sexting
By Laura Tubbs: “Laura is my name and Ad strategy is my game. I dance, I party, and I have a love affair with haute couture when I am not finding solutions for my clients. I grew up in the burbs of Buffalo, NY and have been in Boston for the past six years. Boston University provided me with a fabulous education and Mullen provides me with a place to call home from 9-? on Monday through Friday. Honesty is my favorite quality in people. Some have told me that I have a healthy undertone of sarcasm, but I like to think of myself as a total smart-a$$.”
In a world where getting straight A’s is not nearly enough to succeed and only working 9-5 is simply absurd, we are busy and exhausted and pushed to the limit.
No wonder we don’t have time to pick up the phone and call our friends. Or have we just become too detached to do so?
Enter the alternative to the phone call: SMS texting, BBM-ing, g-chatting, IM-ing, Facebook chatting, and MMS texting. And from there we’ve developed a little something that the media has titled, “sexting.” This is more than flirtatious messaging, but instead it’s sending or receiving text messages that include explicit sexual content (text, photos, or video). Mmmm.
Our generation is so immersed in all things digital that we don’t think twice about our means of communication with one another. No longer do you meet someone and exchange land-line phone numbers.
Now the classic boy-meets-girl story is far from what it used to be.
- Boy meets girl; boy asks girl for her cell number, pin number, and e-mail address.
- Boy “friends” girl on Facebook, text messages girl and adds her to his BBM contacts or taps his iPhone to hers.
- Boy tells girl that she turns him on (via text), boy and girl make their “relationship” official on Facebook after some innocent Facebook “poking.”
This is how generation-Y communicates. It may sound cold, distant, and quite frankly, pathetic. But if the wireless communication devices are at our fingertips, why not use them?
Is dirty texting easy and fast? Definitely. Is it fun and exciting? Can be. Or is it just wimpy and pathetic? Depends on the context. And speaking of context, there is a site called TFLN that showcases dirty (and hilarious) text messages between gen-Yers. The site contains awesome one-liners about getting black-out drunk, getting laid, and getting in trouble.
The average 20-something can text around 100 words per minute. This means that while at a boring party or in class or (heaven forbid) at work, we can have a quick sext session and not miss a beat. Pretty sweet, but is my generation too scared to pick up the phone and actually make a real effort? Are we afraid of rejection? Closeness? We grew up during a technology boom, so it is completely natural that we would express our sexuality via SMS texts or Blackberry messages. But is it normal that we shy away from actual human interaction at first?
Image: noodlepie
AWESOME. And aggressive! Haha!
I think this hits the nail on the head (your bit about Gen Y being afraid of picking up the phone).
I drunk text like it’s my job. And the great thing about that is how I can hide behind my phone and not need to make it a personal interaction. I have the courage to say things I never would face-to-face. It’s interesting how SMS (and alcohol) helps you grow some balls.
That being said, how is this going to develop over time? I think you’re a little too far ahead with your boy-girl story, but at the same time, you’re not that far behind!
We’ve got analog lives too, definitely, but like the chicken and the egg, where do our relationships start?
Great post, I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in having a phone that is used as little more than a two-way pager and never come close to using up the amount of minutes in my “bare minimum” plan. I had a conversation with a Gen Xer a few months back on how Facebook would likely kill off High School reunions as it’s a convenient medium to passively stay in touch with people you wouldn’t go out of your way to keep in touch with (i.e. ex’s). Many may criticize our generation’s new courtship/social rituals, but I say go to a bar and watch people interact there for a while. Give me Facebook over the (ridiculous) bar scene any day.
This is a really great post. I like your spin on it. Since most of us take living in the digital era for granted, I find it jarring when people overstate digital, digital, digital and ignore the human drivers of any action–even digital action. So kudos on looking into the human psyche. Because whether we tweet or text, we are still human. All too human.
Well done, Laura.
Love the post Laura. You’re drunk text is only replaced by my generation’s drunk dial. However, with the invention of star 69, that went away with the dinosaurs. And so this dinosaur thinks that your generation has bigger balls than mine. Leaving a digital footprint, having the possibility of forwarding an intimate sext to frenemies, a website dedicated to calling people out…let’s just say I liked my anonymity back in the day.
