Sexting

Karen gets informed about Sexting

Sexting is being “practised?” in every high school in Australia according to the article by Nicole Brady recently published in The Age .

Whilst the large, eye-catching photo of High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens is inappropriate, the article entitled “Teen sexting: it's illegal, but it's in every high school”, does however, seriously address the legal consequences of sexting and the lack of a consistent policy from either the schools or the police.

Sexting is the act of people taking naked or revealing pictures of themselves and sending them to others via mobile phones or the internet. This practice is becoming more common and according to Susan McLean, a former Victorian policewoman turned cyber safety expert, ''There is not a secondary school in Australia that hasn't had to deal with it.''

The comment ''It is a collision between hormones and technology,'' by Mandy Ross, a senior cyber safety specialist with the Alannah and Madeline Foundation sums it up neatly. For some adolescents the visual communication potential of the mobile phone possessed by most 10 to 17 year old students provides what could appear to be a relatively harmless but none the less exciting way of exploring one’s sexuality. There is a feeling of control when one is in a safe and familiar environment which may lead to uninhibited behaviour which would be out of character in other situations.

''We're certainly seeing more of it [sexting] and what we're seeing is that the children don't understand the consequences of it and the parents don't understand the technology,'' Senior Sergeant Rob Ridley, of the sexual crimes squad, said. ''At the moment everything schools are doing in response to these incidents is pretty random, is uninformed and leaves them wide open to potential litigation,'' said Robyn Treyvaud, a former head at Wesley College who now runs a cyber consultancy.

The ad hoc approaches used by both the police and schools need to be replaced with guidelines which will provide some coherent response to this situation. At a seminar on social media and the law at a Kew private school last month, of the approximately 40 attendees who represented 15 of Melbourne's leading private schools, less than one-third indicated their school had a social media policy.

Ms Treyvaud is piloting the Generation Safe program in two sets of Victorian schools, to develop strategies for dealing with sexting. The pilot gives schools a framework and strategies to use when they are informed of the existence of a sext involving a student - either as the subject, recipient or transmitter of the image.

At present those found guilty of making or possessing child pornography face a 10-year prison sentence and possible registration on the sex offender registry. This is a very severe penalty which could be imposed on an 18 year old receiving a revealing photo from a minor. This law is now under review however it is necessary to address this and other netiquette issues that arise as the proliferation of web 2.0 and web 3.0 technologies continues. The responsibility to educate our young people so that they are aware of the potential consequences of sexting and other internet activities needs to be addressed in the school environment as many parents are not equipped to deal with the issues of either sexuality or technology.