My mum is notorious for buying all the magazines off the supermarket shelves in a desperate pursuit of the latest material to set the next round of school exam papers.
It was during one of her vast reading surges that she alerted me to the new cellphone scourge: pornographic photos.
I hadn`t been completely oblivious to it, mind you; I caught one of the offending television adverts during my weekly dose of Charmed, an addiction since my pre-teens. Then it struck me like a falling brick.
Unfortunately, what my mum had picked up from her reading material was the increase of pornographic downloads among the school population. Young boys have found a new way to see images that were once bagged and hidden in the secret parts of stores, behind worn, crushed velvet curtains.
The speed and ease is luring the impressionable school-going population into spending pocket money on damaging their fragile brains.
Bhavna Singh, junior journalist, ITWeb
What strikes me is the ease with which they manage to access such pictures. For the purpose of research, I got my hands on one of the widely advertised numbers and sent "Tina" to the six-digit service. Three seconds later, I received the link to Tina`s latest modelling shoot. The actual process of downloading anything was a foreign concept to me at that point but I refused to give up in pursuit of the greater good.
I don`t swing that way, but I can see why the service has become so popular among the male population, as it`s an instant gratification tool available in three-second bursts.
Unfortunately the speed and ease is luring the impressionable school-going population into spending pocket money on damaging their fragile brains.
The research mission got me hooked on the ease of downloading and soon enough my mighty mobile was a mixing table phenomenon. I now proudly wake every morning to the Axel Foley remix... you know the one... a ring ding ding bam! bam!
I was warned though, to watch which services I download from. Some are cunningly disguised as once-offs but then debit you R5 for a daily ringtone or image. By the end of the month, you`ve downloaded away the cost of a tank of petrol without thinking.
I`m not entirely sure which scares me more - the ease or the price, but combined, they could severely dent any teenage pay-as-you-go package. With the number of 10-year-olds I`ve witnessed lately chatting away on their clamshells (yes that`s phone envy, I got my first in varsity), it makes me wonder what pocket money rates have escalated to.
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