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In this case, the child who sends inappropriate pictures ends up being both the perpetrator and victim of child pornography: they are a self-victim since the photos are of themselves, and they are the perpetrator since they used the internet to send explicit or inappropriate photos of a minor. Some teens have been arrested for promoting child pornography over Sexting. Clearly, some things are wrong here. But, things like this have happened before. Here’s the story. If you look back at the turn of the last century around 1900, most traffic in transportation in major cities was achieved via horse and buggy. The dirt streets became muddy and filthy at the same time. It was a mess. The development of asphalt eliminated the muddy ruts in the roads, and the development of the automobile made transportation cleaner and faster. But, in less than 50 years, major freeway traffic jams developed in most US cities that we are still dealing with today. The horse and buggy ‘clogged muddy road’ era was replaced with the ‘clogged freeway at rush hour’ era. New technologies (paved roads, automobiles) made it easy for anyone to travel just about anywhere in the US in 1/10th the time. But it also created new problems of traffic congestion and pollution that couldn’t have been predicted 100 years earlier. Fast forward to the 1990s. Sending information across the US or around the world took hours to days and was expensive or time consuming using short-wave radio or telegraph. Then, we created high speed data networks (the Internet) and a structure to allow people to easily share information (the Worldwide Web) and the entire process of sharing information became pervasive and easy for anyone to access just about any information at any time. The Internet and Web also allowed people to misuse the new technology for child pornography, identity theft and gambling scams. Again, the new information technologies provided a wonderful way of creating and instantly sharing information around the world, but it also created a whole set of new problems, many of which required new laws to deal with them. In the past 10 years, SMS ‘texting’ from cell phones has become the latest frontier in faster and more immediate information exchange. Frost & Sullivan research estimates that SMS text message volumes continue to grow significantly in the US. Mobile subscribers sent and received more than 900 billion SMS text messages in 2008. This is an increase of 132% over the 2007 SMS volumes. SMS penetration also increased from 45% to 53% in 2008. MMS volumes increased from less than 15 billion in 2007 to approximately 32 billion in 2008 - more than a 120% increase. SMS and MMS traffic are expected to grow even more in the coming years. Here we go again with Sexting. Is a 13-year old posting an inappropriate photo of himself or herself to a friend truly ‘child pornography’? Perhaps. But, I know one sure way to put an end to it: send a copy of every text message and MMS message created or received by a child to the parents who are paying the bill. Every teen in the country would yell out, “No way!” Sure, kids wouldn’t like it, but the parents have rights to the information since they are paying for the service. Similarly, corporate IT has the right to review the information on an employee’s notebook hard drive. The company owns the asset (notebook PC) and has the right to authorize review of the employee’s information if they believe the employee might be violating company policy or breaking the law. Perhaps the best policy for Sexting is to discuss the problem with your kids and agree to some behavior ‘standards’ (family policy) and then have trust until the policy is violated with consequences given for the violations, e.g. “I’m taking your phone away for the next week.” Remember, each new technology ushers in a wave of tremendous benefits but also trailing right behind the wave of new technology is a dust cloud of new problems that need to be managed. VP & Chief Analyst, Mobile & Wireless Frost & Sullivan www.frost.com www.HealthNewsDigest.com Top of Page 
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