Children are afraid to shower naked in front of classmates

Today while reading my favourite online newspaper, I stumbled upon this article. Since it’s in Dutch, I’ll give a shot at doing a translation.

Teenagers afraid of showering naked amongst peers due to smartphones

A study conducted by antropologist Chris Paulis (university of Liége), showed that 20% of the students in second and third grade refuse to shower while at school. They prefer wearing bathing suits or underwear, because they fear the other students will make pictures and share them on social network sites.

“It’s not extraordinary for teenagers to compare or mock each others bodies”, says Paulis. “On top of that, they have a weapon: the smartphone.” says the antropologist.

Child Focus, the organisation for missing and sexually exploited children, also aknowledges the problem. “There is a rise of reports made by children whose naked pictures had been spread against their will, those pictures were made at school or in a gym.”, as said Nel Broothaerts, from Child Focus.

In the light of this, it’s not a surprise that bathing suits and underwear are becoming more popular at schools. “It’s a new form of prudery. Showing nudity in a group is seen as much more of a problem.”, says Erica Frans from Sensoa. (note: Sensoa is an organisation te help inform people and prevent them from sexual transmitted diseases)

Source: http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/1344/Onderwijs/article/detail/1981661/2014/08/06/Tieners-durven-niet-meer-naakt-te-douchen-met-leeftijdsgenoten-door-smartphone.dhtml

First of all, when I saw the head of this article, I rolled my eyes in both disgust and disbelief. Even tho I’m only in my mid-twenties, I already feel a huge generation gap between myself and teenagers. Maybe it’s the enormous technological revolution, or the growing impact of mass media, or something completely else, I haven’t figured that out yet. But I can’t loose the feeling that, whenever I read the papers, at least once or twice a week I feel ooold, man. Really old.

I remember going swimming as a kid, who doesn’t? In my case, boys and girls were always separated in dressing rooms. But all of us girls dressed up together in a big room until we were I think, 10 years old. Same for the boys. Of course we tried to peak over the wall of the dressing room. That’s normal. Every child is curious, but I do believe most of us just did it to prove how ‘cool’ we were or to pss off those stupid boys. Apparently, this is not how it’s done today.
Today, the goal is to snap a picture of a classmate or other innocent child while he or she is naked. NAKED. Then, if that’s not enough, you spread this picture on the internet. The saddest thing of this whole mess is that frankly, I’m not even that surprised. How harsh it may sound, we kind of saw this one coming.

After reading the article, I felt pretty mad. Not necessarily because of the message, but because of the cool-down tone in which it was presented. I’m not satisfied with this information. Will there be steps taken to help those children and prevent those pictures from spreading? And more importantly, what will be done to help the children commiting this behaviour?

My first reaction would be to have a realllly close talk to those kid’s parents. But of course this is a first reaction, and a problem such as this is much more complex then that. If it was just a problem of parents malfunctioning, accurate actions can be made, sort of. But the big problem here is that underlying sense of sad acceptance I get while reading this article or similar like it. We report it, shake or heads, and try to forget it happens. And that’s the real problem here, folks. This is not something that can be conquered by certain laws or punishing the children involved with this. This is a global problem, affecting millions of children. It’s not about those pictures, or even the horrible act of spreading such images. Instead, it’s about values and universal ideas of what’s good and what’s bad. I wish we could be just a little more angry and disgusted by this. What moral standards are we feeding this youngsters if they think damaging someone for life is fun?

Now, I could go on a rant about why kids shouldn’t have smartphones in the first place, or how world famous entertainers try to distort our young ones minds, but I’ll leave both of those topics for a different event. I don’t want to try and blame anyone for this. Instead, we should all try and talk to some teenagers from time to time. Growing up can be hard and something tells me it’s even harder for kids these days then it was for us. Give them some standards for heavens sake. Those kids are supposed to be our future.
Enough preaching for today, take care folks :)


Mary Jane
pissedofpenguin@gmail.com