AIBU To want to ground my teen FOREVER

[nightglow]

I have NC for this. My DS (14) hasn't been himself these last few days. Bit quiet, a bit withdrawn. Wanted to stay off school today so I was a bit concerned. Wouldn't normally do this but decided to have a look at his FB account. He knows I can access it but haven't bothered for the last few months as he is getting older. I find nothing to explain his recent behavior but there are lots of pictures from one particular friend. No ordinary pictures! Naked and I mean naked pictures of girls, full frontals, rear pictures. Also messages to one girl asking for pictures of her nude and promising to send the same in return. AIBU to want to ground him, take away his fb account and monitor his messages?

Its not only wrong but could ruin both their lives.
Tell him if he ever shared those images or even let others see them he would be on a register for life. DELETE DELETE DELETE that account.
Truly. A quirk of our laws to protect children means if they are underage but over the age of legal responsibility, their stupid teenage "sexting" can result in indecent image prosecution. It can and does happen: 14 year olds on the sex offenders register because they showed a mate and someone reported it. If seen cases irl where a girl sent a picture to a boy, dad got wind and reported the boy - both kids hauled into the police (the dad freaked out when he realised the girl also arrested ). Thankfully that time no one else saw so no charges were pressed. But they were both a shade under 16, bf/gf - and we're monitored by ss till 18.
It is a big deal child protection wise. The girl offering to procure is at risk of arrest, though probably misguidedly trying to attract boys.

That's how serious this is.

...sorry that's re the photos of similar aged girls.
The other stuff is equally grim but if of models etc not illegal.

Nightglow we also had a very similar issue with our ds who was 14 at the time. He sent a naked pic of himself via text to a girl and she sent him one of her too. During the night one night, he woke me up and asked if we could chat about something. He was in a state. What has transpired is that some of the boys at school got hold of his phone and saw the pics. They then started to bribe him, and he had to pay them money each day, and if he didn't, they claimed they would show me the pics and put them on the www.

What he thought was just one picture that would be looked at once and then deleted, didn't work out that way. As we as adults know, but he just didn't realize the consequences of what they had done. The girl was only 13 ffs!

Anyway cutting a long story short, he broke all contact with the boys who did this, and with the girl. I didn't ground him or punish him, as i really honestly think once he realized what had happened, that he learned the consequences himself. From time to time thereafter i would ask to see his phone randomly, he never had anything dodgy like that on there after that.

I do think you need to sit down and have an open discussion about this with him. They really do not understand the consequences of this, although at this age they clearly think they know everything about everything

Just to add, it is quite normal for a 14 yo boy to be interested in naked pics of girls etc, but with technology these days it is so very different. Its not like they are going into the corner shop and buying the girly magazine off the top shelf and all huddling around looking at some boobs. Its just a message here and there asking girls for one, and they are so willing to send them. That's what bothers me the most, is that the girls are willing to do it

If the girls are getting naked pics of guys in return, it's not that surprising that the girls are willing to do it. It's just as normal for a 14 yo girl to be interested in naked pics of guys as it is with the genders reversed. They probably don't understand the potential consequences any more than guys the same age do. And, of course, a girl might be afraid that a guy will break up with her if she doesn't do this, or she might think everyone does it, and so on and so forth. The same reasons why teenagers of both sexes have always done dumb things.

Your son needs to know that what happens online doesn't always stay online, and you can't control who gets to see something once it is posted online. There can be real world legal consequences for this kind of thing. Prospective employers may Google job candidates or search social media for information about them.

It might be worth having a talk with him about safer ways to see images of naked women. He clearly wants to do that, and there are dangers in doing so indiscriminately (sexting charges, child pornography, malware from sketchy porn sites, and so on). He'd probably be better off if he was looking at magazines or getting his pictures from sites that don't have malware or images of people under 18. Kind of like how, if he were having sex, you'd want to make sure he was using some kind of protection.

If he uses your computer, and you don't have any kind of spyware detection program, you should get one now. I like Spybot Search and Destroy, but there are others.