Phone sex used to be something more of a paid service for adults. It wasn’t uncommon for a male teenager to engage in this activity by dialing a 1-900 number after looking through his father’s adult magazine while home alone. This was mainly an impersonal experience and usually the perceived voice was never who was advertised. We all know the cliche jokes on phone sex operators, no need to dig too deep on the subject. Simply, it was more impersonal and costly, but a threat was never there for either party other than a lashing from the father when he got a phone bill.
These days, there are no $3.00 a minute fees, phone sex is free. This activity also no longer belongs to those employed by a sex agency and some unwitting teenage boy, but is now being done by teenage girls, college women, professional women, bachelors, and married men.
What has changed more than who engages in the act of phone sex is the technology it is performed on. Modern day cell phones are acting more and more like personal computers and with camera phones capable of snapshots and video, phone sex is more interactive than ever before. Smartphones allow easier interaction with voice, Internet, video, and text.
What makes phone sex more dangerous than at any other time in the past is the fact that many of transmitted images can be stored and shared with others. The wrong images in the wrong hands can be giving fuel to predators, stalkers, and sex traffickers online, making this dangerous for females as well as males. If your image can be shared with others, then there is a chance your phone number and other personal information can be shared as well making you easy prey. You don’t need to have phone sex with a stranger for a stranger to have your private photos and videos, remember that.
To protect your teenagers from this threat, it may take more than just talking and trust. The only 100% way to make sure your teen is not transmitting x-rated photos of themselves is to not have text or Internet enabled with their cell phone service. Sounds harsh, and it won’t prevent your teen from engaging in this activity on the Internet at home, but then they are at least safe at home, right? Yes, your teenager can still use their phone and say lewd things, but minimizing the tools available to them that enables them to enrich the act with additional media is at least one measure towards protecting your child.
The act of text messaging over a cell phone for sexual purposes is an act now dubbed “SEXTING”. This method can include photo exchanging with image enabled text messaging phones, or phones with the service activated.
The threat with cell phones is that your teen can easily be away from home while engaging and even arranging sexual encounters over the phone. Mobility is the threat and can become much more dangerous when coupled with additional technology. A predator can now verify a victims appearance beforehand, use fake photos of himself to lure the child, and meet up without the child even knowing the truth of that persons age or demeanour.
The scariest statistic on sex predation is that the majority of the rapes that result from the practice of phone and Internet sex are teenage males. The majority of these crimes go unreported due to either humiliation or the fact that the child is exploring their sexuality. Parents tend to keep a more blind eye when it comes to teenage males believing that it is mainly females that fall victim to sexual predators.
Be cautious and aware. This is a new era, and the same old games may result in a bigger loss than a large phone bill.