Hi tkebikyksy
Readers — Today’s post comes from guest contributor Anne Collier, who blogs at NetFamilyNews.org and is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a forum for parents, kids, and everybody interested in safety on the fixed and mobile social Web. Take it away, Anne!
THE SEXT TALK by Anne Collier
Are we turning our kids into criminals? We just may be, thanks to the laws equating “sexting” photos with child pornography.
Right now, about 4% of American 12-to-17-year-olds have sent “sexts,” and 15% have received one from someone they know, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. (Click here for more info.)
While sexting seems to be a mind-boggling new dating ritual, the fact is: people involved with creating, sending or even receiving a nude or explicit photo of someone under 18 can be charged with the production, distribution, or possession of child pornography. And those could be federal felonies.
What law enforcement doesn’t seem to be considering much — yet, hopefully — is that kids sext for a lot of different reasons. These range from developmentally normative behaviors like “Truth or Dare” games gone very wrong (“I dare you to send a naked photo of yourself to the boy you like” said one 13-year-old to another at a sleepover), to malicious peer pressure (popular boys pressuring shy girls in a “prank,” an incident the mother of one of those shy girls emailed me about), to criminal intent like blackmail. I can hardly imagine anything worse than a shy girl who was pressured into making a huge mistake and then getting prosecuted for producing child porn, can you?
Pew found that the “three main scenarios for sexting” are: 1) Romantic partners sharing images just between the two of them. 2) Romantic partners sharing images of themselves outside their relationship (to show off, or get revenge after a fight, and so on). And, 3) Someone sexting a person he or she wants to get involved with — a “flirting” scenario.
Since most of this is not criminal behavior, prosecution should not be the goal. The goal should be support for any child being victimized. It should also be community-wide learning in the areas of critical thinking, ethics, and civility.
So what do you tell your child about sexting?
If a sext gets sent to his phone, in most cases, he should just delete it. The only time you and he should think twice about that is in a situation where he’s the friend of a kid to whom a girl sent a photo of herself (either willingly or under pressure). He might be able to help keep the photo from going viral by reporting it to school administrators as evidence of something they need to stop. In that situation, your child could really be helping a friend or two by having the school stop the problem from getting worse.
Certainly also tell your child NEVER to forward a “sext.” At the very least that’s mean and disrespectful. At the worst, it could be seen as trafficking in child porn.
And by all means, if you have any influence with your kids, be sure they’re not creating these photos, whether they somehow find themselves in disrespectful relationships or are floating in a “romantic” bubble of denial that says, “Maybe other people would share these private photos with anyone, but we never would.” They must know by now that all digital media can easily be copied and pasted into the permanent searchable archive called the Internet!
But here’s what kids are most concerned about, and rightfully so: One expert at a recent online-safety conference said that, if you peel off all the legal and moral layers in these situations, what you usually get, if not outright cruelty, is the violation of a friend’s trust. This isn’t about technology or something new under the sun. It’s about learning to respect your peers and community online and off
Yes, even when tethered to the 24/7 reality-TV drama that is school life.
Related links
* ConnectSafely.org‘s Tips to Prevent Sexting.
* About being tethered to “The Drama” of school life.
* MTV study (released a week or so before Pew’s last December) offering insights on “digital abuse” and sexting <http://www.netfamilynews.org/2009/12/new-study-on-digital-abuse-youth.html>
50 Comments
This gets at one of the fundamental problems with adolescence: we as adults in fact do sexualize adolescence and yet there are very good reasons not to. American society is obsessed with a very immature version of sexuality and yet pretends to be innocent whenever the line between childhood and adulthood is crossed.
At the same time, adolescents sexualize adolescence but don’t (and can’t) fully understand what that means. Which is why they are always doing dumb things, and have for a long time. As you point out, the biggest problem now is a) the permanence of the mistakes they make in a digital medium and b) the crimanlization of the behavior. I don’t know what an effect solution would look like (or if there is one), but I do know that crimanilizing kids ain’t it.
