Susquenita, PA, sexting case: A parent's view

The day after the above blog post that mentioned the Susquenita sexting case, I heard from the father of one of the eight high school students involved. I'll probably post more perspectives in future, but I'm starting with this one, this week, because 1) I think the perspective of a father – of a teen whose involvement sounds pretty typical of students caught up in such incidents – may be useful to other parents and 2) this is the first case I've seen in the news where school officials are under investigation by a prosecutor for the way they handled the case.

"I am one of the parents involved in this issue," wrote this father of a then-16-year-old. When school administrative staff ["head principal, two assistants, director of curriculum and the possibility of more," he later told me] started their investigation the morning of Sept. 24, 2009, they knew then that they were dealing with students and nude pictures, but they continued this [investigation] all day long before contacting parents and police, even passing these phones around to other staff.... My son was interrogated by the head principal along with the director of curriculum. They called my son a sex offender, told him he would go to prison, and that he would be placed on Megan's [sex offender] list. Then he was contained in the nurse's office for over two hours. Other students were treated basically the same....

"My son along with [seven] other students [three girls and four boys] admitted they had a picture or pictures on their phones, etc. They told school staff who was in the pictures, etc., [but] the staff still went through [the phones].... The principal told us he didn't want to talk to the girl about this issue, saying 'he felt uncomfortable', though he didn't mind viewing her pictures and others' as well." [By the sound of it, the police called in at the end of the school day were the best part of this experience, reportedly respectful and clear about the students' rights and what was and wasn't lawful about the school's investigation – for example, a state trooper told the dad that he would need signed parental consent or a warrant signed by a judge to go through students' cell phones. The law differs from state to state, but that's something parents should ask if they're ever in this position: Do school officials have the legal right to search their children's phones without a warrant on school premises?]

"I have been fighting this battle for these kids since it happened on Sept. 24th," the dad continued. "The district attorney offered a consent decree to all the students, involving probation, fines, and a few classes, and the felony charges were to be expunged when this [process] is completed. However, they still pursued the felony charges [he told me later that it's still not clear the students' records will be completely expunged].... These kids were charged with felonies from a law [meant] to protect minors from adult predators. Pennsylvania doesn't have a teen sexting law, although one is expected to pass soon. There needs to be a change to stop this destruction, not to mention the wrongdoing of the school. My question is, did any adult in this situation, from school to legal system, ever step back to have the best interest of these students at heart? No, they labeled and smeared these kids and families."

When I asked him if there was any malice or bullying involved among the students, he said, "These kids did this willingly, they are friends. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone this, it was stupid, but they were basically keeping this private amongst themselves, meaning no harm.... I couldn't even imagine," he wrote, "being wrongfully charged with the worst type of charge anybody could face: sexual abuse of minors."

All told, these students have experienced public humiliation, arrest (fingerprinting, mug shots, etc.), expulsion hearings before the school board, prosecution as adults, probation, fines, classes, and – as of this writing – the possibility of felony convictions remaining on their records, on top of whatever the students and families have dealt with privately over the past six months. Whatever happened at school last September 24, school officials do not seem to have been a support to them.

Meanwhile, 40 students involved in a sexting incident a week later in the next county over, at Chambersburg High School (involving a different prosecutor), did not receive felony charges (see WGAL.com here and here for background).

"The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association has pushed legislation that would make sexting a second-degree misdemeanor. If convicted of a felony related to sexting, children can now be forced to register as sex offenders," the Harrisburg Patriot News reported. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "In 2009, lawmakers in at least 11 states introduced legislation aimed at 'sexting'." In some of those states, that legislation is aimed at deterring and applying appropriate penalties to teens who engage in sexting, NCSL reports. Let's hope the Pennsylvania legislature passes a teen sexting law soon and that it's retroactive.

Related links

My sexting primer for parents

The best approach for schools to take (see "The goal of any incident investigation" at the bottom)

"Sexting: New study & the 'Truth or Dare' scenario"

MD case of middle-schooler sharing 'sexts' for $

Seems kind of like the new "Risky Business" (meaning the 1980s film about the suburban Chicago high school student who turned his house into a weekend brothel to make some money on the side). The digital version of the exploitation – a student selling views of sexy or nude photos of peers, to peers – is less physical but affects more kids and can go on forever (see "The Net effect)." What I'm talking about is a new twist on sexting at an even younger age: a Bethesda, Md., middle school student renting his iPod Touch out to classmates so they can view "images of female classmates and other girls in various states of undress," according to the Washington Post. Pyle Middle School authorities last week turned the investigation over to local police, who are "trying to determine how a middle school boy came to amass such a large collection of provocative images" of 6th-, 7th, and 8th-graders." The Post adds that they want to make sure the girls weren't coerced into sending or posing for the photos, which have reportedly been passed around for months, but neither coercion nor adult involvement seem to be factors so far. The Post links to a message on adolescent development and cellphones Pyle Middle School's principal sent to parents just this month. [For another disturbing angle on the sexting issue, see this report from PennLive.com about school officials in Pennsylvania under investigation for mishandling student sexting photos (thanks to the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use for pointing this out.]

Growing consensus to handle teen sexting differently

Great news on the New York Times's front page yesterday: "There is growing consensus among lawyers and legislators," the Times reports, "that the child pornography laws are too blunt an instrument to deal with [naked photo-sharing, or sexting, which the paper describes in a slightly odd way as] an adolescent cyberculture in which all kinds of sexual pictures circulate on sites like MySpace and Facebook." The description left out cellphones, largely the focus of the public discussion about sexting (if not the activity itself). "Last year, Nebraska, Utah and Vermont changed their laws to reduce penalties for teenagers who engage in such activities," the Times continues, "and this year, according to the National Council on State Legislatures, 14 more states are considering legislation that would treat young people who engage in sexting differently from adult pornographers and sexual predators." And last week saw "the first case ever to challenge the constitutionality of prosecuting teens for 'sexting'," Law.com reports. "A unanimous three-judge panel [of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia] concluded there was no probable cause to bring any charges against the girls who had appeared in various states of undress in photos shared among a group of teens. Missing from the prosecutor's case, the court said, was critical evidence about who exactly had transmitted the images," according to Law.com, which added the court also found that former prosecutor George Skumanick, Jr., had "violated parents' rights by usurping their roles." According to the Times, states are considering various ways to handle sexting by minors – some as a misdemeanor, others as a juvenile offence along the lines of "truancy or running away." Do read the Times piece for legal scholars' views. [Here's my earlier post about the Pennsylvania case.]

Clicks, cliques & cyberbullying, Part 2: Whole-school response is key

Cyberbullying is a serious problem that, according to research, is the most common online risk for young people, affecting about a third of US 13-to-17-year-olds, and has led to some tragic student suicides. Schools and courts are struggling to figure out how to deal with student behavior that occurs off school grounds but can have such a disruptive, sometimes destructive, effect on school.

All the discussion about the legal and First Amendment issues seems to be missing a key factor that points to how to handle cyberbullying: the media environment with which all these incidents are directly associated. The Internet, especially to youth, is now a) collegial or social/behavioral in nature and b) mirrors "real world" life and conditions – it's not something in addition to student or school life. Bullying online is not a whole new problem for schools and courts to deal with. It's a reflection of student relationships, and the bullying's context is largely the life of the school community, not the Internet (or cellphones or any other devices).

Cyberbullying prevention/intervention take a village too

"Because a bully's success depends heavily on context" – write Yale psychology professor Alan Yazdin and his co-author Carlo Rotella at Boston College in "Bullies: They can be stopped, but it takes a village" at Slate.com – "attempts to prevent bullying should concentrate primarily on changing the context rather than directly addressing the victim's or the bully's behavior." That, they add, involves "the entire school, including administration, teachers, and peers."

Author and educator Rosalind Wiseman agrees. In a 55-min. podcast interview she gave fellow educator and author Annie Fox, Wiseman recently said that dealing with cyberbullying "really speaks to a school's culture of dignity....

