9.15.14: Today's Kids Are On The Mild Side Of Wild & A Classroom Without Cellphones

Sexting, sex bracelets, sex parties, the media would like you to believe twenty-first century teenagers are out of control, or are they?

Today’s show takes an objective look at teenage sexual behavior, and finds out what’s behind all the media hype. Then, we’ll hit the classroom and hear from a psychology professor who conducted an experiment of her own: offering students extra credit in return for a phone free environment.

Listen to the full show and Read more for individual segments.

Kids Gone Wild

• Kathleen Bogle is the co-author of Kids Gone Wild: From Rainbow Parties to Sexting, Understanding the Hype over Teen Sex. She argues that kids these days are actually less promiscuous than they were 10, 20, even 30 years ago.

Modern Day Scarlet Letter

• These days, many teenagers live half their lives on social media sites, and they're writing the rules as they go. One online trend 16-year-old radio rookie Temitayo Fagbenle finds disturbing is something she calls "slut-shaming," or using photos and videos to turn a girl's private life inside out.
• Listen to her story at WNYC's website.

Embrace Your Inner Adult

• Tasha Golden is the singer and songwriter for the band Ellery. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Ploughshares which is where we found her essay: “Stop Chasing Childlike Creativity.”

A Rainbow of Noise

• You may know white noise as the hiss on your TV set - some call it static. But are you aware that there's a world of different colors of noise out there? Reporter Marnie Chesterton set out to find what they are for, and whether she could make a rainbow of sound from them.
• This story is part of the PRX STEM Story Project, made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. You can listen to the story at PRX.org.

Life in the Classroom before Cell Phones

• Louise Katz is a professor of psychology at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee. On a whim, she decided to offer her students extra credit in return for a phone-free environment. She wrote about the experiment in an op-ed for The Chronicle of Higher Education called “Today’s Lesson: Life in the Classroom before Cellphones.”