SALT LAKE CITY -- One in four students has been involved in sexting and on average, 52 percent of students have been victims of cyberbullying. That's according to NetSmartz.
Now teens are going to great lengths to hide their texting conversations from their parents.
"’Parent Over Shoulder’ or ‘Parent in Room’ and those I think are a little outdated now, but then you have some of the new ones that involve sexting," according to Max Rogers, the Director of NetSmartz, a national program the Boys and Girls Club uses to educate teens about the dangers lurking on the Internet.
There's a long list of abbreviations teens are now using in text messages with their friends.
GNOC is get naked on camera. CU46 is see you for sex. LMIRL stands for let's meet in real life and TDTM is talk dirty to me.
"Teens have always hid conversations from their parents, whether it was Pig Latin back in the day or acronyms in texting or coding," Rogers said. "Text messaging just doesn't keep up anymore with what kids want to do.”
If they aren't using acronyms, teens are turning to APPS like Snapchat and Kick Messenger. Often parents are clueless simply because things are constantly changing.
"Lots of times they're unaware of these social APPS that change every day, there's new ones all the time. Every year students are using different ones where students can have conversations that parents are definitely unaware of," Rogers said.
