Yesterday the Kansas City Star ran a fascinating story about parental fear about children ‘sexting’ each other beyond the watchful eyes of their mothers and father.

But what is ‘sexting,’ you ask?

One in five kids have used their cell phone to send sexy or nude photos of themselves, according to an online poll by Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), a trend analyst firm in Chicago. The poll surveyed 1,200 kids online. The kids had signed up as volunteers to take TRU surveys. The study was sponsored by CosmoGirl! magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The results became national news and adults dubbed it “sexting.” Newspaper and television headlines asked worried parents, “Is your teen sexting?” No one asked: “Is this a real trend or adults just totally freaked out?”

Don’t worry, a sociologist clears all of this up…

Adults may just be nervous, according to the results of an academic study. The Digital Youth Report was the result of a three-year project in which 28 researchers studied new media and teens. The researchers interviewed 800 kids and young adults in person. They also observed more than 5,000 hours of online activity.

Sociologist CJ Pascoe and her research assistant interviewed 80 kids for the project and said sexting was not a major issue. “No one brought it up,” said Pascoe, an assistant sociology professor at Colorado College. “I had them go through their last 10 messages, their last 10 photos and I never saw it.”

Sexting was not a common enough practice to make it into the report. Instead, Pascoe suggested that adults have fears about teens and the Internet. “I think what makes adults nervous about new media is they have a window into a teenager’s world for the first time, ” Pascoe said. “Teen culture has been around since the 1950s and teens have been pushing the boundaries since the 1950s but adults haven’t seen it.”

Read on…

The Chicago Sun Tribune ran a story today about how Chinese immigrants working in Italy’s fashion industry have had a transformative effect on the Tuscan city of Prato. While the impact of this wave of immigration and success appears positive, there are some indications that life for Chinese workers in the fashion industry be more grim than originally thought.

Christine Spolar reports:

Like some city neighborhoods, suburbs and small towns across the U.S. where Mexicans and other immigrants gather in search of jobs, Prato is a place where two culturally different communities can live side-by-side and never really know each other.

“In all my travels, I had never seen anything like it,” said Roberto Ye, a son of Chinese immigrants and an Italian citizen who opened a Western Union office in the heart of Prato. “I said to myself: This is not like being in Chinatown in Chicago or New York or anywhere else. This is like China. White people are the foreigners here.”

To understand the impact, follow the money. This year, Chinese immigrants in Italy sent home a whopping 1.68 billion euros, about $2.4 billion, the lion’s share of all 6 billion euros in remittances recorded by Italy’s government.

“You have to forget anything you have ever learned about immigration when you come to Prato. Forget typical patterns. Europe has turned itself into a global marketplace and the Chinese who come are trying to take advantage of that,” said Andrea Frattani, Prato’s multicultural minister.

The darker side of this success story…

Police have raided hundreds of crowded workshops in the past few years where Chinese live, work and sleep. They earn far-below standard wage yet produce wares reportedly sold even in designer shops.

Some Chinese offer excuses for breaking labor laws. Workers still find conditions in Italy better than in China, they claim. But law-enforcement agents argue that Italian and Chinese entrepreneurs wrongly squeeze the most vulnerable. Italians subcontract with Chinese businessmen to cover dodgy business practices. Chinese owners rule over workers desperate for jobs.

Authorities worry about potential dangers: Criminal networks can prey on outsiders who don’t speak the native language — and Italy is a place where mafias already operate.

Social integration between Italians and Chinese is almost non-existent; schools are the few places where the young of both cultures mingle.

The sociological commentary…

Chinese businesses exist in Italy but they aren’t part of Italy. There has been immigration but not integration,” said Daniele Cologna, a sociologist at the Codici research group in Milan.

Full story.

An article in the Boston Globe yesterday suggests that men may have a lot to learn from women when it comes to health. New research indicates that the ‘tough guy’ attitude is a key factor in gendered health disparities. 

“In American society, what does a real man do? A real man doesn’t show weakness,” said David R. Williams, a medical sociologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It leads a lot of men to not take preventive action for their health, to deny pain and seek medical attention only when the problem is much more severe.”

A richly detailed portrait of Bay Staters’ health, released earlier this month, proves the point – and provides stark evidence of a persistent divide between the genders. In category after category, women do a better job of taking care of their health. They smoke less and drink less, and they’re less likely to be overweight. They eat more fruits and vegetables. They have their cholesterol tested more regularly.

One especially telling finding: While men more frequently reported being diagnosed with high blood pressure, they were actually less likely than women to take drugs to tame it.

But what can men learn from women?

“Men can learn a lot from women,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We know that some of our health awareness campaigns about the risk of smoking and the risk of binge drinking have to do a better job of being gender-specific.”

That could translate into initiatives centered in the workplace that, perhaps, promise lower insurance premiums for men – and women – who adopt healthy behaviors. And, at home, families could be encouraged to exercise together and share healthier meals.

There is hope that as traditional gender roles continue to shift – as more men, for example, assume family responsibilities historically associated with women – the gender divide will narrow.

Read more.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on a new study, which establishes a troubling trend in homicide rates for black teenagers.  This new research suggests that the murder rate among black teens has risen in the last eight years, while murders by white teens have stagnated or even declines in some places. 

The celebrated reduction in murder rates has concealed a “worrisome divergence,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released today, with Marc L. Swatt. They said the gap could grow without such countermeasures as restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youth.

