Little children have always played doctor, and teenagers have played spin the bottle. Electronic technology is expanding the realm of intimacy, and bans on nudity are now loosened.
As a result, a new phenomenon has emerged – sexting, which is engaged in by more than a quarter of American teenagers and about a third of adult youth (under 24 years old)*. Sexting (sexting, a hybrid of the words sex and text) is the transfer (via cell phone, e-mail and social networks) of intimate photos. Many teenagers do not see anything special in this: in their opinion, “nudity” is just “an air kiss of the XNUMXst century, ordinary flirting”, a form of self-expression and a sign of trust.
The resentment of adults seems to them a manifestation of envy: earlier it was technically impossible. In addition, the demonstration of a beautiful body is “much more interesting for them than the photos of robberies and murders that regularly appear on the Internet.” Physically, sexting is even safer than ordinary sex games: you won’t go beyond pre-set boundaries, you won’t get infected or get pregnant.
The Internet is a public space. it is impossible to predict who will get a candid photo and how it will be used
However, the Internet is not a private, but a public space. You can never know in advance who the image will end up with and how it will be used. A candid shot can provoke sexual assault, and years later, at the height of your public career, it turns out that someone saw you naked on a porn site. Images sent over the phone can also have unpredictable consequences. According to Time, 17% of those who received the photos admitted that they forwarded them further – to those for whom they were not intended. In 2009, a tragic incident occurred in the United States: 18-year-old high school student Jessica Logan, at the request of her boyfriend, sent him a naked photo on her mobile phone, which, by some chance, got on the Web.
Cincinnati teenagers began to bombard the girl with offensive messages, and Jessica, unable to withstand the persecution, committed suicide. The addressee also risks no less. An 18-year-old Canadian who showed friends a photo of his 15-year-old girlfriend was accused of distributing child pornography, and it took considerable effort to change the criminal article to a softer one. An 18-year-old boy from Florida, having a fight with his 16-year-old girlfriend, sent obscene pictures to her parents, which, of course, is mean, but after that he himself turned out to be a sex offender, which he is not … Sexting became a problem for educators. Imagine that you are a school principal who took away a mobile phone from a student and found his girlfriend’s “nudity” there.
Do you: a) call the boy’s parents, b) call the girl’s parents, c) notify the police, or d) do all of the above?** Lawyers also face serious challenges. How can we keep teenagers safe online without tabooing their sexuality or equating erotic games with child pornography? The main dangers of sexting are generated by the costs of modern technology and the imperfection of laws, and parental ignorance and fears only exacerbate the situation. But punishments and prohibitions will not solve the problem. I’ll have to look for other answers…
* Time, 2009, 8 December.
** Newsweek, 2009, 23 February.