I don’t know if I really agree with this…Yes, I text. But in no way does it replace the phone call. In fact, I have become more able to connect with the people around me because of things like video chat on gmail, and Skype. I have become more face-to-face in my connection with people, not less.
Facebook’s chat feature, as well as walls and private messages are awesome–they me a very non-intrusive way of keeping in touch with the people I used to have out with in college, highschool or even middle school. They even helped me and my current boyfriend (going on a year now) feel each other out (not like that!) before becoming officially interested in each other, or emotionally involved. We used facebook to ask some of the tougher questions, to flirt, to say things the way we really meant them, instead fo being embarrassed when face-to-face.
Maybe this seems weird…but hasn’t the traditional love letter been able to say things that we cant put perfect words to out loud? Hasn’t writing in a diary always helped you make sense of what you really think about the world? Maybe facebook and twitter and texting doesn’t give us “balls” in the sense that we say crazy things, but that we’re finally saying what we really mean?
I think people can use technologies in bad ways, but overall, I think these new ways of communicating are incredible–and connect us in more ways then ever before. I want us to get to a point where we can stop making excuses for the way we communicate today, and stop feeling silly for flirting (or sexting!) through text. Let’s own this communication revolution!
(I feel like I should war cry something and charge after that statement, but I feel like I might end up being an army of 1. Does anyone else feel this way?)
Just because something is the way it is, does not mean that’s how it should be.
This is not about tools and devices, it’s about communication. Humans need social interaction to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but we fear rejection. Rejection applies to jobs, family life, friends, dating, and all types of relationships. And teenagers/young adults are inherently less experienced in the dating realm so we should expect them to be nervous/anxious/afraid of dating in general, not just the communication part of it.
New digital tools that enhance social interaction are going to themselves be feared by the same old types: people that fear change. This is as ridiculous a notion as ever, no different than when people feared radio/TV/movies in the early- to mid-20th century, or the Internet’s rise in the late-20th century. MSM today is based on sensationalism-for-profit, and as such the effects of this fear are compounding. It may “feel” like there is more societal concern for these issues, but it’s most likely that we are just being flooded with opinion on an increasingly increasing level.
People of all ages have communication issues, not just Generation Y. Just because our parents & teachers don’t understand how we communicate does not mean we are doing something wrong. On the other hand, as the pseudo-prophesied harbingers of social media, we young folk should be constantly asking ourselves “What is the role of social media? What should it be?” This fundamental question underlies all the silliness of “Am I texting too much? Is sexting okay?” and can often clear the air.
[...] posted as a comment on “I’m not wearing any panties – SEND” at The Next Great Generation. This [...]
I enjoyed reading your post. It made me laugh but also made me pause. You bring up a valid and important point about how technology now and over time can damage how personal relationships are developed and grow. I think this also overlaps with professional, we already email more than we should with clients. Relationships (personal or professional) need human contact. It makes you think, what will the human race be left with in the future? Good Job.
Lovely articulation Laura – this small text (I mean sext) of yours is going to be an inspiration for my next blog entry – thanks a ton
What I find most interesting is that I’m just enough on the old end of Gen Y that I missed this trend by a couple of years. Less than half of my high school class had mobiles by my senior year, by my rough estimate (and I was one who did not), but my sister’s ballet friends only 2 to 3 years younger were well above 75% saturation.
The specific effect on relationships is an open question, and I say that as someone who has had a lot of fun (and some success, and a few disaster meetings) doing online dating in Boston. I don’t think we’ll suss it out right away.
The general discussion of the cultural effects is ongoing, and we won’t know what they are for probably another decade at least (when these current Gen Y sexters are starting families and having kids). This topic is definitely in the zeitgeist right now (particularly the issue of information overload due to too many shallow connections), so your post is timely as well as interesting.
I just finished reading Elsewhere, USA, Dalton Conley’s book on the ongoing cultural shift brought about by urbanization, deindustrialization, and women entering the workforce en masse. His idea of the “intravidual” is pretty interesting.
