Sexting is a huge and growing problem among teens, but there’s more at play than adolescents sending sexually provocative pictures to one another. Often, those photos are seen by other people—often friends and classmates—sometimes, most disturbingly, pedophiles.

According to the Internet Watch Foundation, many of these self-generated photos wind up on pedophilic websites. The organization, in fact, recently conducted a 40-hour research project and found 12,224 sexy, self-generated photos of teens on these sites.

Representatives of the foundation say that, had the study gone on for longer, they likely would’ve found far more pictures. (Mail Online)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife Wendy and his two children. Follow him on Twitter.