UK teens using mobile phones to swap nude pics, access porn sites

LONDON - A study has found that teenagers in UK are using their mobile phones to swap revealing photographs of themselves and to also access porn sites.

Behind the bike sheds used to be the place where children were initiated into a slightly more grown-up world with a peck on the cheek or even a daring snog, but now that has been replaced by mobile phones.

Dr Emma Bond, an expert in childhood and youth studies, said adults “need to take their heads out of the sand” about what is happening to young, impressionable children.

“The research shows how children are using mobile phones in obtaining sexual material, developing their sexual identities and in their intimate relationships with each other,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

“The bike shed offers a useful metaphor as a generation or so ago teenagers used to go ‘behind the bike shed’ to find a space where they could embark on exploring each others’ bodies or get hold of pornography.

“Today it is very different and incredibly easy for young people to take intimate images of themselves and send them to someone else via a text message or via the Internet all in a few seconds and all from their mobile phone.

“There’s hardly time to reflect and think that this may not be such a good idea,” she stated.

Dr Bond, a senior lecturer at University Campus Suffolk in Ipswich, said children still establish complex and emotional relationships with each other.

Her conclusions will be published in the next edition of international journal ‘New Media and Society’. (ANI)