Sexting
London, ON -- A survey of leading stories from major news outlets is enough to demonstrate that technological advancement has outpaced the legislative mechanisms intended to regulate it. In no place is this more evident than in the pervasive presence of wireless devices. The ubiquity of laptops, cell phones, blackberries, and iPods – all networked through invisible currents of information – are changing the way people relate to themselves and to the world. And from illegal downloading to laws governing the use of hand-held devices, legislators the world over are having a hard time keeping-up.
For a generation born in the early 1990s – alternately known to demographers as the Echo Boomers, Generation Y, and the Millennials – there has been no other reality than the online one we find ourselves in today. Not surprisingly, it is this portion of the population that has been most fully immersed in the wireless world. Increasing instances of sexting – a blended expression combining the words ‘sex’ and ‘texting’ – are a logical extension of this generation’s adolescent development in a technologically advanced society.
But the conveyance of sexually-themed notes, solicitations and pictures via wireless networks remains problematic for parents, politicians and police, who have identified exploitation and blackmail as two negative results of sexting.
References to sexting in the media go back to 2005 but the phenomenon itself has long since gone global. A recent conviction in the highly-publicized Stefanie Rengel murder case – which continues in Toronto throughout May - put sexting squarely in the public eye when incriminating evidence delivered on a wireless platform implicated a suspect at the center of a fatal love triangle.
Many more cases involving sexting are appearing before American courts as well, giving the issue increased national exposure. On May 2, police in Henrico, Virginia announced an investigation into the discovery of naked pictures on laptops supplied by a local school while only days earlier – in western Pennsylvania – three teenage males and three teenage females faced child pornography charges for sending nude or semi-nude photos to one another. “This is a serious felony,” said a legal analyst observing the Pennsylvania case. “They could be facing many years in prison.”
Jurisdictions in the US have approached sexting in various ways. In April 2009, law-makers in Vermont introduced a bill that would allow for consensual exchange of images between persons 13 to 18 years of age. Passing these images onto others would remain a crime. In Utah, instances of sexting under 18 are tried as misdemeanours rather than as a more serious felony charge. A similar model is being explored by legislators in Ohio after the suicide of Jessie Logan, an 18-year-old girl driven over the brink because her naked photograph was forwarded to everyone in her school.
In certain ways, sexting is the 21st century equivalent of a suggestive note or sketch passed between two lovestruck teenagers buzzing with hormones. But on another level, it is an entirely different beast altogether. Private lives are less private because of the Internet, and the growing prevalence of sexting suggests a change in human relations similar to those observed in the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
There is something else about sexting, which is also true for all online communications in the digital age – a racy note can be shredded, a paper trail destroyed but once an image or text is in the wireless ether, it’s potentially there forever – or until the power goes out – whichever comes first.
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