"Don't do a 45-minute assembly on cyberbullying," Wiseman said. "It's a waste of time. Have a faculty meeting, and then have a parent meeting, and tell the students this is what you're doing – not just a bullying assembly. Tell them 'we understand that this is about the whole culture of the school, and as part of that culture, you have to participate in this as well.'" Slightly tongue in cheek, Wiseman adds that this will increase "the chance of students believing you're not completely full of it."

Quick fixes don't exist

Schools will probably get plenty of eye-rolling and "whatever's" from the more socially aggressive students, but gradually things can turn around – particularly if there's disciplinary backup. [Note the word "backup": discipline is not the goal, but rather restoration of order – more on this below.] For example, when talking with a student suspected of having been the bully in an incident, the end of the conversation could go something like:

"I know we're on the same page, here: You're a person of honor, so I'm taking you on your word that this won't happen again. But you need to be clear that, if you walk out of here and, as a result of this meeting, the life of the target in any way becomes more difficult, then we are in a whole different situation – a whole different level of the problem. You need to be clear that, if that happens, you're taking a very big chance."

That conversation could also include the following. "I hope and expect that you'll be talking with your parents about this, because I'm going to be calling them within 24 hours." Wiseman tells teachers and administrators that of course the kids will talk to their parents, offering their own spin on the situation. "So it's very important to say to the parent, 'I wanted to include you from the beginning, that is why I talked with your child. I fully expected [him or her] to speak to you immediately and now I'm following up so we can work together and have this be a learning opportunity – a teachable moment – for your child."

Turning incidents into 'teachable moments'

Those words are crucial: "learning opportunity," "teachable moment." They are stepping stones on the way to building the school's "culture of dignity," as Wiseman put. Because it's merely logical that a one-time, sage-on-the-stage assembly will accomplish very little. It's also logical that involving all players and skill sets – students, parents, teachers, administrators, and counselors – creates the conditions for changing the school's culture (see this). The school is, in fact, creating a new social norm – as Elizabeth Englander, director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center and an adviser to state legislators working on bullying-education legislation, told Emily Bazelon at Slate.com – where the whole school community looks down on dissing, flaming, mean gossiping, and other social cruelty, hopefully including students' parents. The Slate piece links to some great resources for school strategizing. For example, here's a sexting investigation protocol from the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use offering the spectrum of sexting causes and intentions enabling school staff to ask students intelligent questions.

When an interdisciplinary group of us were working on that protocol, authored by Nancy Willard, it occurred to me that, because it lays out the spectrum of sexting's causes, it'll help school officials see why it's essential that schools not just reflexively hand off investigations to law enforcement (whose involvement some state laws require).

The goal of any incident investigation

"The immediate goal of the investigation is not discipline [and certainly not expediency] but rather support for the targeted student(s) [who may be experiencing psychological harm], and restoration of order. The ultimate goal is to create a learning opportunity for all involved. The learning opportunity should be on-the-spot, as well as school and community-wide, and focus on the areas of critical thinking, mindful decision-making, perspective-taking, and citizenship." That's a statement a couple of us worked up because we feel it's so important for everybody to understand that, in the social-media age, we can only change behavior – in schools and online communities – together, as "a village."

Here's Part 1 of this 2-part series: "Clicks & cliques: Really meaty advice for parents on cyberbullying".

Related links

In another Massachusetts incident, last week Boston-area police charged three students with identity theft reportedly for creating a fake Facebook profile and posting mean comments about a peer. In an editorial last Saturday (2/13), the Boston Globe applauded the police "for taking aggressive action against cyberbullying when so many others have failed to do so." There's the sad reality: that too often the "authority figure" taking over is the police. Law enforcement is only one piece of the multidisciplinary team that should be in place in schools and ready to step in when something comes up. The other essential roles are principal and counselor/psychologist.

"Cyberbullying better defined" – with links to two national studies showing that about one-third of teens

Finding of the Harvard Berkman Center's 2008 Internet Safety & Technical Task Force: "Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, both online and offline" (p. 4 of Executive Summary)

The Fox-Wiseman podcast

ConnectSafely.org's Tips to Help Stop Cyberbullying

'Sext education': US- and Canada-based resources

Citing new US figures showing that two-thirds of 8-to-18-year-olds own cellphones, Canada's CBC points to a new Web site designed to educate people about texting – textED.ca – "set up by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, in partnership with Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association." The CBC says it includes "sext ed," but I don't see much in the site specifically about photo-sharing, and there – slightly frustratingly – isn't a search box in the site that allowed me to search for "sext ed." But for parents there's an "acronictionary" with abbreviations and acronyms often used in text messages, and for kids there's a "Need help now" form, which they can fill out and which promises to get back to senders within 24 hours. From here in the US, PC Magazine's John Dvorak offers 7 reputation-protection tips that "can save your kids – and you – from a lifetime of online embarrassment" (offline too!). They cover everything from Twitter and Facebook to blogging and vlogging to video chat on Stickam (take special note of that last genre, parents – not a good place for kids in online stealth mode). See also ConnectSafely.org's "sext ed" and "Sexting: New study & the 'Truth or Dare' scenario." As for anti-sexting legislation, here's a commentary from Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe & Responsible Internet Use offering ways to adjust laws so as to help rather than harm youth.

[The new US data the CBC refers to is from the just-released Kaiser Family Foundation study I blogged about and linked to in "Major study on youth & media: Let's take a closer look."]

Sexism in sexting case?

A federal court of appeals in Philadelphia is expected soon to decide the first case about the criminal prosecution of teens for sexting. One side – that of George Skumanick, who in 2006 was district attorney for Pennsylvania's Wyoming County – argued that the DA "was trying to protect the teens from themselves and potential child predators." The other side, the ACLU, argued that "the prosecutor cannot accuse the girls of being pornographers under the guise of protecting them from pornographers," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Two of the photos involved depicted two 12-year-old girls in their underwear; a third photo in a separate situation, depicted a 16-year-old girl nude from the waist up. [In this case's first trial, in March 2009, US District Judge James M. Munley "sided with the ACLU and issued an injunction that blocked Skumanick from bringing charges, declaring that the photographs were not child pornography under Pennsylvania law," Law.com reports.] After learning that the photos were circulating, the school confiscated some phones and turned them over to the DA's office. "Interestingly, none of the classmates who distributed the photos received letters from Skumanick. Only the girls who appeared in the photos were threatened with child porn charges," writes the ACLU in its blog. "If the DA did in fact regard these photos as pornographic, why not file distribution charges against the boys? A clue may be found in their argument before the 3rd Circuit. In narrating the case, their attorney explained how, after the girls were photographed, 'high school boys did as high school boys will do, and traded the photos among themselves'.

"The boys who traded the photos bear no responsibility and require no re-education," the ACLU blogger writes, referring to a letter Skumanick sent the girls' parents threatening prosecution if the girls didn't take a "five-week re-education program of his own design, which included topics like 'what it means to be a girl in today's society'." Only the girls were threatened with felony charges and sex-offender registration. It was one of the Third Circuit judges who raised "the central question" of the case, the blogger concluded: During arguments, Judge Thomas L. Ambro said, "Should we allow the state to force children, by threat of prosecution, to attend a session espousing the views of one particular government official on what it means to be a girl?"

From comic-book panic to sexting panic

Compare sexting to the comic book panic of the 1950s, a thoughtful commentary in the Boston Globe suggests. "Huh?" you might say? Yes, back then, "a broad swath of the United States was convinced that crime and horror comic books were turning the nation’s children into murdering, raping monsters. Hearings were held, and eventually federal authorities pressured publishers into creating the Comics Code, an industry standard that neutered what had been a vibrant, eccentric - and yes, oftentimes provocative - form of American art." Hmm, isn't it interesting that each previous moral panic seems to have happened just long enough before the current one that the current generation of parents has no memory of it, and therefore lacks the kind of perspective that would help protect us from "the outrage industry" that exploits parental fears? Must be a conspiracy! Writer Jesse Singal continues: "We’re wired to be protective of our young, so it will always be much easier to convince people that children are at risk than to argue otherwise. That’s why these moral panics rage through the country at regular intervals. In the 20th century alone, marijuana, rock music, Dungeons & Dragons, Satanic cults, and first-person shooters have all seized the minds of American parents. And yet each successive generation graduated to adulthood largely undecimated." Actually, this is good. It's an opportunity for parents to practice the critical thinking that protects us against group think and fear-mongering, so we can teach our children critical thinking from experience! [See also "Why technopanics are bad."]

