Parental Perspectives on Sexting: What can do to protect you child?

In the wake of our discussion of sexting on Tuesday, I was left with some questions about the way we view sexting in society, wanted to probe into the problems with the popular conceptualization, and make an attempt at reasoning through a more rational way of thinking about sexting. This post turned into a powerpost, I may have gotten a little carried away.

I question the true potential for harm assumed to be inherent in sexting. The potential consequences we usually cite in order to deter young people from sexting are often legal- or emotionally-based. As a society, we have insisted on treating sexting as different from other sexual activities, despite sexting being shown by Temple and colleagues (2012) to be closely related to other sexual behaviors; much of the way we treat sexting feels like the result of a moral panic. It's easy to see where this panic stems from, as much of the conversation around sexting taps into the deep-seated parental fear that their child might go behind their back and violate the values they have taught or get themselves into trouble, as illustrated by this news story. 

In accordance with this panicked perspective on sexting, the current societal response to sexts is illustrated by the response to the recent discovery of a Colorado High School's student-run sexting ring. These Colorado students, who claim the sharing of sexts seemed like a normal part of teen life, are now subject to the same charges we apply to rapists, child pornographers and the like. While it's possible someone who was hurt by the circulation of the images provided the anonymous tip that exposed the sext ring, it's not clear that these sexts resulted in personal injury to anyone, which begs the question, what are we punishing these kids for?

In sexting and sex in general, I believe it is crucial to treat each case as unique and listen to the victim or survivor when any abuse occurs to decide how to respond. At the same time, I hear of far less cases of two minors facing serious legal consequences for having consensual underaged sex and then telling other people at their school about it. The analogues between sexting and sex in general may at first be unclear; by temporarily assuming the mentality that consensual sexting is like any other sexual act and that some abuses of the sext are more like acts of bullying than sexual assault, we will soon find ourselves better equipped as parents and lawmakers to deal with the consequences associated with the sext. 

An immediately apparent virtue of linking sexting to sex is that the idea of consent can now be used to better define the appropriate treatment of the various abuses linked to sexting. If one young person takes a picture of another young person's body without their consent, that person has essentially violated their right to control their own body and should be subject to serious legal consequences. We often (and justly) treat adults and minors the same in the cases of molestation and rape (other nonconsentual bodily intrusions), and thus gain considerable insight in how to investigate and treat the true creeps who take advantage of others' bodies.

Now I turn to the much more common scenario of a consensual picture being given or taken of a young person's body and circulated without their consent. In this case, the circulator is essentially communicating potentially damaging knowledge of that person's body to others, which seems to be a much less malicious case than the completely nonconsensual picture. To illustrate the logic here, I turn to Lippman and Campbell's (2014) work, which finds that adolescents' main concerns surrounding the decision to sext revolve around fears of being termed "prude" for not sending sexts or "sluts" for sending sexts. This binary of fears is extremely similar to the fears surrounding adolescents' decisions to have sex or not. In either case, calling someone a "prude" or "slut" and spreading vicious rumors falls squarely in the definition of bullying (where, in this case, the imbalance of power stems from intimate knowledge of someone's personal life or other perceived social or moral superiorities). As such, the people responsible for tarnishing someone's reputation ought to be subject to the punishments applied to any other sort of bullying, which range in severity but often are resolved within the schools themselves (thus avoiding drastically life-altering consequences). After all, the social and emotional consequences of the sext arise not from the existence and circulation of the sext itself but rather the use of the sext to judge and shame the individual.

Lastly, in the case of the more rare but potentially much more damaging scenario of the viral sext, we already have the mechanisms in place to help individuals assert agency over their images as media content producers, coming in the form of copyright laws. Dr. Hasinoff's book Sexting Panic explores the validity of claims of digital permanency that are often cited in panic pieces like the news story above. By thinking of sexting as a form of media production, the individual is now able to control the distribution of their likeness without relying on more serious sexual offense laws, which may not help someone over the age of 18. This conceptualization has the added benefit of lending the sexter agency over their body, thus subverting the victimizing rhetoric applied to the adolescent sexter. 

The result of the failure to connect sexting to other sexual acts and other forms of media production is the unduly severe and inconsistent treatment of those involved in the taking and circulating of sexts, which usually comes in the form of felonies or sexual offender registrations. By focusing on the problems of bullying and media control, we can begin to empower young people to have agency over their bodies while also fostering a climate in which they can make mistakes and learn from them rather than suffer at the hands of an overzealous prosecutor.