We Urgently Need To Educate Our Teens About The Dangers Of ‘Sexting’

Children as young as 13 are sending explicit and sexual pictures to one another, thinking this is a normal part of adult behaviour, according to a new study.

And while this statistic alone is horrifying, the repercussions of these photos falling into the wrong hands are much, much worse.

Revenge Porn

You only have to be a fly on the wall of a typical teenager to see that young people these days are more wired than ever.

Laptops, smartphones, tablets, blogs, Tumblr, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram are all part of the lexis of the Millennials – things that meant nothing to Generation X growing up.

And while technology brings heaps of benefits, it also has its drawbacks, as demonstrated in the recently celebrity photo-hacking scandal that saw nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence circulated online.

But worryingly, it seems like young people are the least educated about the consequences of revenge porn – despite many sending explicit images themselves.

The Risks of Sexting

A new study by anti-bullying charity Ditch The Label found that ‘sexting’ (sending sexual images via smartphones) is on the rise and causing serious harm to teenagers.

The survey of 2,732 people aged between 13-25 found that 37 per cent of them had sent a naked photo of themselves to someone else – and 24 per cent had seen that image shared with others without their permission.

New legislation is currently going through parliament that will make it a criminal offence to circulate any sexualised image that is circulated on OR offline without prior consent.

It covers images of sexual acts but also images depicting the victim in a sexual way or with their gentials exposed, and carries a jail sentence of up to two years.

In other words, if you send an explicit photo of someone at school to one of your friends on WhatsApp, you could be sent to prison.

Granted, this legislation is very new (it was only announced this week), but the research found that young people are simply not aware of the legal, moral or emotional consequences of ‘sexting’.

Part Of Teen Life

Nearly half (49 per cent) of those questioned believed ‘sexting’ was just a bit of ‘harmless fun’ while 16 per cent said it was ‘just the normal thing to do.’

But sending an explicit image to someone else can have serious repercussions – especially within the context of a bad break-up when a relationship goes sour, dubbed ‘revenge porn.’

Police investigations have found that some of the victims of revenge porn were as young as 11.

During other investigations, it was found that the threat of revenge porn had been used as blackmail to force young women into having sex where they would otherwise have said no.

The new research backs up this shocking statistic, with 13 per cent of respondents saying that have felt pressured into sending explicit pictures to someone else.

Dangerous Consequences

One 17-year-old girl said a boy at school had spent months asking her for a naked ‘selfie’ and because she thought she could trust him, she sent it to him privately.

But he uploaded it to Facebook, where it stayed online for two days before the social networking site removed it - by which point many of her peers had already seen it.

It sent her into a deep depression and she tried to commit suicide. The person who uploaded that picture to Facebook could be prosecuted, under the new laws.

The Knock-On Effect

The worst part of all of this is that youngsters are - albeit unwittingly - voluntarily contributing to the spread of child pornography images.

Legally, naked images of someone under the age of 16 (whether taken by themselves as a selfie, taken by their peers or by someone else) are not allowed to be circulated.

Consent at this point is irrelevant.

Ruining Lives

Just last week, 200,000 private photos and videos sent via Snapchat were leaked onto the web, in what critics called called ‘The Snappening.’

With more than half of Snapchat users believed to be aged between 13 and 17 (the Ditch The Label study confirmed that Snapchat was the most popular app among young people), there’s a high chance that these hacked photos were of underage victims.

As much as hacks on apps such as Snapchat and servers including iCloud are part of a much wider security issue, sexting is a lesser-known issue that really needs to be addressed.

In the research, 22 per cent of teens had turned to self-harm as a mechanism to cope with smartphone abuse while nearly a quarter tried to change their appearance to stop the bullying.

Not only are teenagers risking their privacy by sending explicit images, they are also risking their lives.

As adults, it's our responsiblity to educate teenagers about the risks associated with 'sexting' before it’s too late to do anything about it.

[Revenge Porn To Be Made Illegal In UK: But What Took Them So Long?]

[The Kids Are Alright: Older Generations Reckon Millennials Have Got The Right Idea]