State senator wants to criminalize teen sexting

US states are all over the map where sexting legislation is concerned. While Vermont decriminalized sexting by minors, Indiana is considering a law that makes it a juvenile crime. WTHR TV in Indianapolis reports that, in order to send Indiana children the message, "Do not sext," state Sen. Jim Merritt (R) is working on a law that would make texting sexually explicit messages and photos a juvenile violation." "Senator Merritt says other similar sexting bills will likely be filed as well and he would like to eventually see adults included under the law too." Texas A&M psychology professor Christopher Ferguson sent a great response to the Indianapolis Star in a Letter to the Editor: "I share Merritt's concerns about responsible teen behavior and the potential risks of sexting. However, criminalizing sexting is the wrong response as it only harms teenagers who engage in this behavior more rather than teaching them responsible behavior." The real solution, Ferguson writes, is "increased education," including adding the subject of sexting to sex-education classes in schools. I agree. Or at least health class – not some sort of non-contextual, government-imposed add-on to the curriculum called "Internet safety" aimed at covering the whole gamut of risks online. That's almost like trying to teach a course on all the risks of life, since the Internet increasingly mirrors it, and have we thought about how well students will respond to a class focused on all the negative consequences of using the media and technologies they find so compelling?!

Let's teach constructive use of media and technology in context. When children learn history or social studies, they learn about community, citizenship, social justice – a natural place to include online community and digital citizenship. When learning
writing and composition, classes discuss plagiarism and academic ethics, the place where online-style, copy-and-paste plagiarism needs to be covered too. Sexting has its right place largely in discussions about adolescent sexual development. If malicious intent is involved, then sexting needs to be discussed in the context of bullying, including cyberbullying, for which many schools have programs. In any case, education is the key. I was encouraged to see that the Associated Press led its coverage of a recent sexting survey with a quote from a 16-year-old saying he probably wouldn't send a sext message again, knowing that sexting could bring felony charges (see this). [Here's earlier coverage on what other states have considered.]

'Soft power' works better: Parenting social Web users

We're in quite a fix, we parents, over this "sexting" phenomenon. On the one hand, sexting "is causing growing concern among parents," HealthDay cites a University of Michigan survey as finding. On the other, "the real problem sets in when grownups get involved," writes DailyBeast.com columnist Conor Friedersdorf, pointing to the evidence: "In most cases, teens who conceal their sexting from authority figures suffer negligible adverse consequences.... Perversely, however, tragic stories that begin with 'sexting' are all too frequent when principals, police officers, or district attorneys get involved. The two known suicides attributed to 'sexting' actually resulted from adults who exacerbated, rather than stopped, the abhorrent 'slut-shaming' that peers callously directed at girls whose naked photos were spread around school; and authority figures in at least six states charge less troubled teens who send naked pictures of themselves with distributing child pornography!" [And I can't resist quoting where Friedersdorf goes with this child-porn-law point: "Should technology ever permit humans to download our brains' mental images to a hard drive, every last teenager in America will wind up prohibited from living within 10,000 feet of themselves" – but maybe quite a few adults too, no?]

I think he's right. Whether or not you agree that sexting is digitally exacerbated normative adolescent behavior, I hope you agree that adults need to tread very lightly or at least carefully in these situations, with child-pornography law a factor (see ConnectSafely's tips). But forget about school policy and law enforcement for a second and just think about parenting: Certainly we need to apply our values to our parenting and, if those values call for it, try to mitigate the sexualized media environment surrounding us all, but it's best to spread that teaching and parenting out over time and not allow ourselves to be so shocked by what we're seeing as to react in ways that send kids into determined resistance, "underground" online, where our values probably don't have much influence at all.

Cornell University assistant professor Sahara Byrne, while presenting a survey of parents and kids about online-safety strategies at the Harvard Berkman Center last week, found all kinds of evidence that "the more angry kids are, the more they're going to try to restore their freedom" – or assert it. That's why sudden changes in parenting style like overreaction or anger, banning technology (which to a teen can be like banning a whole social life), or suddenly installing monitoring software can have unintended, sometimes risky effects and workarounds.

So we're not really in such a fix, fellow parents. We just need to mindful of the concerns we have and channel them wisely. Trying to make our children avoid risk altogether can be riskier than being consistent about "our family's values," letting them do developmentally appropriate adolescent risk assessment, and being there for them when stuff comes up. I love how parent and media professor Henry Jenkins says it – that we need to "watch their backs rather than snoop over their shoulders."

Related links

"Sahara Byrne: Parents, Kids & Online Safety" in the blog of Prof. John Palfrey, co-director of Harvard Unviersity's Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Latest data (from Pew/Internet last week): "Sexting: New study & the 'Truth or Dare' scenario"

Prof. Sahara Byrne's presentation on parenting & online safety (I'll be posting more on this)

"Online Safety 3.0: Empowering and Protecting Youth"

ConnectSafely's tips to prevent bad effects from teens sexting

Sexting: New study & the 'Truth or Dare' scenario

Three up-to-the-minute developments – fresh data on sexting from Pew/Internet, an important podcast about technology & developmental behavior among teens, and a summit held by the National District Attorneys Association and the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse – offer important insights....

1. 4% of US teens have sent 'sext' messages

It's a significantly lower figure than two previous national studies, which arrived at 10% and 9% for youth who had sent sext messages (see links below). The Pew Internet & American Life Project today released a survey finding that only 4% of US 12-to-17-year-olds had sent a sexually suggestive nude or semi-nude photo or video of themselves via cellphone, and 15% had received one on their mobile from someone they know personally. The explanation for the lower figures may be that Pew focused solely on images on cellphones, not on text either via phones or other electronic means. "We chose this strategy because the policy community and advocates are primarily concerned with the legality of sharing images and because the mobile phone is increasingly the locus of teens’ personal, and seemingly private communication," Pew says in its report. In other key findings....

There was no gender difference in the sending of sexting images – boys and girls were equally engaged.

"Older teens are much more likely to send and receive these images."

More intense users of cellphones are more likely to receive sext images.

18% of teen cellphone owners with unlimited texting plans have received such images compared with 8% of teens on limited plans and 3% of teens who pay per message.

The teens who pay their own phone bills are more likely to send “sexts”: 17% of those who pay for their phones had done so, while 3% of teens who don't pay for their phones or pay for a portion of the cost had.

With the University of Michigan, Pew conducted six followup focus groups this fall with middle and high school students in three cities. The focus groups showed that "these images are shared as a part of or instead of sexual activity, or as a way of starting or maintaining a relationship with a significant other. And they are also passed along to friends for their entertainment value, as a joke or for fun," said the study's author, Amanda Lenhart.

[Here are links to my posts on previous sexting surveys, the MTV/AP study early this month and a Harris Interactive study for Cox/NCMEC last june.]

2. Digitally 'enhanced' Truth or Dare

It can sound a little clinical when researchers or law enforcement talk about sexting, so let's look at one scenario at the middle school level – which ideally has everybody (girls, boys, and parents) thinking about cellphone-"enabled" sleepovers.

Remember that classic adolescent game of "Truth or Dare"? Well, in a recent "Family Confidential" podcast with educator and author Annie Fox, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes Rosalind Wiseman told Fox, "When we were growing up and even just five years ago, if girls in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade [had] ... a sleepover and played the Truth or Dare game – a classic thing you'd do when you were in middle school, a lot of the dares being about testing what you were thinking about, your sexuality, about coming into your sexuality; it's developmentally appropriate. But back then, if you'd do something in the dare category, not many people would see it and it would have a limited life-span. But now, this school year, Truth or Dare for 7th and 8th graders can include, 'I dare you to take a picture of yourself naked and send it to the boy you like,' and of course that boy will forward it to everybody he knows.