This is a timely reminder for me, since I had to explain the mechanics of sex to my 8yo son this morning — and before I’d had any coffee! The horror! I need to make a mental note to talks about sexting the next time the subject comes up.
Please don’t think me a coward that I’m not planning to go home and resume the conversation today. 🙂
I don’t get the part about going to the school authorities to stop a behaviour which is happening outside school. Aren’t most of the items on this blog complaints about the schools trying to take on too much of the roles of parents and police (and judge and jailer too)?
Oh, and by yesterday’s piece, at least in Jeffersonville, IN, deleting the picture wouldn’t save you – you’ve already “possessed” it. 🙂
So agree, Ammon. The state of Vermont recently passed a law that decriminalized sexting by minors, hopefully also dealing appropriately with cases involving criminal intent – one good step that can be taken. A police officer I spoke with in another state recently said all sexting cases should be referred to law enforcement. I’m not so sure!
Joette, you’re a bold, intrepid, mom – definitely no coward! Thanks for your comment.
@Anne: Thanks for the compliment! I wasn’t fishing, I promise.
On a related note, I’ve often wondered if our society in general wouldn’t have less trouble with some of these “sext” crimes if we just weren’t so backwards about nudity. Flashing the puppies in a sext to your boyfriend wouldn’t feel so naughty, dangerous and rebellious if it weren’t so verboten.
I guess the reason for them getting involved in outside school activities like this is that it does spill over into school, to a very great degree. It’s probably still not appropriate for them to be monitoring outside behavior like this, but I can see where a situation like this becomes the school’s problem very quickly, so they’d want to deal with it before it did.
Nothing done in the pursuit of personal happiness that doesn’t harm others should be illegal. If a person wants to post nude pictures of themselves online, that is their business.
Maybe we need to take a big step backwards and maybe not get our kids phones with cameras…
Siver Fang, I think the problem with sexting is that it often does end up hurting people. Teens and pre-teeens are doing this and they don’t have the maturity to handle the pictures. They get forwarded to everyone as either trophies or a way to humiliate a person. My kids don’t have cell phones so I’m hoping this never comes up but their friends do so we’ll need to discuss it. Imagine “flirting” by sending a nude pic to a boy you like… I don’t get it.
@ robin- imagine a perfect stranger giving you a standing ovation- that’s me. what a radical and reasonable idea.
@ joette- i imagine risking getting caught is part of the thrill. what if we took that risk/thrill out of the equation by having completely open and uncondemning communication with our kids?
@ walt- exactly what i was thinking! no way would i tell a kid to take evidence like that into zero-tolerance territory! why not do something vastly old-fashioned and either discreetly delete it or get other (gasp!) parents involved to sort out irresponsible behavior?
“The only time you and he should think twice about that is in a situation where he’s the friend of a kid to whom a girl sent a photo of herself (either willingly or under pressure). He might be able to help keep the photo from going viral by reporting it to school administrators as evidence of something they need to stop. In that situation, your child could really be helping a friend or two by having the school stop the problem from getting worse.”
Given the predominance of idiotic Zero Tolerance laws these days, I’d be disinclined to advise a kid to do that, simply because of the high risk that he himself would be punished simply for having such a picture in his possession.
…and I see that Walt has already beat me to it.
We have a young teen and when she got her cell phone, we added her to our plan and blocked all texting. I seriously don’t see the point. It’s too much effort to use your phone to actually speak to people? I must be old…
“critical thinking, ethics, and civility”
After all the experience we’ve had with “zero tolerance” policies and their enforcement in government schools, I find it foolish to expect any of those three things in that environment.
I agree with Joette. I think a lot of the problem stems from unhealthy attitude toward the human body in general, and nudity in particular, that Americans have been raised with for generations.
I was really struck by a comment from a Dutch police chief several years ago, regarding the effects of legalizing pot over there. He said they had half the rate of pot use in Holland vs. America because, in his words, they’d “succeeded in making pot boring.”
What if we could do the same kind of thing for this “crime”? What if we took the mystery and the naughtiness out of nudity, so when they saw naked people, or pictures of naked people, their response would be something more like “Oh, a naked person. So what?”
