The Truth About Teens and Sexuality
It’s all over the news these days. Teens are dealing with things in far different ways than they were ten and twenty years ago. That includes their sexuality. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you live in a small town or a big city, teenagers are having sex and experimenting with their sexuality. Teenagers have been doing this probably since the dawn of man, but with social media and smartphones it’s far more out in the open now.
Most parents probably think they know what their teenagers are doing. However, unless you are equipped to bug their phones and are recording every keystroke on their computers, you really have no idea.
Teen Sexuality and Technology
You may not know what sexting is, but it’s likely your teenager does. According to some reports, studies have shown that a fairly high amount of college age teenagers have been sexting and including risky photos with those messages. While college age students are generally of legal sexual age, that doesn’t mean they are the only ones practicing this risky behavior, and more.
Not only does technology impose a greater risk for sexually active teenagers, it also opens those teens that are exploring different forms of technology to ridicule when they share their feelings online. Cyberbullying is traumatic, and has led to teenage suicide in teens that identify as transgender, bisexual, and gay.
Coming Out About Teen Sexuality
Teenagers can be cruel and nothing hurts more than discovering who you were meant to be and having others make fun of you for it. Teenagers that identify as gay or transgender are at a higher risk for suicide. It’s not because they themselves feel bad about their sexual orientation, but because other do. As a parent to a teen that identifies with an alternative sexual orientation, it is extra important to talk to your teens about sex and about how to protect themselves from the opinions of others.
Teens exploring their sexuality can be a healthy thing, but they need to go about it in a safe fashion and the only way for that to happen is for their parents to let them know what is safe. You might not think your kids are listening to you, but if you don’t talk to them they’ll never hear you. All teenagers rebel, so don’t expect them to do everything you tell them to do.
Teenagers will have sex and they will experiment with their sexuality. It’s part of growing up. That doesn’t mean that parents can’t try to be influential on what their children do, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you have any clue what all your teenagers knows about sex and what they are doing when it comes to their own sexual experiences.
Guest Author: Lolita Di