"This developmentally appropriate moment," says Wiseman, "has become a huge weapon to humiliate a girl forever, in her mind ... so the impact and the ability to degrade people's ability to go through their sexual development in an appropriately uncomfortable but comfortable way is lost when we have these kinds of things happen." [That's at about 13:40 in the MP3 version of Fox's podcast.]

But we're not just talking about victims, of course. Later in the podcast (26:05), Fox comes back to this sexting situation, as she and Wiseman are talking about how these dares and other developmental tests and risk-taking "really go both ways," Wiseman said. These situations are very fluid and have tech-enhanced ripple effects.

Fox said, "The girl who was humiliated pushed Send." Rosalind agreed: "Yes she did, she needs to think about what was motivating her to capitulate – we have to talk about that that if we want the child to be able to stop it the next time it happens.... She also needs to think about why she was unable to hold her ground and wants attention from boys in a particular way. Why is that? It's partly that, for a girl growing up in this culture, the culture says that's how you get attention from boys, but this is an opportunity for reflection about the cost of doing that."

Scenarios like this can be great talking points for calm, supportive, nonconfrontational discussion at home and school about all kinds of issues: at school, the legal and psychological costs of caving to peer pressure and forgetting to treat self and others with respect; at home, whether our kids have felt or observed that kind of focused pressure from peers; how they handled it; how they'd like to be able to handle it; whether they'd feel comfortable coming to us about it and what their conditions for doing so would be; where technology comes into play (literally) and what we can do about it in specific situations; and so on. [A similar scenario played out in Indiana a few months ago (see "Students sue school for social Web-related discipline").]

3. The law enforcement piece

Social media researcher Sameer Hinduja told Slate.com after the just-ended meeting of the National District Attorneys Association that participants were "clamoring for research on who's most likely to be an offender, or a victim, what are the contributing factors, what are the consequences." Certainly more research is needed, but look at those terms "offenders" and "victims" in light of the snap-and-send "Truth or Dare" scene. Can the children at that sleepover reasonably be frozen in time as either "offender" or "victim"? Do you, too, see a disconnect between 7th-graders engaged in casual, developmental risk-taking and what the law requires of police and prosecutors, and sometimes schools, handling "cases"?

I hope against hope for two things: that 1) except in cases involving criminal intent, law enforcement can play an educational rather than prosecutorial role where sexting by minors is concerned (helping middle and high school students understand related law) and that 2) there will be more calm, respectful communication between parents and kids, between schools and families, and within whole school communities about all aspects of this issue. There is nothing to be gained and a great deal to be lost from dealing with sexting strictly as a legal issue. How can schools fear litigation less? How can we all acknowledge multiple perspectives? It may take time, but if we can collectively focus on respectful communication and effective prevention as well as response, maybe we'll have fewer sexting and cyberbullying "cases" develop. As difficult as this may be, youth and society will gain from the conscious, collaborative effort.

Please see Dr. Hinduja's own blog post about the summit (organized by National District Attorneys Association and the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse), where he, too, recommends "multidisciplinary prevention and response."

Related links

"Sexting as a form of relationship currency" is an important insight from the Pew study that the GetNetWise.org blog zooms in on.

This week the Virginia Crime Commission decided against recommending any changes in state child pornography laws in light of “sexting” by teens, with Commission Vice-Chair David Albo saying that "a well-intended change could prove to be 'a roadmap for freaks' on how to skirt the law," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. Vermont, on the other hand, revised state child-pornography law last summer so that "minors caught sexting would not be charged with a felony and forced to register as sex offenders" (see my post).

CNN's coverage of the Pew study - interesting that, in headline, it went for 15% of teens have received sext messages rather than 4% have sent

Audio interview with Pew/Internet's Amanda Lenhart on teens & sexting at Public Radio International

A bit more on peer pressure & sexting at NetFamilyNews

See also our tips for parents about sexting at ConnectSafely.org and Common Sense Media's video advice.

New study on 'digital abuse' & youth

New national sexting numbers that have sparked headlines all over the Web about higher-than-ever sexting rates among US youth actually show that 90% have not sent naked photos to someone. Sammy, a San Francisco 16-year-old cited in the Associated Press's coverage and one of the 10% of youth who have sent "sexts," told the AP that he probably wouldn't do it again knowing that sexting could bring felony charges. I think all the above says a lot about the importance of 1) educating teens about this (see ConnectSafely's tips for starters ) 2) reporting surveys accurately, and 3) applying some critical thinking to breaking news. [In CNET's coverage, ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid points out that the MTV/AP study of 1,247 14-to-24-year-olds "confirms what many Internet safety experts have been saying for the past several months: Young people are far more likely to experience problems online from their peers or from their own indiscretions than from adult predators."]

Here are some highlights from the AP/MTV survey:

The 50% figure you may've seen in some headlines refers to the percentage of youth who have experienced "digital abuse from the mild to the extreme," including spreading lies, violation of trust, and digital disrespect.

30% have been involved in some type of naked photo-sharing.

10% have actually sent sexting photos, females more than males (13% vs. 9%, respectively)

45% of sexually active youth report being involved with sexting.

Young people have complex views of sexting, calling it everything from "hot" and "trusting" to "uncomfortable" and "slutty," and those who don't engage in it calling it "gross," "uncomfortable," and "stupid."

In the "dating abuse" area, 22% say their significant others check up on them too often (see other interesting data in that category).

76% say digital abuse is a serious problem for people their age

51% "say they have thought about the idea that things they post online could come back to hurt them"; and only 25% have given at least some thought to the idea that what they post could get them in trouble with the police and 28% in trouble at school.

There's lots more interesting data, so please click to the pdf summary at AThinLine.org for more.

Teen sexting conviction upheld

The teenager, Jorge Canal, was an 18-year-old high school student at the time of the incident in 2005. His misdemeanor conviction for sending sexually explicit photos to a 14-year-old student in his school was upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court, USATODAY reports. The two students "had known each other as friends for roughly a year, according to the ruling. The girl, identified by initials C.E., testified that she asked [him] to send the photo three or four times, as a joke, and not to excite any feelings." The judge in his original trial "granted him a deferred judgment with a $250 fine and one year of probation," but he was required to register as a sex offender. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has just released its "Policy Statement on Sexting," which asks questions including, "Was the distribution of the photos done with no malicious regard or desire to harm another, or was it the result of malicious intent by one or more senders?"; "What was the intent behind the production of the photos, on a severity scale ranging from a benign reason to supporting a separate and malicious criminal purpose?"; and "Will prosecution achieve a result which addresses the larger problem of 'sexting' adequately?" There isn't much guidance associated with the potential answers to those questions, but they're important questions. This was not the reporting process in the case above, but all students need to know that schools are required by state laws to report sexting incidents to law enforcement when they become aware of them, and NCMEC says in its statement that federal law requires it to refer all sexting reports it receives through its CyberTipline(.com) "to the appropriate law-enforcement agency for investigation. NCMEC does not determine whether photos are actual child pornography or a violation of any laws. [See also ConnectSafely.org's Tips to Prevent Sexting.]

Sexting: The peer pressure factor

This scenario – true story in Arizona, actually – is probably not uncommon, so good for parent-child discussion. A 13-year-old student's cellphone gets confiscated because she's caught using it in class. Her mom shortly gets a call from the school police officer saying the phone has the nude photo of a boy on it. The phone is returned to the mom, who then finds text messages from the boy on it "asking her daughter to send him nude pictures of herself. She had refused, but he was persistent: 'I sent you one. Don't you like me?'" This was a boy she did like, her mother told the Arizona Republic, wondering how long it would've been before she gave in. It's a volatile mix: kids' normal desire to be liked and accepted, as this mom put it, peer pressure, and digital media. That's dicey enough, but add child-pornography laws into the mix, with arrests and charges for production and distribution, and the impact of adolescent behavior can be earth-shattering for kids and their families. In another story in the same article, a 12-year-old student "faced criminal charges after she snapped a lewd photo of herself using a classmate's cellphone and sent the image to other students as a prank." Fortunately, she was suspended from school, not prosecuted. Gina Durbin, director of student-support services in the Cave Creek Unified School District, suggests to parents that they "tell their children to lock their phones when not in use and not to loan them to anyone." Good advice. At least that lowers the chances of getting blamed for someone else's sexting prank.

