Technology is changing the way young people communicate with each other. A recent report released by anti-bullying charity, Beatbullying, found that there was widespread use of the humble text message as a tool for bullying. In particular, a third of secondary school children have been sent messages containing sexual content. These sex texts, or 'sexts', often contained images of a sexual nature involving both boys and girls – usually of youngsters exposing themselves.
With such material so easy to capture by phone, so easy to Bluetooth and so easy to upload to websites or social networking groups, has the innocent text crossed over the line to the dark side? Here, we look at real-life examples of how texting can be used positively in an educational environment.
The obsession with social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter might make you think that the humble text message has fallen out of favour. Texts of late have been linked to unrelenting bullying campaigns and the dire consequences of “sexting” (sending images of a sexual content to other mobile phones – friends or otherwise).
However, the statistics show that UK mobile phone users sent 7.7 billion text messages in December 2008, and the chances are that the majority of these messages were arranging to meet friends by the fountains in Trafalgar Square, or possibly voting for the cute one on the X Factor.
Approximately 60% of the world’s population now owns, or has access to, a mobile phone, with 4.1 billion mobile phone contracts running annually according to a 2009 United Nations survey. As mobile technology continues to develop in sophistication, many organisations are seeing the potential of using mobile phones to communicate and engage with their audiences.