The Malaysian Insider :: Features

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 06:20 AM PST

NEW YORK, Dec 6 — Sexually explicit material isn't as widespread on kids' cell phones as some surveys have suggested, researchers have found.

But "sexting" — sending or receiving risque photos or videos via cell phone — can still mean legal trouble for minors.

"Right now, in most areas, it's a criminal offence," said Kimberly J. Mitchell, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham and a co-author on two new reports in the journal Pediatrics. "Child pornography is by definition a sexual picture of a minor."

In one study, Mitchell and her colleagues estimate that US police handled nearly 3,500 cases of sexual images produced by adolescents from 2008 to 2009.

Adults were on the receiving end just over a third of the time, while the rest involved only the youth.

Nearly four out of 10 cases led to an arrest, including when the sexting had been "romantic" or "attention-seeking."

Fuelled by high-profile scandals, sexting has become a hot topic in the media. Earlier this year, Representative Anthony Weiner stepped down from Congress after admitting to sexting in which he sent lewd pictures of himself to young women.

For minors, there is the added concern that sexually explicit photos or videos may be considered child pornography, even when sent from a girl to her boyfriend or vice versa.

Mitchell said parents should make their teens aware of the legal risks and make sure they understand that anything they send could end up on the Internet.

"Once it's out there you probably won't be able to get it back," she told Reuters Health.

And for receivers, Mitchell added, "we are recommending they should delete it and they certainly should not distribute it themselves."

But she also cautioned that youth sexting isn't as common as earlier polls have suggested.

A TOPIC WORTH ADDRESSING WITH KIDS

A 2008 survey found one in five teens have sent or posted online nude or semi-nude pictures or videos of themselves, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a private organisation based in Washington, D.C.

Mitchell and her colleagues got much smaller numbers in a 2010 national survey, however.

Based on phone interviews with more than 1,500 children ages 10 through 17, they found just 2.5 per cent had appeared in or produced nude or nearly nude photos or videos. That number dropped to 1 per cent if only sexually explicit material — naked breasts, genitals or bottoms — was included.

Between 6 and 7 per cent of the adolescents said they'd received such images or videos.

"Overall, our results are actually quite reassuring," said Mitchell.

"With any sort of new technology that kids become involved in, there is a tendency to become easily alarmed," she added. "What we are instead seeing is that sexting may just make some forms of sexual behaviour more visible to adults."

Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, welcomed the new findings.

He said he wasn't surprised by the smaller numbers, given that Mitchell and colleagues surveyed younger kids and interviewed them over the phone while their parents were around.

"I wonder if teens are being as truthful as they might be," Albert told Reuters Health, adding that past surveys had come up with a range of estimates.

"It's nothing to panic about, but it's something to address," he said. "It's a good opportunity to sit down with your kid and talk about it." — Reuters

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Study finds how child abuse changes the brain

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 06:05 AM PST

LONDON, Dec 6 — Children exposed to family violence show the same pattern of activity in their brains as soldiers exposed to combat, scientists said yesterday.

In a study in the journal Current Biology, researchers used brain scans to explore the impact of physical abuse or domestic violence on children's emotional development and found that exposure to it was linked to increased activity in two brain areas when children were shown pictures of angry faces.

Previous studies that scanned the brains of soldiers exposed to violent combat situations showed the same pattern of heightened activity in these two brain areas — the anterior insula and the amygdala — which experts say are associated with detecting potential threats.

This suggests that both maltreated children and soldiers may have adapted to become "hyper-aware" of danger in their environment, the researchers said.

"Enhanced reactivity to a...threat cue such as anger may represent an adaptive response for these children in the short term, helping keep them out of danger," said Eamon McCrory of Britain's University College London, who led the study.

But he added that such responses might also be underlying neurobiological risk factor that increases the children's susceptibility to later mental illness such as depression.

Depression is already a major cause of mortality, disability, and economic burden worldwide and the World Health Organisation predicts that by 2020, it will be the second leading contributor to the global burden of disease across all ages.

Childhood maltreatment is known to be one of the most potent environmental risk factors linked to later mental health problems such as anxiety disorders and depression.

A study published in August found that people who suffered maltreatment as children were twice as likely as those who had normal childhoods to develop persistent and recurrent depression, and less likely to respond well or quickly to treatment for their mental illness.

McCrory said still relatively little was known about how such early adversity "gets under the skin and increases a child's later vulnerability, even into adulthood."

In the study, 43 children had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty of the children who were known to have been exposed to violence at home were compared with 23 who had not experienced family violence.

The average age of the maltreated children was 12 years and they had all been referred to local social services in London.

When the children were in the scanner they were shown pictures of male and female faces showing sad, calm or angry expressions. The researchers found that those who had been exposed to violence showed increased brain activity in the anterior insula and amygdala in response to the angry faces.

"We are only now beginning to understand how child abuse influences functioning of the brain's emotional systems," McCrory said. "This research...provides our first clues as to how regions in the child's brain may adapt to early experiences of abuse." — Reuters

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Selasa, 6 Disember 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

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