In related news, two 13-year-old boys in Tucson face charges of "use of a telephone to offend, harass or intimidate" for passing around a nude photo of a 13-year-old girl with their cellphones, the Arizona Daily Star reports. They're misdemeanor charges "because in all likelihood, the teens were not aware of the implications of their actions, officials said."

Houston schools 'just say no' to sexting

The Houston Independent School District, one of the US's biggest school districts, decided to adopt a new no-sexting rule "before some 200,000 students returned to classes after their summer vacation," Agence France Presse reports. Sharing nude photos by phone hasn't been much of an issue in the district, but some principals brought it up over the summer as an issue in the news and "wanted a policy on the books just in case it happens," the Dallas Morning News reports. The Mesquite, Texas, district joined Houston, but other districts, such as Dallas and Garland, felt their policies - against "sending, sharing, viewing or possessing pictures, text messages, e-mails or other material of a sexual nature in electronic or against distribution of obscene material via any electronic device" - about covered the issue. I'd say so. But I hope any sexting incidents are handled as "teachable moments" and not just further opportunity to suspend or expel students. Meanwhile, Forbes reports that New Hampshire lawmakers are considering a law against charging minors under the state's child pornography law for sexting when it's "part of a romantic partnerships." The discussion follows next-door neighbor Vermont's new law decriminalizing sexting by minors (see this).

FL school district's plans for sexting ed

The Miami-Dade school district aims to be a leader in teaching students the risks of cellphone sexting, the Miami Herald reports. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho wants to work with government and law enforcement to develop a curriculum for the coming school year, and he plans to put forth "a cutting-edge School Board policy" on the subject, the Herald adds. It looks like the superintendent is taking a solid multi-disciplinary approach; if the policy's approved, the district "will also begin conversations with local law enforcement and government agencies to review the existing laws." In the Miami-Dade district, students can have cellphones in school, but they have to be turned off during class. Here's UPI's coverage. Here's a little insight into one mother's tough experience with a school sexting incident. EdWeek.org reports that school officials are being urged to develop such policies and programs, and School Library Journal recently zoomed in on some intelligent thinking on the subject in Pennsylvania. Here are ConnectSafely.org's tips for dealing with sexting (see also "Meaty perspective on sexting").

States' anti-sexting legislation

Right now in Illinois, a teen who takes and sends a nude self-portrait on a cellphone can "be charged with production and/or manufacturing of child pornography," resulting in "mandatory sex offender registration," Suburban Chicago News reports. So State Rep. Darlene Senger has filed legislation that would keep a sexting case involving a minor out of court. Representative Senger told the News that the aim is accountability appropriate to the age and intent of the sexter (assuming it was neither malicious nor criminal) - e.g., "community service, writing term papers, apology letters, curfew regulations and allowing parents to install software on their cell phones to closely monitor their child." Here's the view from Illinois teens in the Naperville Sun. In Colorado, the CBS4 News headline is "'Sexting' Now The Same As Internet Luring In Colo.", because Colorado is adding cellphones to its child-sexual-exploitation law, but I think CBS4 didn't understand the legislation authors' intent simply to add phone-based photo-sharing to the Web-based variety. Meanwhile, anti-sexting ed is in the works for Colorado youth. Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey's office (in the Denver area) is working to develop a "6-to-9-month program that children will have to go through that educates them about boundaries if they're caught sexting." Brochures for school distribution are also in the works. [Vermont recently passed a law that decriminalizes sexting by minors (see "Sexting legislative update" for more).]

Meaty perspective on sexting

Teens sharing nude or provocative photos is not brand-new, says Dr. Richard Chalfen at the Center for Media and Child Health, and there are "at least 4 kinds of sub-cultures crucial to understanding the 'sexting' phenomenon"; "media culture," "digital culture," "intense visual culture," and "adolescent culture." Chalfen explains each one in "Teen Culture," the first of a very digestible three-part series. In Part 2, "Photo Sharing Behavior," he gives examples of "sexting" past, then talks about influences of the current media environment, including reports of adults misusing cellphone cams, intimate paparazzi photos of celebrities, ethically challenged citizen "photojournalists" and even professional photojournalists, reality TV, graphical language and stories in talkshows, and the general blurring of public and private. In Part 3, Dr. Chalfen discusses some of the consequences, with an eye toward family discussion. A related new resource - another project of the Center, a joint venture of Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Public Health - is "Ask the Mediatrician," where people can email media-related child-health-related questions to and find in-site answers from Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician, parent, and director of the Center. It's a brilliant concept. I'd just like to see a search box in the site and - in answer to a question about Internet safety - a link to research down the street at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center, "Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies," which found, among other things, that a child's psychosocial makeup and environment are better predictors of online risk than the technology the child uses.

Sexting legislative update

Vermont lawmakers reconfigured state child-pornography law so that "that minors caught sexting would not be charged with a felony and forced to register as sex offenders, so long as the incident was done voluntarily and without coercion," the Washington Times reports (I mentioned this earlier when a House vote was still pending). The Times adds that Utah and Ohio are considering similar tweaks. Prosecutors in some states, though, have decided that keeping the possibility of criminal charges for teens on the table is a good prevention measure. Some experts agree because they say sexting can be an element in teen dating violence, in which case malicious or criminal intent can be a factor. So sexting needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis, Carolyn Atwell-Davis, director of legislative affairs at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told the Times. The only problem there is when a sexting case involving bad judgment, not malicious intent (for example this one in Pennsylvania, probably), gets into the hands of a prosecutor who doesn't have the kids' best interests at heart! Here's a commentary on this in the Los Angeles Times by David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family.

Sexting picture a bit clearer, maybe brighter

We all just got a little clearer picture on teen sexting (nude or sexy texting), and it's not quite as dark as previously painted. The first known (and widely cited) survey on the subject, by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, found that 20% of teens have "sent/posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves." The latest figure - in a new survey by Harris Interactive for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and Cox Communications - is very close to that (19%), but it's cumulative; there's a breakdown of who's involved in sexting and how. As ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid reports in CNET, "the data from the Cox survey showed that, while 20% of teens "have engaged in sexting ... only 9% 'sent a sext,' ... 17% received one and 3% forwarded a 'sext'.... That 9% number is too high but it's less than half the 20% figure commonly used. And 90% of the kids who sent 'sexts' said that nothing bad happened, even though 74% of the kids agreed that sexting is 'wrong'. Twenty-three percent felt that it's OK if both parties are OK with it and only 3% said 'there is nothing wrong with it'." It's when "something bad happens" that we worry, because of the child-porn-related legal implications (see "Tips to Prevent Sexting" for more on that), but sexting can also turn into cyberbullying. And here's what's concerning about there: According to Clemson University psychology professor Robin Kowalski, kids don't want to tell parents or other adults about digital harassment because they fear 1) they'll be further victimized if the bully gets into trouble and retaliates and 2) their parents will remove their computers or cellphones - social lifelines - in an effort to protect them.

Teaching about sexting: Social Web lesson plan

Ever wonder how to teach young people about what can happen to information they post online? Canadian author and journalist Cory Doctorow has a great idea: show them on/with the Web. In a video interview he gave the European Commission's Net-safety program, Insafe, he talks about how we can now literally watch the diffusion of communication, behavior, and information in real time on the social Web - a sociologist's dream come true. So parents and educators might consider this sociology lesson plan:

"You could sit down with your kids and say, 'Last month this school was in turmoil about some rumor, some terrible thing some student did, or some health risk - someone had cooties or swine flu or something else. Let's watch the diffusion of that information. We have the social network, right? Who wants to volunteer to go through your email box, your instant-messenger record, your twitter stream, and tell me about the first time that rumor or information appeared - when you heard it next, how it mutated? Let's do a big class project and find all the ways that information spread.' And then say, 'Who here was thinking about putting a naked picture of yourself online? Look at this diffusion of information - look at what's happened here.'" He continues: "You can teach an awful lot about epidemiology and social idea diffusion by starting a harmless rumor and then tracking its growth through a network [community of people, not necessarily an online social network] and using a hashtag or distinctive term [e.g., a fake word like "mixoplex" and "come up with a bunch of characteristics it has"] and watch it spread ... 4 cases in Hertfordshire ... it's spreading and what are we going to do about it ... have a daily class project .... and think together about how a flu would spread from person to person, then how an idea would spread from person to person and then a naked picture of yourself and how it would spread from person to person." The simple aim being, he told insafe, to "turn the thing that they're already obsessed with into a tool that teaches them to use it better, rather than telling them they need to stop it. Telling kids that the thing they love is wrong is probably a non-starter.... It just doesn't work very well." But don't trust my transcribing - listen to the whole fascinating video!