I think it would go a long way toward resolving issues around “sexting”, and body image, and “what is art” vs. “what is porn”. In my experience, kids who are exposed to things like vacations at naturist resorts and nude or topless beaches grow up being far more accepting of both themselves and others. They’ve seen for themselves that humans come in all shapes and sizes, that women have breasts and men have penises is no surprise and no mystery to them because they’ve seen it all before, and they’ve been exposed to these things in a non-judgemental environment.
Way better, I think, than learning about the other gender’s body parts from porn sites or magazines (which present a very biased view of what is “normal”, “beautiful”, or “desirable” about the human body, and basically deny the possibility that anything that doesn’t look just like Barbie or Ken can be beautiful), dry and boring medical tracts (which tend to be clinical to the point of confusing anyone who isn’t professionally trained in the medical field), or teenage locker room trash talk.
@Rob C.
I could not agree with you more. Just the possession of such a photography could get you into trouble.
Going to report it to the authorities does nothing but put yourself in danger.
Until we are able to step back from these situations and remember that these are children, and they are going to make mistakes…and that they should be treated like children.
That isn’t to say that kids never do anything wrong on purpose, however, most of these situations are just kids being stupid and not realizing the consequences of their actions.
And instead of helping them learn from these mistakes and grow in wisdom and understanding, we are going to criminalize them and put them under the stigma of sex offender for the rest of their lives.
Eventually being a sex offender won’t have any meaning, and how will be know who to protect our children from? They could all be sex offenders at the rate we are criminalizing their behavior.
Do they even make those any more?
Good points, Denise.
How can we expect young people to learn responsible behaviour, if we never give them a chance to practice some?
cell phones with cameras were just starting to be popular when I was in high school. I guess maybe since I grew up around this kind of thing “sexting” has never seemed like as big a deal as people make it out to be.
I’ll admit I sent a few dirty pictures of myself to boys in high school, and yeah, maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing in the world, but if they ended up getting around I never heard about it, and they didn’t show my face anyway.
In fact, I still send sexts, every once in a while, to my husband when he is having a bad day.
I think the bigger issue here is that we have a culture where people feel it is ok to pressure girls into these things, and girls feel like they have to give in. Honestly, though, sexting isn’t the problem. These same girls that are getting pressured into sending dirty pictures of themselves are also getting pressured into sex. The solution here is to raise boys who don’t see women as sex objects and girls who understand that they have value to other people even if they don’t want to have sex.
Yeah, Rich, they do. You have to look around, but we got one for my grandmother that has no camera. (It’s specially marketed for older people, with big buttons and a special button just for dialing 911. But I suspect there’s a similar market for kids as well, phones with no unnecessary features.)
@tana: Exactly! I would much rather my child go “Naked person. Big deal,” than be subjected to hormones in overdrive because he’s never seen a breast. In fact, in high school I consented to show one of my good male friends “the girls” (in person, digital cameras hadn’t even been invented yet) because he’d never seen any real ones, just pictures. I thought at the time that his ignorance was sad, and I think so even more now. The neurotic hiding away of our bodies contributes heavily to the objectification and over-sexualization of women, in my opinion.
RobC and Walt, I think your gut instincts are right on the mark, which is why I wrote “in most cases” up there. Rarely can sexting “cases” be considered entirely outside of school, as if in some sort of a vacuum. The school gets swept into these incidents (though less often than the news media would have us believe) by default as distribution widens.
As for the alternative you understandably question, it’s for when a kid really wants to help a friend who has been victimized (the subject of a sexting photo) or a friend who is likely to get in serious trouble for encouraging the subject to send the photo to him or her (because he stupidly forwarded it to someone else, like the kid in question, and none of these parties wants it to go viral and worsen the situation by having it go all over school, when administrators have to get involved). An adviser in law enforcement I consulted insists that a student trying to stop distribution in this way just would not be prosecuted. I’m sharing the view of US law enforcement. In Australia, one national-level law enforcement campaign advises simply to delete.
