In his January 31, 2011, blog<\/a>, Bill Albert, Chief Program Officer and frequent media spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, attacked my op-ed in the New York Times<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n To paraphrase actress Sally Field for just a moment: Mike Males<\/a> doesn\u2019t like us. He really, really doesn\u2019t like us. Alas. Mr. Males has made a cottage industry of being the nation\u2019s lonely protector of the truth regarding teen attitudes and behavior. Mr. Males took his latest adults bad\/teens good barb to the august New York Times<\/em> in the form of an op-ed.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n After lauding (I think) \u201cTruth and Justice Mike\u201d for presenting positive information about declining \u201cteen pregnancy\u201d rates\u2014without mentioning my point that the decline occurred only among married<\/i><\/b> teens, which interest groups across the spectrum evidently don\u2019t like to talk about\u2014Albert gets to his main criticism:<\/p>\n In the op-ed Mr. Males says that The National Campaign \u201cdefines receiving any \u2018sexy messages\u2019 by e-mail or cellphone as \u2018sexting.\u2019\u201c Hmm. The survey Mr. Males refers to\u2014entitled Sex and Tech<\/a> (PDF) for anyone keeping track\u2014never uses the word sexting. Not once. Nor, by the way, does the corresponding press release<\/a> (PDF). The report is scrupulously careful in differentiating between, say, teens who say they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves\u2014an activity many find worrisome\u2014and more benign activities such as sharing sexually suggestive messages. Moreover, Sex and Tech<\/i> details findings from young adults (age 20-26), not just teens, and notes that young adults are far more likely than teens to, for example, electronically share nude\/semi-nude photos. I guess that didn\u2019t fit in Mr. Males\u2019 narrative about our proclivity for teen-bashing.<\/i><\/p>\n Really? Did Mr. Albert miss the National Campaign\u2019s fact sheet, \u201cTeens, Digital Media, and Sexting\u201d<\/a> issued in conjunction with its survey\u2014or is he just rightly embarrassed about it? Note the word the National Campaign includes right in the title, repeated in a bold-headed section on page 2 entitled\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cSexting\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n …which presents the following \u201cfacts\u201d:<\/p>\n 20% of teens (ages 13 to 19) have sent\/posted nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves, including 22% of teen girls, 18% of teen boys, and 11% of young teen girls (ages 13-16).<\/p>\n 33% of young adults (ages 20 to 26) have sent\/posted nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves, including 36% of young women and 31% of young men.<\/p>\n 68% of teens and young adults describe the activity of sending suggestive content to someone else as \u201cflirty,\u201d but 73% also say sending sexually suggestive content can have serious negative\u00a0consequences.<\/p>\n 72% of teens and 68% of young adults also believe that personal sexy messages and pictures\/video usually end up being seen by more than just those to whom they were sent.<\/p>\n These are the typically meaningless, media-baiting unscrupulosities my Times<\/i> op-ed criticized. There’s no definition of what a \u201csemi-nude\u201d picture is, nor \u201csexually suggestive content,\u201d nor \u201cpersonal sexy messages,\u201d or why it is in any way troubling that most teens reasonably recognize that cellphone or email texts \u201ccan have serious negative consequences.\u201d After all, going to church<\/a><\/strong><\/b> \u201ccan have serious negative consequences\u201d\u2014look at the shootings, the clerical abuses, the camp liaisons.<\/p>\n For more evidence of its less than \u201cscrupulously careful\u201d approach, note the post by Amy R. Kramer<\/a>, the National Campaign\u2019s Director of Entertainment Media & Audience Strategy, which is titled\u2014note again the word choice\u2014\u201c<\/a>Sexting and Nude Postings: Everyone\u2019s Doing It. Well, Lots of Them\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/b>:<\/p>\n Today The Campaign, along with our friends at Cosmogirl.com<\/a>, released a survey about the scary intersection of sex and technology. As it turns out, nearly 40% of teens are sending sexually suggestive text message, IMs, or emails. And nearly half have received them. Think that\u2019s bad? They\u2019re also sending sexually explicit photos and video\u2014about 1 in 5 teens say they\u2019ve posted or sent nude or semi-nude images of themselves. Most send this stuff to their boyfriends and girlfriends but 15% of those who\u2019ve done it say they\u2019ve sent such content to people they know only online. Yikes!<\/i><\/p>\n Scary? Bad? “Yikes<\/em>“? Hardly. What astonishes me is that 60% of teens age 13-19 (perhaps growing weary of the paranoia interest groups led by the National Campaign inflame over their mildest acts) say they never<\/i><\/b> sent a \u201csexually suggestive text message,\u201d even one time.<\/p>\n Instead of remarking on this astonishing point, Kramer misrepresents the survey by claiming that \u201cthey\u2019re also sending sexually explicit photos and video.\u201d Note the key qualifications:(a) what \u201cthey\u2019re\u201d really<\/i> means is \u201c1 in 5\u201d (that is, 80% of teens have never done so, and only 15% of the 20% who did\u2014that is, a whopping 3% of the total sample\u2014sent \u201csuch content to people they know only online\u201d); and (b) what \u201csexually explicit photos\u201d really<\/i> means is \u201cnude or semi-nude images of themselves\u201d (\u201csemi-nude\u201d is conveniently undefined and could mean nothing more than a girl sending a bathing suit photo to her sister). The National Campaign could have asked specific questions but chose vague generalities that reliably produce the wildest numbers.<\/p>\n So, to reverse the lens, by the same \u201csexting\u201d definitions they apply to teens and young adults, have Bill Albert or Amy Kramer ever sent a \u201csexy\u201d or \u201csexually suggestive\u201d message? By their own definitions, what percentage of National Campaign staffers would admit to \u201csexting\u201d at least once in their lives?<\/p>\n Finally, let\u2019s get to the National Campaign\u2019s chief teen legend, which Albert winds up his blog by repeating:<\/p>\n Despite the fact that the teen birth rate is at an all-time recorded low, it is still the case that 3 in 10 girls get pregnant by age 20 and that rates of teen childbearing in the United States remain way out of step with the rest of the world.<\/p>\n This generalization suffers from crucial omissions, even if we allow for Albert\u2019s mistake (he clearly meant \u201crest of the Western world\u201d). Let\u2019s provide a more detailed accounting (updated from my 2010 book, Teenage Sex and Pregnancy: Modern Myths, Unsexy Realities<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/b>, p. 116) that details how the National Campaign consistently helps politicians and interests obscure, not illuminate, the realities of what all sides mislabel as \u201cteenage pregnancy\u201d:<\/p>\nPregnancy rates per 1,000 females age 15-19<\/h3>\n
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