Sexting: The new spin-the-bottle?

Speaking at the 78th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Canadian professor Peter Cumming of York University said sexting is just the modern version of "spin the bottle," Agence France-Presse reports, and the uproar over it is overblown, UPI reports. He said the reaction "is just the modern version of the outrage in the 1950s about the way Elvis Presley moved provocatively on stage." I agree with the part about how adolescent behavior - and adult reactions to it - haven't really changed. Two things have changed, though: the presence of the fixed and mobile Internet in the equation and the unprecedented predicament in which child pornography law puts adolescents, the one in which they can be both perpetrator and victim at the same time. That puts police and prosecutors in an extremely difficult predicament as well, and we can only hope that they will apply these laws - which have not caught up with what technology allows sometimes impulsive, sometimes mean, always experimental and risk-assessing adolescents to do - with great care and play more of an educational than a prosecutorial role with sexting cases. I hope they'll consider statements like that of Professor Cumming thoughtfully, unlike Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who "has attacked [Cumming's] contention that teenagers should not face child pornography charges for electronically sending nude pictures of themselves to others," the Deseret News reports. Because the law is extremely unforgiving in these cases, and I suspect that few sexting cases involving minors involve either malicious or criminal intent (I wish an enterprising reporter or researcher could look up all news reports of sexting going back to when it was just called "nude photo-sharing" and report on the motives behind the cases). In a recent sexting case, police in Nampa, ID, were trying to figure out how pictures sent by a freshman to her boyfriend got distributed around their high school, KTVB in Idaho reports. [Here are some of my early posts on naked photo-sharing. See also "Sexting overblown? Yes and No."]

Sexting repercussions: Update

Here's a sampler of sexting cases (in three states) in the news this past week: Two Ohio 15-year-olds pleaded guilty to "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" and have been sentenced, the boy to 30 days' house arrest and the girl to writing a research paper for the court on the dangers of sexting and both to 100 hours of community service and no cellphones for 30 days, WHIO Radio reports. Investigators from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office showed up at the homes of five Florida teens aged 14-16 with search warrants and "seized their cell phones and home computers, in a stunning sexting investigation," a Fox TV station there reports. As of Tuesday they had not been arrested, but the stakes are high in Florida if they are (see "FL teen a registered sex offender for sexting"). And in Nebraska, a 15-year-old high school freshman has been convicted and sentenced to 12 months' probation for sending nude photos to a 13-year-old girl, the first sexting conviction of a minor in that part of the state, the North Platte Bulletin reports. See also "Sending of Explicit Photos Can Land Teens in Legal Fix" in the Washington Post and our "Tips to Prevent Sexting" at ConnectSafely.org. You might also appreciate this meaty conversation on sexting on Capitol Hill, offering three important perspectives: that of law enforcement, from Monique Roth, senior counsel at the US Justice Department; Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough is Enough, on the sexualized media environment; and Ting-Yi Oei, assistant principal of Freedom High School in Loudoun County, Va., on sexting incident at his school (see also "Asst. principal tells his own story").

The role of betrayal in sexting

Well put: "A brokered trust leads to broken trust when those photos are sent into the ether," writes Ellen Goodman in a column about sexting in the Boston Globe. The vast majority of those naked photos are sent to romantic partners, experts say, with "a guy saying, 'You don't trust me? You won't send me a naked picture?'" And what happens later that can lead to serious psychological and legal trouble (the wider sharing of those photos) is often about betrayed trust. Little of this is new - photography (remember Polaroids at parties?), brokered and betrayed trust in relationships, sexism (betrayed girls get called sluts while the betrayer gets to go ruin someone else's reputation). What is new is the *extra* unintended exposure (party Polaroids could possibly be obtained, ripped up, and tossed). That exposure is mostly bad. Goodman led with the bad part - high-profile cases of teens being subjected to truly nasty peer behavior or overzealous prosecutors or both (Vermont, Utah, and Ohio are all trying to reduce the possibility of criminal charges for sexting, the Globe reports). But the one ray of light is that there's a national discussion about the need to "Trust but verify," adjust laws and apply them appropriately, and "raise the social penalty for being a certified creep."

Ed campaign on sexting in Oz

Not at all surprising (because what are borders or continents, where social technology's concerned), the New South Wales government is educating its teens about the risks of sexting too. "The government has produced a fact sheet for schools, parents and young people to warn about the possible lifetime consequences of the growing practice," the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The NSW minister of community services told the Morning Herald that her department "had received reports of girls as young as 13 sending sexually explicit images to their boyfriends' mobiles, which are then passed on to other friends." Like in the US, youth are being warned that the practice is illegal. Interestingly, there's nothing in either the article or the Community Services Department's Fact Sheet on Sexting about the risk to children of being convicted for producing, possessing, or distributing child pornography, as can happen in the US (though there are efforts in some US states to take criminal prosecution off the table). The NSW Fact Sheet refers to the risks of "public humiliation, cyberbullying, or even sexual assault." For US-style info on sexting, check out our tips at ConnectSafely.org. Meanwhile, the Australian federal government has appointed a Youth Advisory Group of 305 11-to-17-year-olds to "advise the Government on strategies to tackle online bullying," NEWS.com.au reports.

Asst. principal tells his own story

Two months after his boss, the principal of Freedom High School in Loudoun County, Va., told him to store a photo of a semi-naked girl on his computer "in case we needed it later," Asst. Principal Ting-Yi Oei was charged with "failure to report suspected child abuse" and put on administrative leave (he hadn't been able to ID the girl because the photo was taken from the neck down). That was last May, he writes in a commentary in the Washington Post. Only this month did his legal ordeal end, with the charges against him thrown out of court, as earlier reported (here's my post). Thought you'd like to get his take on what happened. It's a long story, so I'll leave the details of this latest misapplication of child-porn law in a sexting case to the teller.

Law would decriminalize sexting in VT

Legislation has passed Vermont's Senate and is pending in the House that would decriminalize but not legalize teen sexting. The bill would take child-porn charges off the table in cases where teens send or receive nude images of themselves or peers, Yahoo Tech News reports. The bill wouldn't legalize sexting, but "would carve out an exemption from prosecution for child pornography for 13-to-18-year-olds on either the sending or receiving end of sexting messages, so long as the sender voluntarily transmits an image of himself or herself." Yahoo adds that Vermont prosecutors could "still use laws against lewd and lascivious conduct and against disseminating indecent materials to a minor." The Vermont legislation makes sense for most sexting incidents - those involving impulsive, self-destructive, or "romantic" consensual behavior among peers - but some legal scholars feel serious charges may need to remain an option in cases where malicious or criminal intent's involved. The Yahoo article details criminal charges teens face for sexting in a number of states.

School admin's legal nightmare in sexting case

The story of a high school assistant principal accused of possessing child pornography in a student sexting incident illustrates how unjustly child porn law can be applied. Even in the current "environment of prosecutorial excess, [this] case [of a 60-year-old former Fullbright exchange teacher, Peace Corps volunteer, and 30-year veteran educator] stands out as likely the first to entangle an adult who came in possession of an image that even police admit wasn't pornographic, and who did so simply in the course of doing his job," Wired blogger Kim Zetter reports. He "spent $150,000 and a year of his life defending himself in a ... legal nightmare triggered by a determined county prosecutor and nurtured by a growing hysteria over technology-enabled child porn at America's schools." It's a long, complicated story, so pls go to Zetter's post for the details, but she reports that a Virginia judge finally through the case out of court on March 31.

