For Goodness Sex (24 page)

Our school’s technology policy allows students to have their cell phones with them during the school day and to use them for academic, social, and entertainment purposes during nonclass periods. They may be used in class with teacher permission. Watching my students and their phones, it’s hard to know sometimes who is the master and who is the slave. Their responses to each buzz, beep, or ping are Pavlovian. It calls, they respond—even when they know they shouldn’t (like during the chime time at the start of class).

In the “olden” days of teaching, like the late 1980s, when I started, young teachers sought to perfect their “teacher eyes.” When well trained, they could spot a cheat sheet, a passed note, an attempt to put gum under the desk, or a sly foot signal (point left for true and right for false) in an instant. Today it’s all about spotting the hidden cell phone in use. This year I had a student who mastered the art of balancing the phone in the crook of his elbow and texting as if he were scratching his arm. I’ve spotted cell phones inside hoods, up sleeves, under desks, and even hidden in wads of tissues. And it’s not that kids are engaging in academic dishonesty with their phones. There are no tests in my sexuality class, so there’s never a need to cheat. It’s just that they can’t imagine being unplugged for the forty minutes of class. They
have
to know what’s happening and there’s always someone who wants to tell them something
right now
! Even the most interesting class activity will take a backseat to an incoming text message.

I have a smartphone and, although I’m good about keeping it in my backpack during school hours and worship services and faculty meetings, I leap to its call whenever I’m at home or out in the world. I admit that it’s the last thing I look at before I go to bed (I don’t keep it right by my bed, though; it’s in another room) and one of the first things I look at in the morning. I’m not a Luddite; I
love
my phone and would feel lost without it. And I have to say, that worries me a bit.

Like it or not, technology is changing the way that we communicate. Parents text their kids throughout the school day, while students tweet each other from their smartphones, even when they’re in the same room. Facebook status updates announce breakups and makeups and are often annotated with hashtags—phrases used to label the online snippets so as to provide context for everyone reading. (For example, look at the difference between the same status updates with different hashtags: I Love You #wishyouknew and I Love You #forever.) Social scientists are studying the short- and long-term impacts of electronic communication on our connections to other humans. Will we, like the characters in the Pixar movie
Wall-E
, become people who rarely speak directly to each other and instead spend our days video chatting and pecking out messages in 144 characters? Probably not. Let’s hope not. But electronic communication and social media are undoubtedly changing the way kids talk to one another about sex, fall in and out of love, even how they argue. And like everything we’ve discussed in this book, it all needs to be put into context so that we can help them think more critically and objectively about whether their behavior in the digital world aligns with their and your values in the real world.

Although we didn’t grow up with cell phones, most of us can remember stretching the cord of a wall telephone across the room or into a closet when our sweetheart called. And when you were on the phone with a friend or sweetheart, who doesn’t recall the endless hours of conversation about who knows what, but things that felt important at the time? There were awkward silences, plenty of moments when one of you would do something else—say, flip through the TV channels or doodle—and lots of time to figure out how to carry on a conversation with someone you knew little (or too much) about. Those days seem downright simple compared with the frenetic pace at which teenagers talk to one another today.

They’re taking multitasking to a whole new level. While we were multitasking, we were usually talking to only one person at a time. Multitasking today often involves talking to several people at the same time. Kids are texting at the speed of light with their sweetheart, while instant messaging with their BFF on the computer, scrolling through social media updates, and e-mailing their teacher back about a missed homework assignment. It’s dizzying just how quickly they read and respond to multiple messages, and how they can seemingly take in so much information at one time and not get lost. Or maybe it just looks as though they’re not getting lost? I certainly can’t say for sure.

Kids today are so reliant on smartphone communication that it isn’t uncommon for teenagers to begin relationships via text. Rather than approach someone at school, they’ll begin a conversation by text message: “Hey. What are you up to?” All of that time you used to spend talking on the phone, your kids spend texting. Kids ask each other their deepest thoughts over text. They complain about their soccer coach or the lousy grade they got on a biology test. They share their sexual desires, sometimes even sending provocative photos to one another. They break up via text, and say I love you for the first time. I’m sure that all adults who have teens in their lives have seen all of this firsthand.

Social media and e-mail are great tools for many reasons—they allow us to reestablish contact with or keep in touch with old friends, for one—but I don’t believe they’re good for developing intimacy, at least not the kind of intimacy needed for a healthy relationship. My students and some of my colleagues will argue with me that you can build a relationship from
text and social-media communications, but my response is simple: just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s healthy, or good for you, or that it carries the same value as talking face-to-face.

I think using electronic communication when you have the option of face-to-face communication is problematic. Think about how much our kids, and we, miss out on. We’re a species that has evolved to communicate verbally and nonverbally simultaneously. If we’re not talking to someone in person, we’re getting far less information. We don’t see if our sweeties shift their eyes when we say we care for them, or how someone’s face can help us know whether the phrase “You’re too much” is meant as a compliment or a complaint. Electronic communication can be like communicating with someone who speaks a different language—a lot can get lost in translation.

