect, self-esteem and self-regard.
These are important discussions to engage in as well. If your child is involved, you want to listen well enough to know what sexting means to him or her in particular. But, you have to be open to listening in order to help him or her fully understand it themselves.

To my thinking, sexting is a safety issue. As parents, we know very little about it ourselves, and it’s an uncomfortable, awkward topic to discuss with our teens. and in my experience, the more uncomfortable and awkward a topic is, the more important it is to talk with your teens about it. So, I encourage you to talk with your teens, and tweens, about sexting. Make it a part of an open and
ongoing discussion. If your child is willing to talk, you need to be willing to listen. They undoubtedly know more about the whole phenomenon than you do. Ask what kids are doing. Ask how it affects them, why they do it, and what the down-sides are. And don’t assume that your child isn’t involved, simply because you wish it. I run into this all the time, and it can be quite dangerous. Attending to and talking through uncomfortable, unfamiliar topics, sexting included, with our teens is always the better story.