FL teen a registered sex offender for sexting

Teens do not want a late-night fit of anger channeled into a few seconds' worth of clicks on a cellphone to lead to anything close to what happened to Phillip Alpert, who will be in Florida's sex offender registry until he's 43, CNN reports. He told CNN he had just turned 18, he was tired, and it was the middle of the night "when he sent a naked photo of his 16-year-old girlfriend [for 2½ years], a photo she had taken and sent him, to dozens of her friends and family after an argument." Arrested and charged with distributing child pornography, he was later convicted and "sentenced to five years' probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender." Please see the CNN article for how US states handle child porn crimes, which - unfortunately, until US policymakers come up with a better idea - is how sexting is dealt with under US state and federal laws. What makes this complicated for law enforcement is, sexting is not always impulsive behavior by teenagers who know nothing about the law. Sometimes it's premeditated and malicious (e.g., bullying) or even criminal (blackmail or sexual abuse), in which case, Catholic U. Prof. Mary Leary and other legal scholars believe prosecution of minors should not be taken off the table (see "Self-produced child porn").

I wonder if it would it help to look at how other countries are dealing with sexting. When a Toronto TV reporter contacted ConnectSafely today, I learned that Canadian child porn law is a little easier on juveniles - more reasonable, I think, even though "sexting" has barely hit the public radar there, he told me. He pointed me to a thoughtful Macleans magazine article, reporting that, in Canada, "it’s not illegal for two teenagers under the age of 18 to carry naked photographs of one another, provided it's [consensual activity and] for private viewing only." It becomes child porn when one of them sends it around, and charges are for that distribution not against the minor who took the photo, according to Maclean. I haven't seen reports on UK law where sexting's concerned, but I noted that "90 children in the UK have been cautioned [presumably by law enforcement people] as a result of posting sexual material of themselves or their underage friends online or on their mobile phones," according to The Daily Mail, which indicates to me that those 90 children weren't arrested and that UK law enforcement may be playing the largely educational role that the realities of adolescent behavior and development demand of law enforcement where sexting's concerned. [For some research-based tips on how to deal with sexting in the US, click here.]

Now available: Tips to prevent 'sexting'

Hey, readers. Will you help us spread the word and make "sexting" a short-lived trend (by minimizing the number of children being prosecuted!)? We just posted our Tips to Prevent Sexting at ConnectSafely.org. They're based on solid research - conversations with police, prosecutors, and legal scholars at local, state, and federal levels). If we missed or muddied anything, feedback most welcome! In any case, we think that, once they have the facts, teens themselves will help minimize this problem.

Sexting, the video version

This story illustrates how child porn law applies to a lot more than still photos on phones. Police in Massachusetts are "investigating charges" against three teens who they alleged recorded video of two engage in sex and distributed the video to junior high students, WCBV TV Boston reported. In addition to child-pornography charges, statutory rape and wiretapping charges are being considered, police said (the latter if audio was involved). "Police said the video was taken at a home, not at the school. The alleged victim, a girl under 16, told them she did not realize she was being captured on cell phone. She went to police with her parents when she realized the video was circulating," WCBV added.

Teen sexting prosecutions: Negative reactions

A federal judge has barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three teenage girls in a sexting case. "US District Judge James Munley said he was issuing a restraining order on Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick because his proposed action would violate freedom of speech and parental rights," Reuters reports. The ruling came after the ACLU last week said it would sue District Attorney Skumanick for his approach to child-pornography law (see my item on this). Also last week, Maureen Kanka, "the mother of the New Jersey girl whose death inspired Megan's Law," criticized "prosecutors who charge teenagers with child porn for distributing nude photos of themselves," the Associated Press reported. Apparently she was referring to a New Jersey case in which a 14-year-old girl was charged with distributing child pornography for posting nude photos of herself on MySpace. Kanka said the prosecutors "are harming the children more than helping them."

ACLU sues prosecutor in sexting case

In a federal lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Pennsylvania district attorney who has "threatened to charge [three] girls with felony child porn violations over digital photos they took of themselves," Wired reports. "The lawsuit says the threat to prosecute the minors 'is unprecedented and stands anti-child-pornography laws on their head'." Wired adds that District Attorney George Skumanick is running for re-election in May. This is the worst-case scenario that parents and teens need to be aware of: a zealous prosecutor and minors with no criminal intent (or even awareness that their behavior was illegal). A New York Times blogger painted the legal picture pretty graphically today, showing how laws written to protect children have not caught up with "the dicey mix of teenagers’ age-old sexual curiosity, notoriously bad judgment and modern love of electronic sharing." I do believe, though, that merely sharing this story with young people at your house or school is all the education most of them need to avoid sexting. A few more details on Skumanick's approach: Wired blogger Kim Zetter reports that "in a meeting with the students and their parents, he said he would file felony charges against the students unless they agreed to six months of probation, among other terms. He gave the parents 48 hours to agree. The parents of the three girls in the ACLU suit refused to sign. Skumanick then threatened to charge the girls with producing child porn unless their parents agreed to the probation, and sent the teenagers to a five-week, 10-hour education program to discuss why what they did was wrong and what it means to be a girl in today's society." [See also our sexting prevention tips at ConnectSafely.org, and this from my co-director Larry Magid about the need for calm discussion.]

Sexting overblown? Yes and *no*

Not having heard the term "sexting" before the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed her, one 17-year-old referred to the practice of sending nude images of one's self or peers on phones as "lame" and plain-old drama creation. Her comment "echoes a view shared by sexual-health educators, teen advocates and academics gathering in San Francisco [last] week for Sex Tech, a conference that promotes sexual health among youth through technology. They believe that the sexting 'trend' is a cultural fascination du jour and is way overblown," the Chronicle reports. But, they indicate, it's also a very risky way to act out normative sexual curiosity (if that's what's involved and not peer pressure or bullying).

Where minors are concerned, sexting is definitely not overblown. Besides the psychological consequences of teens having intimate photos of themselves sent or posted anywhere, anytime, in perpetuity, the practice is illegal. Under current child pornography laws, taking, sending, and receiving nude photos of minors is production, distribution, and possession of child pornography. Right now these laws are extremely black-and-white and don't distinguish between sexting and "traditional" child porn trafficking. The piece in the UK's Daily Mail I blogged about last week suggests that sexting is becoming a social norm, and a recent survey said a third of young adults and 20% of teens had posted nude or semi-nude photos or video of themselves (which also means 80% haven't, sex educators pointed out in the Chronicle). The 20% figure seems high, but even if sexting is becoming normative, the bottom line is: the law hasn't caught up with the norm and - as long as bullying is, if not a norm, a reality of adolescent life - where teens are involved, concern about sexting is justified! They need to be educated about both the legal and psychological consequences (see also "The Net effect"). My hope is that law enforcement people called in by schools to deal with these cases will treat them as "teachable moments" and play an educational role - not send these cases to prosecutors. [Last week I blogged about a wise district attorney who does not want them to reach his desk.]

Self-published child porn in UK

I just posted on youth as self-published pornographer, but here's an exhaustive take on the subject from across the Atlantic. In the UK so far, 90 UK youth "have been cautioned as a result of posting sexual material of themselves or their underage friends online or on their mobile phones," the Daily Mail reports. I'll tell you more about the piece in a second but want to zoom right in on the operative word "cautioned." Not "arrested," which is what I'm seeing in too many news reports about sexting over here. That, I think, is what has to be law enforcement's role where sexting's concerned: helping youth understand the tragic, potentially life-changing implications of this behavior. Police are often called in when these incidents involving students occur, and rightly so because this is technically child pornography we're talking about, and producing and distributing such is a crime. But where minors are concerned, this is much more a behavioral than a criminal issue, and I feel it has to be dealt with as such. At the very least school counselors and parents need to be involved as well (I'd appreciate your thoughts on this via anne(at)netfamilynews.org or our forum at ConnnectSafely.org). The article's exaggerated in places (e.g., "the avalanche of pornographic material beamed onto every computer screen unless it is actively blocked"), but the reporter, a foreign correspondent who'd just finished researching online pornography for BBC Radio 4 and - before talking with many UK secondary-school students about it - "was not prepared to hear they were also producing it" and to what extent. And she's a mother of three girls, 12, 14, and 15. "I spoke to children from a range of public and state schools. It is certainly not the case that this behaviour is being perpetrated by those from a deprived background or those who lack intelligence. In fact, it's the privileged, supposedly brightest youngsters who are most at risk," she reports.

