I’ve been doing a lot of reading about teaching social media safety skills. I have some online groups coming up and I want to make sure I am addressing the real issue. I hate to say this cause I think it speaks to my age, but I need to educate myself in the CURRENT research and CURRENT views around sexting. The way that adults/parents view sexting is different from the way teens view it.
A study in 2016, “Sexting: Adolescent’s perceptions of the application used for, motives for, and consequences of sexting” (J. Ouytsel, E. Gool, et al.) in the Journal of Youth Studies found that sexting is actually a quite normal behavior for teens and should be seen as an activity that aids in their development. Sexting was used in romantic relationships to increase connection, to flirt or to experience sexual activity without actually engaging in physical sex.
According to “What Do We Know About Sexting, and When Did We Know it?” by Elizabeth Englander in the Journal of Adolescent Health, “sexting is not [always] strongly correlated with high-risk sexual behavior or poor self-image”. Now it can be, but often times these negative results comes when someone was coerced into sexting or harassed into sexting. Additionally, negative outcomes were more likely to be reported by pre-teens instead of older teens. Oftentimes, the stories we hear are the negative ones and so those are the ones that we pass along and use to scare teens. However, a study in 2018 interviewed teens and found that teens claimed that sexting also led to “enhanced self-confidence, positive self-image, and the strengthening of a romantic relationship”.
I am not saying that sexting is good or bad. But I think when teaching about how to be safe online, using shame and victim blaming (e.g. telling a victim of sexual harassment that it was their fault for sending the nude in the first place) isn’t going to work. Instead of using fear-based teaching we need to use a more normalizing approach. This type of approach would focus on:
- Teaching safe sexting practices (avoid sending nudes with identifying information; turn off location sharing; collect evidence if you are being pressured or blackmailed) (“Behind Their Screens: What teens are Facing (and Adults are Missing) by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James).
- Teaching scripts to use or ways to respond if a friend/acquaintances asks for a text
- Have discussions about their personal values around sex and sexting.