It also feels to me like a shortcut, and sometimes I worry that my students choose this route to avoid the hard work of actually communicating face-to-face. My students will argue that they
are
having serious conversations via text or social media, even conversations about values, feelings, and sexual readiness. Then when they’re together they can skip right to hooking up or just talk about
whatever
, since everything was discussed already via text. I have colleagues who argue that if kids have important conversations through texting, it’s because they can’t or won’t have them face-to-face, and having them in some format is always better than not having them at all. I see that point, but I’m still uncomfortable with it. I know how teenagers fear being awkward, and I also know that healthy relationships are ones that can deal with awkwardness without avoiding it. Maybe I’m being too much of a purist here, but I want the kids I teach to push themselves to do the hard work and not settle for what’s easier or more convenient or less awkward. I encourage my kids to think about why they’re using text to say something so significant to their sweethearts, or to anyone. Are they taking a shortcut? Why is it difficult for them to express their feelings in person? Do they use text as a supplement to in-person communication, or do they use it as a crutch? It’s also important to ask about how sincere they are in their electronic comments. When it comes to bullying, power games, or coercion, people can hide behind their devices, and that can make it hard for the recipient to know what’s really going on. There’s also the question of what you can “get away with.” Boys and girls can flirt with multiple parties over text and e-mail much more easily than they could in person. It’s easier to deceive someone.

I’ll challenge my students: “Next time you’re about to text something to your sweetheart, why not call them instead? Let them hear your voice. It’s OK if you sound scared or if you crack a joke to break the tension. Just say hello.”

“We’re not allowed to make calls with our phones during school hours!” they snap back. It’s true; our school policy allows them to text or surf the Web but not actually to make calls. They’re supposed to use a school phone for that.

“OK,” I acquiesce. “I don’t want to get into a policy debate. What I’m really interested in is this—if you had the option to either call or text your sweetheart, which would you do?”

They give me that most maddening of teenage answers: “It depends.” They’ll ask for clarification, “Is it a serious conversation or just, you know, something quick like a check-in?”

“Let’s say it’s kind of serious; not a major breakup or fight, but an important conversation.”

The answer I get consistently is text for serious conversations and voice for silly stuff, the exact opposite of what my brain tells me the answer should be. But, I remind myself, I’m old, and I didn’t grow up in a world that had the option of electronic communication when I was a teenager. Maybe I would have made the same choice. But the question remains, is it the
healthy
choice?

Another problem I see with relying on electronic communication is that we tend to put our best selves online—the version of ourselves that we want everyone to see, not necessarily who we really are. That increases the potential for disappointment when we do spend time with someone face-to-face. It’s easy to construct a fantasy person in one’s head based on clever texts, cool Instagram photos, and impressive Facebook updates. The person in real life can’t possibly compete with the one a teenager has created from building these words and images into a person. Any of us who has ever used an online dating service knows that reading someone’s profile or having a short chat with them can’t convey the totality of a person. What’s important to realize about the way kids get to know their peers today is that oftentimes they have quite extensive and long-term electronic contact before actually meeting a friend or sweetheart in person. It’s not just the initial contact that’s made over text. Often the early stages of the relationship are carried out this way as well.

That long-term electronic communication can also foster a false sense of intimacy. We’ve all read those horrible stories of Internet predators who befriend and seduce young people by making them think no one else understands them or really knows them like
they
do. That’s the most extreme case, and it’s not what this chapter is about. But it shows that what looks and feels like intimacy to one person may be something entirely different to the person on the other end of the device. Here’s a much more mundane example using my own circle of friends: I’m a big Facebook user and love reconnecting with people. I’ve had the experience of chatting with an old friend and commenting on someone’s status update and feeling really close to these people, even though I may not have seen them in years or spoken to them very often. But is that intimacy I experience even real? And is it intimacy that springs from this interaction or just an echo of the intimacy I established with them earlier in our lives? Or perhaps the better question to ask: is that intimacy shared? Maybe my friends feel it, or maybe I was a little blip in their day hardly worthy of notice. People will argue that the same thing can happen in a face-to-face interaction, but I think it’d be much easier to see that one of us was more into it than the other in that situation.

Recently out to dinner at a restaurant, I saw a family sitting at a table together. Mom was on her smartphone; dad was on his. The two teenagers were on their phones, too. No one at the table was talking. We all use our smartphones to get things done—they make everything easier. But seeing this family reminded me of the importance of knowing and living one’s values. Parents will tell me that it’s easier to ask their son or daughter personal questions or check in with them over text or e-mail. But that, too, is a crutch. Texting and e-mail are not how you want to talk to your kids about emotions or healthy sexuality, or any kind of relationships for that matter. If you’re able to sit down with your child and talk in person about things that are bothering you, to have a conversation about values or safer sex, then you’re modeling how to communicate face-to-face. If a parent is relying on text to communicate, that’s a powerful message too. Sitting down and talking shows the children that the parents rely on real life to share with one another. They tune in. They put the smartphone down when it’s time to talk. And they don’t immediately turn to it and start texting when conversations get tough.

Texting and posting about relationship status is just the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to teens, sex, and technology. You have probably heard the term
sexting
by now, but just in case you’ve been spared this particular cultural phenomenon, sexting is the term used to describe a new kind of sexual behavior, in which people (often teens and young adults) send explicit text messages, photos, or short videos via text. A 2012 study in the
Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine
notes that 28 percent of the youth surveyed, all in tenth or eleventh grade, reported having sent a naked picture of themselves through text or e-mail, and 31 percent reported having asked someone for a sext. More than half of the teens surveyed, 57 percent, had been asked to send a sext. What was also interesting about this study was that it reported that young people don’t like to receive requests for a sext. All of the girls and half of the boys surveyed reported feeling bothered by requests for sexts.

You might ask the logical question, then: why do teens send them? The answers are complex and reveal kids’ deep-seated needs to feel noticed and accepted and loved. Some teens reply with a sext because they feel it’s what’s expected of them. Some do so because they know it will allow a conversation, and maybe an interaction, to happen afterward. Sexting can be a gateway to starting an interaction, a hoop to jump through or something to get out of the way so the “real” communication can begin. Young women have said that requests for a sexy photo are the first messages they get when trying to start an online conversation with a new boy.