Great comments, especially those addressing the ridiculous hypersexualization of anything and everything in our culture, and its evil twin, shame about one’s OWN body. I think Lenore’s original point is very well taken — that forwarding naked pictures isn’t so much about sexuality as it is about betrayal of trust, all dressed up in Internet clothes (so to speak).
But one important thing, folks: We need to find another word, because the kids don’t call it “sexting.” The ADULTS are calling it that, which just about guarantees that if you ask a kid anything related to it by that name, you’ll get the Eye Roll of Mortification and Instant Deafness and guarantee that you’re talking to yourself for at least five minutes thereafter. (You don’t have to not talk about it — you just have to find another way into the conversation.)
Agree, Denise. Our society seems to be making it harder and harder for kids to believe that it’s ok to make mistakes and do the risk assessment that develops their brains.
Rich, so we just give up on schools (and parents) teaching the media literacy and citizenship (which has been on report cards for generations, or at least back to when I was a kid) involving “critical thinking, ethics, and civility”? Sorry, I’ve gotta keep advocating for that. I feel it’s more important than ever.
Yes you can get a phone with no camera but there’s usually one model and it’s the bottom of the line. But isn’t that beside the point? If every other kid has a phone why is YOUR kid not going to just use their friends’ phones? No texting? So when someone records sex talk on a regular call and a bunch of 14 year olds get arrested? No, you guys who want to eliminate the technology from your kids lives are missing the point. That’s closing the barn door after the cow’s gone free.
The point is a) that people are having hysterics over stuff and arresting kids for acting out that should be handled out in a much different way and b)we need to make sure our kids know how to handle this technology that is in their lives like it or not.
I have repeatedly told my kids that anything they text, talk, type, or photograph should be considered public information. For that matter anything you tell your friend in deepest confidence is also possible, even likely to be spread around. It’s like those pointless privacy agreements we adults constantly sign; they usually say in the tiniest text what amounts to “nothing that passes between us in this business transaction is actually private and you agree to this fact.” One should approach life assuming that everything we do, ESPECIALLY in the electronic realm may become public. If you don’t want your Grandma, principal, mother, best friend to know about it, keep it to yourself. Period.
@Anne I enjoyed the post but agree with the others who’ve questioned the wisdom of reporting to school authorities. And when you write in your reply to RobC and Walt, “I’m sharing the view of US law enforcement,” I have to admit this makes me question just how much you know about this topic. There is such a thing as US law enforcement, but there are also 50 state legal systems in the US, each different from the next. Plenty of examples of dumber decisions about prosecution have been posted right on this blog, and even if charges are eventually dropped, by then a significant amount of damage is done.
I said nothing against advocating for it. I just pointed out that it is very nearly non-existent in the current school system.
As for what’s being taught as “good citizenship” in public schools these days, this clip pretty much sums it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPI0Zq4oSU4&feature=PlayList&p=15D0051317958244&index=14
Alexicographer, thanks, worded badly, but meant “US law enforcement” as opposed to a law enforcement view in Australia. In our tips we explain that “laws vary from state to state, each jurisdiction enforces the law differently, and the applicable laws were written before sexting was ‘invented’.”
I’m actually surprised by the 4% and 15% figures. The way the media hypes it, I thought it was something that everyone does (which, ironically, can cause more people to do it).
I’ve managed to make it to age 38 without a cell phone. My kids don’t need one either, and they sure don’t need one with a camera. I will talk to them about the dangers of electronic images (they never die) but at the same time, this is a problem created by people who generate ‘needs’ that aren’t really needs. Some kids may need cell phones. Most probably don’t, but we’ve let everyone convince us they do.
Returning to the question in the headline, “Sext or Kiddie Porn…”
Pornography sometimes is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve heard people label the famous sunburn lotion ad with the dog pulling on the the child’s swimsuit as porn. I remember a woman cancelling her subscription to the local newspaper because the local beauty queen’s knee visible in a newsphoto was, in her opinion, pornography.