How 1 county is dealing with sexting

In western Massachusetts, the Berkshire County district attorney plans to "produce anti-sexting programs that will begin airing in county schools this spring," the Berkshire Eagle reports. His goal is to keep the problem from growing - he told the Eagle "he would prefer to deal with such matters outside the criminal justice system. If need be, though, offenders could be charged with any of a number of felony crimes." He didn't name the high school where the incident happened because he said he didn't want to stigmatize it, but "more than a dozen students were implicated in the sexting incident, which involved the circulation of explicit photos of a local girl.... No one has been criminally charged in connection with the case. [For other perspectives on the subject, see Slate's "Textual misconduct" and The American Culture blog's "Normalization of Pornography Cited in Texting Issue."]

Kids as inadvertent child pornographers

To sometimes tragic effect, that is what the usually impulsive, unthinking behavior behind sexting can lead to: child child pornographers. "A growing number of teens are ending up in serious trouble for sending racy photos with their cellphones. Police have investigated more than two dozen teens in at least six states this year for sending nude images of themselves in cellphone text messages, which can bring a charge of distributing child pornography," USATODAY reports. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children told USATODAY that, of the 2,100 children it has identified as victims of online porn, a quarter of them "initially sent the images themselves" - photos that can end up mixed in with adult-produced child-abuse images circulating online (Austrian police just reported breaking up a child porn ring operating in 170 countries, the International Herald Tribune reports). Two teens 15 and 18 were recently charged with soliciting and possessing child porn with the intent to distribute after seeking nude pictures from three other kids, one in elementary school, USATODAY adds. This is why I feel critical thinking - about what they send and upload as much as what they receive and download - is essential to youth online safety going forward. Have your kids either read this item or the full USATODAY piece, and they'll probably think twice about being manipulated or impulsive in this way and may even help a friend avoid being so. [See also "Social media literacy: The new Internet safety," "Teen suicide over sexting," and a number of other NFN items on sexting.]

Teen's suicide over sexting

It's a tragedy no parent can imagine, and this teenage suicide was over nude photos she sent to her "boyfriend" last spring. Her mother, Cynthia Logan, went public on national television today so that other teens won't make the same mistake. The sexting incident involving her only child, then-18-year-old Jesse Logan. NBC reports that "she had sent nude pictures of herself to a boyfriend. When they broke up, he sent them to other high school girls. The girls were harassing her, calling her a slut and a whore. She was miserable and depressed, afraid even to go to school." Her mother told Today "she never knew the full extent of her daughter’s anguish until it was too late. Cynthia Logan only learned there was a problem at all when she started getting daily letters from her daughter’s school reporting that the young woman was skipping school." The tragedy illustrates the importance of getting and keeping young people talking with parents or other trusted adults about the online and on-phone part of their social lives too. A recent study at UCLA found that only 10% of youth report incidents of digital harassment and bullying (see "Online harassment: Not telling parents."

Sexting in Canada too

"Canadian teenagers are increasingly finding themselves in trouble after images of themselves get posted on the Internet," reports the CBC, citing reports from Cybertip.ca, Canada's equivalent to the US's CyberTipline.com. "Respect Yourself" is the message of Cybertip.ca's new campaign to raise awareness of this problem. "In more than six years, 5% of 30,000 tips have been received from teenagers ... and many of those cases involved a young person who has either posted a picture of himself or herself on the Internet or forwarded a nude photo to a boyfriend and then regretted that after the photo has been shared with others," the online-child-exploitation hotline says. The toughest part of this is how hard it is to delete those photos. Even if responsible sites with customer-service departments delete them, there's no guarantee they weren't copied and posted elsewhere beforehand. [Another very kid-friendly education site for avid texters and photo-sharers is ThatsNotCool.com (see my coverage, "Stalking texters, sexting monsters."]

Teen's alleged online sex scam

Of course the worst news gets the most coverage - more than 500 news outlets in the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, India, Australia, and Bosnia Herzegovina, among other countries, turned up in a Google News search on this. But there is something to be learned even from this sex extortion story about an 18-year-old in Wisconsin, described by a "shocked" friend to a Wisconsin radio station as a "goody-two-shoes kind of guy" but accused of "posing as a female on Facebook in a plot to trick at least 31 male classmates into sending nude pictures of themselves and then using the images to blackmail them into performing sex acts, The Register in the UK reports. The takeaway is that even when the site you use is all about socializing with friends in "real life" - which is usually a pretty good protection measure - don't develop a false sense of security. Not everyone is on the up and up even in real life. The other takeaway: that this, as The Register put it, is just "the latest graphic example of the heap of trouble waiting for naive teens who send sexually explicit images of themselves over the email or text messages. Last month, six high school students in Pennsylvania were charged under state child pornography statutes for sending and receiving nude images of each other using cell phones. Last year, a 15-year old girl was arrested on felony child pornography charges for allegedly sending nude pictures of herself to classmates."

Digital dating abuse

Sexting (sending naked photos of oneself or peers) is one form of it. Other forms: nonstop text messages from/to a boyfriend or girlfriend (or anyone), a digital form of stalking; sending around unbecoming photos or videos of someone via phone or Web; hacking into a peer's profile and cruelly misrepresenting him in comments that look like they're coming from him; or posting mean comments to someone in her social network profile or via an app like "Honesty Box." "The behaviors can be a warning sign that a teenager may become a perpetrator or a victim of domestic violence," reports the New York Times, citing the view of the San Francisco-based Family Violence Prevention Fund. In fact, the Fund, a public-awareness nonprofit, calls this "digital dating violence," not just "abuse" (it can also be called "cyberbullying"). If not physical, it certainly can do violence to people lives, including the lives of young people who send nude photos of "themselves." For example, this month six high school students in western Pennsylvania were charged with child pornography, three girls with distribution (for taking and sending nude photos of themselves) and three boys with possession, a commentator at CNET reports. The Minneapolis Star Tribune today reported that "all but one of the students accepted a lesser misdemeanor charge, partly to avoid a trial and further embarrassment." But they were charged with serious crimes, and two Florida teens fared much worse in 2007 (see "Teens' child-porn convictions upheld"). "Whatever the outcome, the mere fact that child pornography charges were filed at all is stirring debate among students and adults," according to the Star Tribune. Law professor Mary Leary wrote in the Virginia Journal of Law and Policy last summer that, though prosecution in such cases shouldn't be mandatory, it "should remain an option for the state."

Stalking texters, sexting monsters: A bit of help

You wouldn't think that the guy who made "Extreme PB&J Sandwich Making" would be an excellent source of advice on establishing digital boundaries. But YouTube and post-YouTube star Brandon Hardesty delivers brilliantly in his 4.5 minute video "What If" in ThatsNotCool.com. If your kid even knows someone who knows someone who's getting pressured by a peer to send nude photos of him or herself via cellphone, you might appreciate watching Brandon playing the roles of Mom, Dad, guidance counselor, and boyfriend as potential confidants in a situation like this. You might also love the quite fruity "Pressure Pic Problem," providing a slightly less agnostic perspective than Brandon's. I did. ThatsNotCool.com is brilliant too. It's co-created and -sponsored by the Family Violence Prevention Fund, Ad Council, and Office on Violence Against Women "to address new and complicated problems between teens who are dating or hooking up — problems like constant and controlling texting, pressuring for nude pictures, and breaking into someone's email or social-networking page." Besides the videos, which make for great family discussion talking points, there are "Call-Out Cards" with little messages like "I appreciate your concern for my location EVERY TWO MINUTES" that can be downloaded, emailed, or sent to MySpace or Facebook friends and annoying acquaintances. There are also a discussion forum where people can give and receive advice from peers and a Help section where they can reach out for professional help. BTW, for a bit of context: Nielsen Mobile reports that a typical US teen sends and receives more than 1,700 text messages a month (that's more than 50 a day).