VOLUME 30 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 2011

Sexting and young people

Experts’ views

by Shelley Walker, Lena Sanci & Meredith Temple- Smith

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Young people’s ‘sexting’ – defined by the Macquarie Dictionary Online (2010) as the sending and receiving of sexually explicit images via mobile phones – has become a focus of much media reporting; however, research regarding the phenomenon is in its infancy. This paper reports on the first phase of a study to understand this activity more comprehensively. Interviews were conducted with notable key informants (including teen culture authors and professionals from the academic, education and health sectors) to create a context for a second phase involving interviews with young people. Insights were offered into reasons for young people’s participation, potential consequences and solutions. Highlighted was a gap in reliable data from the perspective of young people themselves, and the importance of their voice in understanding and developing effective strategies to prevent and deal with this phenomenon.

Daniel and Abbey are 15 years old and have been together for two months. Daniel texts Abbey, “Send me a ‘noodz’ ”. Abbey is worried Daniel will “dump” her if she doesn’t, so she sends a naked photo of herself via mobile phone text, asking him to promise he won’t show anyone else. Daniel assures Abbey he won’t, but then can’t resist texting the photo to his mate. Within a week, almost everyone in school has seen the photo. It is anecdotes such as these, echoed by secondary school staff, local police and youth health service workers in Melbourne’s outer east, which prompted this study.

Young people are growing up in an increasingly sexualised world driven by technology (McGrath 2009), with mobile phone ownership among Australian young people aged 15 to 17 years having risen to 90% (Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) 2010). Sending and receiving text messages, taking photos and accessing the internet are mobile phone activities that have been taken up at ever-increasing rates by young people (Mackay & Weidlich 2009; Brown & Bobkowski 2011). “As digital culture becomes increasingly pervasive and embedded in young people’s everyday experiences” (Weber & Dixon 2010), young people’s relationships with each other, in terms of how they interact and socialise, are being transformed.

Advances in technology offer many opportunities to improve youth health; however, this progress also brings potential risks. The introduction of text, Bluetooth and webcam mean sexual images can be forwarded to cyberspace easily and rapidly. These images then “become part of a young person’s digital footprint, which may last forever and potentially damage future career prospects or relationships” (NSW Government 2008). Of particular concern is that images of young women are reportedly being distributed without their consent, and mobile phone technologies are being used “as vehicles for the perpetration of sexual assault” (Quadara 2010; Powell 2009).

The viral spread of these images and the associated shame have reportedly led to social, psychological and legal consequences for victims (Katzman 2010). A wealth of local anecdotes abound of young people being excluded from friendship groups and moving schools, with reports of their having experienced emotional distress and school suspension (O’Keefe & Clarke-Pearson 2011), and, in the more extreme cases, committing suicide (Tomazin & Smith 2007; Chalfen 2009). Furthermore, young people face the risk of criminal charges for the production and distribution of child pornography (Prince & Jordan 2004; Krause 2009; Weiss & Samenow 2010), although there has only been one criminal case against a young person in Australia to date in relation to sexting (Pace Legal 2010). However, the story in the US is quite different. A report by Wolak and Finkelhor (2011) presents a typology of sexting episodes involving young people based on a review of more than 550 cases from law enforcement agencies there. At least a dozen peer-reviewed law and policy journal articles were sourced regarding this topic in the US (examples include Ryan (2010) ‘How the state can prevent a moment of indiscretion from leading to a lifetime of unintended consequences for minors and young adults’, and Wood (2009) ‘The failure of sexting criminalization: A plea for the exercise of prosecutorial restraint’).

Issues relating to the practice of sexting among young people have been increasingly gaining media attention both nationally and internationally. An online search (see Table 1) of 10 academic databases (Psychology and Behaviour Sciences, Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Science, PubMed, CINAHL PLUS, Academic Search Premier, Expanded Academic ASAP, JSTOR and Google Scholar) revealed very little reliable literature, particularly from an Australian perspective.

A few expert opinion papers were sourced; most are authored from a North American viewpoint. The little available quantitative data is of poor quality, and contradictory. Two consumer surveys by young women’s magazines in Australia (Battersby 2008) and the US (Cosmogirl 2009), and the first quantitative study to be cited in a peer review journal, involving 16- to 25-year-old Hispanic women (Ferguson 2010), have indicated that as many as 20%–40% of respondents aged 12–19 years have been asked to send or have posted nude or semi-nude pictures or videos of themselves in cyberspace. In contrast, a Victorian independent schools survey (Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (ASIV) 2009) and a US report (Lenhart 2009) found as few as 4%–7% of 12- to 17-yearolds were involved in this behaviour.

Only one qualitative study about young people and sexting was sourced. Pew Research Center in the US conducted a mixed-methods study (Lenhart 2009) involving telephone surveys and focus groups with young people aged 12 to 18 years. This report describes sexting as one of three main categories of behaviour that involves the exchange of images between young people. It is suggested that images are sent 1) between romantic partners, 2) between partners and shared with others, and 3) between young people where at least one person hopes to be in a relationship with the other. Lenhart’s report showed very little evidence of difference in the behaviour of sexting related to gender. However, many other authors (Hand, Chung & Peters 2009; Kee 2005; Powell 2009; Flood 2008) argue it is young women’s sexual images in particular that are being distributed without their consent, and that ultimately this is just another means of controlling and exerting power over women.