On the other hand, blatant sex depiction doesn’t belong on my phone, or the phones of my family. Tthey all know what a naked human being looks like and would either shrug it off or object to anything raunchy.
I had texting turned off on our cell phones, not because of sexting, but because it was expensive and was taking time away from more important things, like eating and homework.
RobC hit it… go the administrators, get in trouble. The admins of schools are digging their own holes on this one and our kids are suffering because of it. 🙁
“An adviser in law enforcement I consulted insists that a student trying to stop distribution in this way just would not be prosecuted.”
I’m willing to take your, and their, word for that, but there are many other ways in which the school could completely overreact due to some idiotic Zero Commonsense policy.
Right, no DA worth his salt would prosecute. But suspension or expulsion…that’s another matter. To a kid who cares about school, expulsion is probably more devastating than the likely outcome of juvenile probation from prosecution.
I agree that we need to stop using that ridiculous term that some media idiots made up to sensationalize the practice. It also reinforces the insane and backwards notion that a nude body part always = something sexual.
@Anne fair enough. Overall an interesting read and good discussion; thanks for your reply to my earlier comment.
This whole topic makes me so angry. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman of loose morals myself – I’ve been known to use my own cameraphone to send my husband the occasional saucy pic in the middle of a workday – but I just can’t see it as a “grave mistake” for teenagers to be trading topless pictures of each other.
I mean, yes, there are all kinds of abusive scenarios like the ones outlined in this article, and clearly we’re on the same side of all thinking people in seeing that these kids are not engaging in child pornography by doing this stuff.
I just have a hard time even paying lip service to the idea that sending your sweetie a dirty picture is always a horrible error kids must be protected from at all costs. Sometimes it really is just good, clean fun.
I bet that’s true for some older teens, just like some older teens are capable of having healthy, loving sexual relationships with each other.
…aaaaand Walt and RobC already expressed my first reaction to this, and pentamom really nailed it: if we’ve seen anything in recent news stories, it’s that school administration doesn’t give a damn whether the DA’s going to prosecute (for posession of kiddie porn or “possession” of drugs)- they’ll go ahead and suspend or expel the kid anyway under the “zero tolerance” policy.
At least, I hope they wouldn’t prosecute. I’ll be VERY surprised if there aren’t already kids on the sex offender registry for exactly this.
The article’s great, though, and the tips about talking to kids are helpful. I’m sure the issue will have evolved by the time my boys are old enough to use phones, but we’re already trying to raise them to respect themselves and other people enough that they wouldn’t take advantage of someone by forwarding “sexts” or pressuring anyone into taking the photos.
@DairyStateMom- I’m actually glad to know they’re not calling it “sexting”. It’s a stupid, stupid word!
I don’t know about that. Whether you want to normalize nudity in a non-sexual context depends on your mores, but I don’t think it would carry over to sexual contexts.
Men (and teenage boys) are primarily aroused visually. It’s not a novelty thing. It’s the way they sexually function. Supposing you can train them out of porn being effective is, in my opinion, like supposing you can train women out of being charmed by romance. It’s wishful thinking that betrays a lack of understanding about how men work.
Oh please. If you’re gonna try to convince me that men and women are completely different when it comes to sex, you won’t be very successful. There are plenty of people in other countries who look at us strangely when we panic over a “wardrobe malfunction” because they don’t think nudity is such a big deal. At the same time, we look strangely at the Victorian era and at extremist places that require burqas, because we think it’s strange that anyone would care about an ankle or a knee. Of course people, both male and female, will continue to be aroused visually no matter what, but we really should try to take the stigma and shame out of naked bodies and not act like it’s the end of your life if anyone ever sees a naked picture of you.
For immediate management of the problem, a psychologist who gave a talk at our middle school recommended asking your cell phone carrier to disable the child’s ability to send or receive photos. It doesn’t solve the larger problem, but it helps keep your kid from making an impulsive move s/he’ll regret later. It also protects your child somewhat from actions taken by friends (e.g. using your kid’s cell phone to take pictures).
