Kerry Cohen - Dirty Little Secrets

Johanna is part of the 39 percent of teenagers who have sent racy messages via text and part of the 20 percent who has sent nude photos. {102} 102 1. National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Cosmogirl.com, “Sex and Tech, Results from a Survey of Teens and Young Adults,” National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, retrieved April 5, 2011, www.thenationalcampaign.org/sextech/PDF/SexTech_Summary.pdf . The largely held assumption is that our teenagers are in a whole new world when it comes to sex, and regarding technology, that is absolutely true. The current generation is the first one to have so much immediate technology at their fingertips. Flirting looks different now. Bullying and rumors have a new weapon.

Parents and school officials are scared, and our often frantic concern about kids being exposed too early to sex through technology makes some sense. According to Child Trends Databank, the proportion of children with home access to computers has steadily increased to more than 90 percent as of 2009, and 93 percent use the Internet. According to a 2009 survey of eight- to eighteen-yearolds, 36 percent had a computer in their bedroom, and 71 percent of them also had a television in their bedroom. {103} 103 2. “Home Computer Access and Internet Use,” Child Trends Databank ,June2010, www.childtrendsdatabank.org/?q=node/298 . We know that porn is readily available to most Web viewers. One need only click the button that says “yes” to the question that reads, “Are you 18 years or older?”

As part of this fear, a number of states have criminalized the sending and sharing of nude photos, like the ones Johanna sends, hitting teenagers with child pornography and sex offender charges. As of this writing, at least twelve states have introduced legislation to prohibit or deter sexting. State laws range from minor dings on a juvenile record to child pornography convictions. Each state controls the severity of its laws about sexting, and school officials and parents of girls who’ve had their pictures distributed bring the most charges. {104} 104 3. For a list of sexting legislation for each state, see “2010 Legislation Related to ‘Sexting,’” National Conference of State Legislature, January 4, 2011, www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=19696 . The question is, What really happens to girls who use this sort of technology?

Media concerns itself, of course, with the sensationalized, fear-inducing stories, such as the one about Jesse Logan, the eighteen-year-old Ohio girl who hung herself after a nude photo of her had been disseminated throughout her school. The tragic story quickly segued into one about the necessity of criminalizing the kids who dispersed the photo and about holding the schools accountable. In a Today show interview with Jesse’s mother and the Internet expert Parry Aftab, Aftab noted that we need to enforce these laws “in order to keep our children alive.” {105} 105 4. For more on Jesse Logan and the Today show interview with Parry Aftab, see Mike Celizic, “Her Teen Committed Suicide Over ‘Sexting,’” Today Parenting, March 6, 2009, today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29546030 .

Hope Witsell, a thirteen-year-old in Florida, killed herself after a topless photo of her was sent around her high school and the high school in a neighboring town. She sent the photo after pressure to do so from a boy she had a crush on. {106} 106 5. For more on Hope Witsell’s story, see Michael Inbar, “’Sexting’ Bullying Cited in Teen’s Suicide,” Today People , December 2, 2009, today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34236377/ns/today-today_people/ . Really, though, the harm didn’t originate with the sexting, which is how Witsell’s and Logan’s cases were presented. It came from the girls’ peers, who bullied them. The photos were just tools of a much greater harm, which is rarely addressed as seriously: slut shaming.

In January 2009, six teenagers faced child pornography charges for taking photos of themselves and being in possession of the photos. Three fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls from their high school in Pennsylvania had sent seminude photos to the three sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. School officials seized the phones and reported them to the police, leading to the charges. {107} 107 6. Mike Brunker, “‘Sexting’ Surprise: Six Teens Face Child Porn Charges,” MSNBC.com, January 15, 2009, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28679588 . In Florida, a sixteen-year-old girl and her seventeen-year-old boyfriend, Phillip Albert, were charged with possession of child pornography. Albert, who is now twenty, sent a nude photo of his ex-girlfriend to seventy people out of anger after a fight with her. He was sentenced with child pornography charges and required to go on the public sex offender’s list. He was kicked out of school, he struggles to find a job, and he can’t even live with his father because his father lives near a high school, something Phillip is no longer allowed to do. {108} 108 7. Vicki Mabrey and David Perozzi, “‘Sexting’: Should Child Pornography Laws Apply?” ABCnews.com, April 1, 2010, abcnews.go.com/Nightline/phillip-alpert-sexting-teen-child-porn/story?id=10252790 .

But is sexting really worthy of such extreme policing? There has been much hesitating and changing minds in the courts, which suggests that we might be overreacting, typical of people’s fears surrounding teenagers and sex.

Let’s take a look at the data. In the 2008 study “Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies,” by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, researchers found that risky behavior online was generally in cahoots with risky behavior offline. Those who engaged in sexual acts away from their phones and the Internet tended to do so on their phones and the Internet as well. Indeed, almost half of sexually active teens tend to be involved in sexting and cybersex as well. {109} 109 8. Berkman Center for Internet and Society, “Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies,” Harvard University, December 31, 2008, cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/ISTTF_Final_Report-Executive_Summary.pdf .

Turned around, though, the statistics change. Sexting and sexual Internet activity does not seem to lead to real-life sexual activity among those who don’t already engage in it. Regardless of all the increased access to sex online, teen sex rates haven’t skyrocketed. In fact, they’ve lowered some during the past decade.

In my mind, we are missing the point regarding what to panic about. The issue isn’t the “dicey mix of teenagers’ age-old sexual curiosity, notoriously bad judgment and modern love of electronic sharing,” as Riva Richmond called it in a New York Times article. {110} 110 9. Riva Richmond, “Sexting May Place Teens at Legal Risk,” New York Times , March 26, 2009, gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/sexting-may-place-teens-at-legal-risk/ . One could argue, in fact, that sexting is not only safe but also keeps kids safer than if they were having real-life sex.

No, the issue is that many girls—you guessed it, loose girls—use sexting and cybersex to try to feel wanted, and just like when they use male attention and sex in similar ways in real life, they don’t get what they’re after. When I asked the girls I interviewed why they sexted, their answers all pointed to a desire for connection. Amelia said, “It makes what is basically impossible to me possible, which is a hot guy liking me and wanting me in all ways.”

“All ways?” I asked.

“Well, sexually, I guess,” she said.

Amelia uses sexting and cybersex to pick up boys she likes who she meets in school or online, but is too shy to speak to in person. She contacts them and is immediately flirtatious. Within one or two exchanges, she starts in on the dirty talk. She engages in this way with them obsessively, and if they stop responding, or reject her in any way, she feels crushed.