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Kids Are Sexting Loads More In Lockdown. What Can Parents Do?
With so many of us resorting to screen-time to cope with social distancing during the lockdown, not to mention all the online home-schooling and FaceTime chats with friends and relatives, it can be hard to keep track of everything our kids are sending and receiving on their digital devices.
Even so, news that the number of ‘sexts’ tapped out by children using mobile phones or other digital devices has risen by an alarming rate in recent months will no doubt worry parents.
Data from safeguarding app SafeToNet found that ‘sexts’ typed out by children in the UK rose 183% during lockdown – with a 55% rise in inappropriate messages drafted during normal school hours.
Shockingly, children as young as six were found to have been sending ‘sexts’ to other kids. So, what do parents need to understand about the situation – and what can we do to make our kids safer?
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HuffPost UK spoke to child psychologist Dr Amanda Gummer, who says that it’s important to recognise why children might be sending messages like these – and believes that if parents are “more open” with their kids, it will help.
“We make sex a taboo,” she says. “If we were all a bit more open about it from the beginning then it wouldn’t be so underground and have a certain mystique.”
Dr Gummer says children always want to do what older boys and girls do; whether that’s riding a bike, dating, swearing, smoking – or sexting. And she says that while sending inappropriate messages or photos might sometimes be a more serious indicator of abuse, in the majority of cases it’s often more to do with kids enjoying attention, and a natural urge to “try stuff out”.
“First of all, you need to have a very honest look at whether you think this could be an indicator of something serious,” she says. “If you’re sure there isn’t, then...