Very good article, and the advice on talking to your teen is a good starting point. This is not something about which my 14 yo and I have chatted, but I will use this to butt-kick me into having that chat. Not because he needs to be told that sexting is stupid and insulting (that he knows), but so that he understands that the world can blow out of proportion a simple game, such that he or his friends could face huge amounts of trouble.
I agree with disabling the picture-sending/receiving capability on a teen’s phone, as at least an option. Though of course that would inhibit their ability to upload a dozen new Facebook profile pictures per day…..
@catgirl Different cultures may have different rules about what does and doesn’t constitute a sexual context, just as they have different languages. So different collections of sounds constitute vulgarity in different places, and different levels of dress imply sexual content. But some standard between decency and immodesty, some level of exposure that is exclusive to a sexual relationship, is universal.
The particular boundaries matter less than the intention of the person breaking them. Someone swearing at me in Spanish is still going to give offense even if I can’t understand him, and a sultry arabic woman showing a flash of face is going to arouse because it violates her cultural norm, even if it doesn’t violate mine.
Just because the norms vary with culture doesn’t mean they’re meaningless, either. The more I and others keep hidden from public, the more I can exclusively enjoy with my spouse. That seems to me to be a good thing — or at least, not a bad thing. It’s a tradeoff between that and public expression, so it’s complicated. But the stigmas you’re so anxious to remove serve a valuable purpose to me.
Here’s the thing, though. Wherever the cultural line is, some stigma is necessary for exclusivity to be possible. Normalize nudity, and it’ll be provocative poses. And these sexts? *Intended* to be sexual. They’re going to cross the line, wherever you put it.
Think what you like, men and women *are* different about this. Women *don’t* have the immediate reaction men do. You can train boys to react ethically to sexual material, to respect women and privacy. But you can’t train them to say “meh” to it. Show me a guy who says “meh” to sexually intended nudity, and I’ll eat my hat.
People and sex are complicated, and the rules that have evolved along with them address that complexity. You might not see a purpose for them, but that doesn’t mean reengineering society without them will work. http://xkcd.com/592/
Yes, I’m one of those evil school employees you like to vilify. I invited our school resource officer (cop) to come talk to my 8th graders last year about sexting. You should have seen their faces when she explained the laws regarding possession and distribution of child pornography. I personally don’t know if judges are actually sentencing minors for child porn offenses, but those are the only laws on the books at the moment, and we sure didn’t have any problems in the 8th grade after the cop visited. I am disturbed by some of the comments here suggesting that minors sending nude pics of themselves over the cell phone is “no big deal.” If a 13-year-old girl taking a naked pic of herself and sending it out is not a big deal, what actually is a big deal to you? Several girls have already committed suicide over pictures that went viral. I mostly agree with you Lenore, but I do think you take a far too cavalier approach to the harms of pornography and sexual predators. This places you a bit too far outside the mainstream.
“Several girls have already committed suicide over pictures that went viral. ”
Citation, please.
Here’s one: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29546030/
Im In Junior High. And Not Alot Of People sext. A few people have and everyone thinks of them as ‘dirty’ or ‘sluts’ now. I would know.
It’s just a dumb thing for teens to do, and wont get them anyfurther in life. but ruin the rest of their teen years.
Thanks for your comment, Morgan – very interesting. That’s what other middle and high school kids have told me, too, that sexting isn’t something they’re very aware of at their school, if at all (and I don’t usually use the term when I ask; I just ask if they’re aware of ppl sending naked photos of themselves or others). Maybe that’s because it’s usually pretty private or just not common – what do you think? Have you heard about “sexting” much as a term? A p.r. professional made it up, and I think it’s more a word adults use but I wonder if that’s what you’re seeing too. Tx again,
Anne (who wrote the post up there)
Well now more people use the term ‘sexting’ but sending naked pictures or like nudes is more commenly said when describing that.
Nothing done in the pursuit of personal happiness that doesn’t harm others should be illegal. If a person wants to post nude pictures of themselves online, that is their business.