The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.

But why?

The report lays primary blame on cutbacks in federal support for community policing and juvenile crime prevention, reduced support for after-school and other social programs and a weakening of gun laws. Cuts in these areas have been felt most deeply in poor, black, urban areas, helping to explain the growing racial disparity, Fox said.

Sociologist Bruce Western raised some doubts…

But Harvard sociologist Bruce Western said the change in murder rates was not large and did not yet show a clear trend. Western also said the impact of the reduction in government spending would have to be studied on a city-by-city basis, and that many other changes, including a sagging economy, could have affected murder rates.

Read more.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune posted a podcast today about holiday spirituality, which included a discussion of new work from Mark Chaves, a Duke University sociologist studying churches in the United States. Technology is the opiate of the masses…

One of the biggest changes in churches over the past decade is a huge increase in the use of computer technology to keep in touch with current members and to reach out to new ones, according to a Duke University study that was released — appropriately enough — in the online version of the journal Sociology of Religion.

An average of 10,000 church websites are being launched every year, according to the National Congregations Study, Wave II, a follow-up to a 1998 study. In the earlier study only a handful of churches used e-mail to communicate with members. Now 60 percent are doing it.

Researchers conducted interviews with 1,500 congregations representing a cross-section of religious traditions. For the follow-up study, they went back to the same churches.

“This is the first study that has tracked change over time in a nationally representative sample of congregations,” said Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology, religion and divinity and the lead researcher. “We’ve never been able to do that before. This research tells us what is changing and what is staying the same.”

Read the full story.

The New York Times reports on the apparent downturn in major cosmetic surgeries as the US economy seems to be faltering. The article, ‘Putting Vanity (and Botox?) on Hold,’ explores how even with the advent of Botox in 2002 – making wrinkle reduction a more affordable luxury – people may still be cutting back on their body alterations. The Times asks, “But now, as the country plunges into recession, will financial hardship demote the pursuit of physical perfection?”

Time to call in the sociologists…

In uncertain times, people tend to re-evaluate their priorities, dismissing aspirational purchases as frivolous, said Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

“Cosmetic surgery is going to become the new S.U.V., something that you can do without, that is less justifiable for you and your family,” said Dr. Pitts-Taylor. She is the author of “Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture.”

A second opinion…

Deborah A. Sullivan, a sociology professor at the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, said that people who feel forced to forgo cosmetic medicine might experience a loss of control in their lives.

“I think it will intensify the sense of downward mobility: ‘I can’t even get my wrinkles treated,’ ” Dr. Sullivan said. She is the author of “Cosmetic Surgery: The Cutting Edge of Commercial Medicine in America.”

Against a tide of people eschewing cosmetic medicine in the new economy, she also predicted a counter current of consumers having procedures to feel proactive.

“People who would not have considered it, when they get laid off at 45, 50, 55 and are back on the job market, might consider it as they try to enhance their human capital,” she said.

Read the full story.

Thursday morning USA Today reported on a new findings from a study of the Pew Research Center’s survey data, which shows that Americans are feeling pulled closer to home. 

USA Today reports:

The majority of U.S.-born adults (56%) have not lived outside their birth state, suggests research out Wednesday, and of the 37% who have stayed in their hometown, three-quarters say the main reason is because they want to be near family. Fifteen percent have lived in four or more states.

Pew Research Center’s survey paints a vivid portrait about how Americans feel about their hometowns at a time when geographic mobility is at the lowest levels since the government began keeping statistics in 1948. Pew cites government that data shows 13.2% moved from 2006 to 2007, down from a high of 21.2% in 1951. Census figures to be released in 2009 confirm the trend, showing a dip to 11.9%.

The sociological commentary…

Duke University sociologist Angela O’Rand says economic uncertainty causes people to dig in where they are, making them less likely to risk moving. “Family provides in an uncertain world some level of safety and certainty,” O’Rand says.

The latest study on happiness (Fowler and Christakis) that has been all over the news and featured on the Crawler made The Colbert Report earlier this week.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports this morning on recent speculation that financial woes from the deepening recession may mean that families will be having fewer children. The AJC reports on how parents are increasingly filled with doubts about their ability to provide for additional children as job prospects shrink, retirement savings plummet, and home values continue to fall.

Many economists fear that the recession will become one of the worst since the Great Depression. When that hit in the 1930s, the birthrate dropped precipitously, and the effects of having fewer people in the work force rippled through the economy two decades later. “If you can’t pay your mortgage, the last thing on your mind is to have another child,” said Dr. Khalil Tabsh, chief of obstetrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who expects to start seeing a drop in pregnancies.

Bring in the sociologists…

Starting or growing a family often becomes more of a financial decision than an emotional one as parents calculate the sometimes overwhelming costs of health care, child care, education and other necessities, said Kathleen Gerson, a sociologist at New York University.

Though birthrates usually decline in a recession, there is a countervailing theory popular with some economists: Births may swell. Some women who lose their jobs may decide it’s an opportune time to raise a child, said Gary Becker, a University of Chicago economist and sociologist.

Read more.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story this week about a new study that details the persistence of negative racial stereotypes, reporting that “Changes in social standing such as falling below the poverty line or going to jail made people more likely to be perceived as black and less likely to be seen as white,” according to the researchers.