Impaired texting is a guilty pleasure. It might even be a lifestyle for some. And, it’s doubtful anyone under 25 hasn’t been on one, if not both sides of the coin. It’s a mode of communication that’s become completely woven into our lives–and the key to sexting to drunk messages at 2am is that it’s just so fricken easy. I suppose people could have done the same via snail mail? Can’t decide if that’s more or less sexy…
Anyways, on texting, jic anyone reading hasn’t herd of the drunk dial app http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/19/the-iphone-gets-a-new-weapon-in-the-war-on-drunk-dials/ or texts from last night http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/ now you have.
I can’t help but think that the massive rise in accessibility of porn has led us to sexting. Being able to google every sexual act ever invented has certainly changed expectations of real-life sex, and it has set the bar for erotic messaging as well. It’s now fairly acceptable and almost innocent to send full frontal pix around….celebrities “accidentally” leak sex tapes to promote themselves when it used to be a career-ender.
Do I think this is a symptom of our moral decline? No way! Fact is, porn, professional and amateur, have been around since the first phallus cave painting. I just watched a documentary on civil war era porn last night. New technology makes it easier to create and distribute and that ease leads to cultural acceptance.
As far as human contact goes, there is definitely a trend toward minimize real-life interaction in some cases. But I see that more with non-social contact like customer service, ordering food, banking, etc. While digital interaction might be more prevalent in our social lives now, it’s still social. We still share information, laughs and, yes, even real intimacy online. Even TFLN documents mainly real-life social experiences. So I don’t think we’re ready to be reclusive loners quite yet…
I thoroughly enjoyed this posting…but after reading it…I am happy NOT to be a Millennial– it sounds like a lot of work. Although…it does beat racing home to check your answering machine/caller ID log, etc!
Call me slightly old-fashioned, but for as connected as I am (2 laptops and 2 phones), I really appreciate a phone call (especially in romantic situations) or a card mailed by snail mail.
I love the convenience of texting for arranging plans and asking smaller questions. If anything, the sheer convenience of BBM, texting, Internet on my phone, Facebook and Twitter make me appreciate when people make an effort to hand-write something, send a longer email, or call me MORE.
I love you Laura Tubbs!
Our generation is scared to death of telephones. Fairly often, I’ll call a friend, leave a message, and get a response via text. Personally, I think it’s a little pathetic. Shouldn’t we be responding through the same medium?
As for sexting, that’s my secret I’ll never tell.
Xoxo,
GG
Dave, I really have to agree with you. I was actually talking about this with a friend last week; how we’re able to stay in touch with people so easily these days with cell phones and text messages, yet it feels like we’re distancing ourselves in the process. I like to text message; it’s easy, it’s fun and it’s convenient when you have something quick to say. But when it comes to important things like making plans or finalizing something with someone, I pick up the phone and call to firm things up. Too many times people won’t pick up, and will later text me rather than talking on the phone. And it’s usually when plans have changed, or people don’t want to hang out or have prior engagements. I feel like people are using indirect communication (texting) far too much. Just pick up the phone and call, is it that scary?
The problem with sexting is the possible embarrassment, harassment and abuse it can lead to. Yes it’s all fun and games at the time but like someone mentioned – it has a permanent digital trace. We can store text messages and photos not only on our phones but send them online with just a few clicks and that’s truly scary.
The dangers and associated insights are evident in The Ad Council campaign that asks “Where do you your digital line?” – http://www.thatsnotcool.com. While the campaign is directed at high schoolers, it isn’t applicable to most of Gen Y, but I think the messages are still relevant. The campaign created call out cards that do just that. Examples: “Thanks to your texting I never have to enjoy free space,” “Now that you’ve violated my email account, I won’t feel bad dumping you,” and “When does talking become stalking.”
Having instant technology to communicate with significant (or not so significant) other(s) can lead to overwhelming. Just because we have connections instant communication doesn’t mean we always have to use it.
Typo alert. I meant “Where do you *DRAW your digital line?”
Great Essay, I followed the link, and read ridiculous text messages…
It makes me want to sit down and have a cup of tea and a real conversatioj with a friend I have not seen in a long time.
Molly
when the person you might like actually picks up the phone or write you a note, it means SO much more because of how people tend to communicate these days. take a look at this awesome opinion piece from the NYTimes http://bit.ly/17jUpB.
sexting is bad