Sexting... and other things from this week...

Monday was spent in Mankato looking with the Office on Justice Programs and other local providers at Best Practices, what does that mean, what does it look like for us and how would we use these to help enhance our work.

Tuesday was a subcommittee meeting of the SMART team, looking at monitoring and evaluation, how we collect data, what we look at etc. and we made some progress in that meeting. And the evening was spent with the our Volunteer Advocates who are almost done with their training for the Safeline and helping out at HOPE Center. We are thrilled to say that at this point there is 24 advocates that are almost through with the 40 hour training!

There was an article in the paper today about 2 level 3 Sex Offenders moving to the area, http://faribault.com/news.php?viewStory=94929, a community notification meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 4 at the Faribault City Hall Council Chambers, 208 First Ave. N.W. so as always that will generate a lot of conversation about our community, the safety of its residents, victims' rights, offender's rights... and in the meantime we are here to answer questions you may have about any of that, and the local police department is as well.

For lunch I met with a friend who is currently in the midst of some job transition and is going to use her journalism skills and expertise to help out HOPE Center, and we are so excited to have her help us out! Last year we had around 600 hours of volunteer time, and this year we have already had well over 700, and the end of the year is still a few months away! We GREATLY appreciate all of the volunteers that we have and for all that they have given to HOPE Center.

This afternoon I am presenting to a local church youth group, talking about HOPE Center, who we are, what we do and looking at cyberbulling, sexting and healthy relationships... and in doing some research for that presentation I came across these scary statistics from youth around the issue of sexting... Keep in mind these laws are specific to PA, but the stats are from a nationwide survey... http://www.tesd.k12.pa.us/tems/appliedtech/Sexting-posting.pdf


“Sexting” is a growing problem:

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Cosmogirl.com
recently published results of a “sex and tech” survey which explored the connection
between teen sex and cyberspace (October 2008). The survey polled 1280 teens and
young adults between the ages of 13 and 26 about their cell phone, computer and digital
device behaviors and attitudes. The results are disturbing:

The % of teenagers who have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of
themselves:

20% of teenagers overall
22% of teen girls
18% of teen boys
11% of young teen girls ages 13-16

The % of teenagers sending or posting sexually suggestive messages:
39% of all teenagers
37% of teen girls
40% of teen boys

Have you talked to your teens about this issue? If you haven't, let us help. We have resources and ideas on how to best help start that conversation.