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!