A children's charity has today confirmed the worrying extent to which 11-18 year-olds use digital technologies for sexual purposes. You may recall that this is something we warned of a couple of months ago, following our seminar on the impact of sexual imagery on young people, when we noted that everyone is concerned about child pornography, but few realise that surveys suggest one in five teenagers participate in "sexting" - exchanging nude and semi-nude photos of themselves via mobile phones or online.

Last autumn a survey revealed just how prolific the practice has become in the USA, where 20 per cent of 13-19 year olds and 33 per cent of 20-26 year olds have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves by phone or online and 39 per cent of teens and 59 per cent of young adults have sent or posted sexually suggestive messages.† Such activity risks increasing peer-pressure to engage in physical sexual activity, exposes young people to greater risk of grooming by paedophiles, adds the distribution of personal sexual images to the existing problem of text bullying, and creates ‘electronic hostages’ for the future (e.g. prospective employers trawling social networking sites before interviews).  It has directly resulted in at least one suicide in the USA and a number of prosecutions for obscenity and child pornography in Australia and the USA.

The Jubilee Centre has been concerned that either this is already a problem that is essentially hidden from parents and other adults or else there is a high probability the trend will begin here in the near future. Today's survey results suggest the former is in fact the case. Either way, this is an important issue that needs to be recognised and addressed. After all, sexual activity among teenagers in the UK is already officially recognised as a problem: despite a ten-year campaign by the government to reduce underage pregnancies, Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe – up to 8.3 per 1000 among under-16s – and 16 to 19-year-olds account for more than a third of some sexually transmitted infections.

Today's interim findings from Beatbullying, who surveyed more than 2,000 secondary school pupils across England, should therefore be of interest to anyone with a responsibility for children:

• 38% said they had received a sexually explicit or distressing text or email (male: 36% | female: 39%)
• 70% of young people knew the sender of the message.
• 45% of messages were from a peer, 23% from a current boyfriend / girlfriend and just 2% from adults
• Of the 25% who received an offensive sexual image, 55% were issued via mobile phone
• 29% have been chatting online chat when someone started talking about offensive or up-setting sexual things (male: 24% | female: 31%)
• In this instance, 45% said the chat was instigated by a peer, 10% by an ex-partner and 2% by an adult

So, next time the news condemns someone arrested on child pornography charges, you might want to ask what is being done to protect young people from themselves and each other or to equip them with a better understanding of the risks involved in 'exploring their sexuality' and giving in to peer-pressure on such matters. You might even want to ask what you are doing to help protect and equip them... To help the Jubilee Centre continue developing resources in this area of sexual ethics, we invite you to contact us or visit the support pages of our website.

† See Sex and Tech by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com

• 
• Share