Last month an Associated Press/MTV survey on “sexting’’ revealed that 30 percent of 14- to 24-year-olds had been involved in some sort of sexual text-messaging. Eighteen percent had received a naked picture or video of someone they knew from that person. The poll was conducted when sexting had already been blamed in two cases in which teenage girls committed suicide after nude photos they sent of themselves were widely circulated.

The study and the deaths amplified the moral panic over sexting, which the media have been chewing over regularly in red-alert segments. On CNN in October, the superintendent of a school district embroiled in a sexting scandal explained that parents need to be educated so that they know “what the implications are if their children get caught up in this new way of behaving,’’ as though this crop of teenagers were the first to be fascinated by sex.

There are obviously real concerns here. Nobody wants their children sending naked pictures or getting sexually harassed via text message. But the overblown reaction has had some nasty consequences: Kids across the country have been arrested on child pornography charges when the pictures or videos in question are of themselves or their boyfriends or girlfriends.

The focus on sexting also siphons attention from a more substantive threat: bullying. A year-old study by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society discounted the notion that the wired world poses unique dangers to kids, finding instead that bullying and harassment “are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline.’’

Earlier in the article, Singal equates the current media attention over sexting to other perceived dangers to youth society from different eras, such as comic books, rock music, and violent video games. He returns to this comparison later in the article, saying that then, as now, “so-called experts try to convince us that kids today are more out of control than ever before.”

To a point, I agree with Mr. Singal. As we explained in our coverage of the tragic suicide of a 13-year-old Florida girl last month, while sexting is the initial problem, it’s cyberbullying that does the most damage. That’s why we put together this guide to help parents recognize the symptoms of cyberbullying and prevent it from happening to their children.

However, I disagree that the attention given to sexting is comparable to the misguided hysteria over other elements of youth culture from decades past. While a parent in the 1950s may have had an irrational fear of their child taking to a life of crime because of a violent comic book, there’s nothing irrational about the fear parents have over their kids sharing sexually explicit images of themselves online.

We’ve seen time and time again how the web is like a giant sponge for bad behavior. If you post something you regret, there is a good chance it can come back to hurt you later in life. While charging teens with child pornography for self-published images is certainly a harsh punishment, it’s only because the law hasn’t changed to reflect the new ways that individuals are using digital media. I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe prosecutors want to send teens to prison or put them on the sex offender registry for the rest of their lives, they are simply interpreting the law as it currently exists.

To this end, it is imperative that we teach kids and teens about the ramifications of their actions and that we focus on prevention and education as much as possible. Teen sexuality is not the problem here. It has existed, and will exist, for all time. The problem is the mental gap that teens have in understanding what is and is not proper behavior.