Everyone texts, especially teenagers, who depend on their mobile phones for everything from connecting to social media to calling mom for a ride. Parents, however, are beginning to discover the more risqué behavior cell phones allow. Teenagers have been sexting each other since before smartphones, but parents have recently caught on to the trend, and police are right behind.

Sexting, the act of sending nude pictures or sexually explicit texts, has been done for years by adults and teenagers alike, but the advent of social media, particularly photo-related apps and sites like Instagram, have brought the trend to the fore. Over a hundred teenagers in Virginia are undoubtedly embarrassed after their parents and then police begun investigating two Instagram accounts replete with nude pictures of teenage girls, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The investigation begun when a mother noticed strange activity on her daughter's Instagram account. Investigators ended up discovering over 1,000 nude photos in two Instagram accounts. The police seized two dozen cell phones for forensic evaluation, though police say the pictures were consensual. The investigation, according to the Journal-Constitution, encompassed six counties.

In Pulaski County, Va., 40 students are involved in another sexting scandal.

According to WDBJ, the students are from three different county schools, Dublin and Pulaski Middle Schools as well as Pulaski High. Though it involves less students, the situation has shed light into the Internet's lasting memory. Two freshmen students from Pulaski High, Savannah Farley and Brittany Bird, were both interviewed with their parents' permission and expressed students' fears about the investigation.

"They're pulling up stuff from people from back when they were in middle school, and they're in high school now so this can be from two or three or four years ago and I think that's wrong," Farley said.

She added that students often post photos of each other online.

"I know a friend of mine who had a picture, and it's been sent out to many people and it's hard to tell who has it," Farley said.

Both parents and school administrators have begun questioning the students involved. Although sexting cases have happened in the past, nothing has been done on this type of scale, and it will not be the last time parents, teachers and police have to handle another similar situation.

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