Safer Sexting

"Safe sexting" involves teaching teens about the possible consequences of participating in sexting while equipping them with knowledge to minimize harm.

Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin of cyberbullying.org advocate for an approach to teen sexting called "safe sexting." Similar to the failure of abstinence-only sex education to delay teen sex, prevent teen pregnancies, or stop the spread of sexually-transmitted infections, simply telling teens not to sext isn't working.

Instead, Hinduja and Patchin (2019) advocate for giving students the knowledge they need to make informed decisions when being intimate with others, including online. "Safe sexting" involves teaching teens about the possible consequences of participating in sexting while equipping them with knowledge to minimize harm. This does not mean encouraging sexting. Instead, it's about recognizing that some teens will experiment with various behaviors, including sexting. It is better for them to have guidance than to have no education at all (Patchin & Hinduja, 2019).

Hinduja and Patchin recommend these strategies for safer sexting:

1. If someone sends you a sext, do not send it to - or show - anyone else. This could be considered nonconsensual sharing of pornography, and there are laws prohibiting it and which outline serious penalties (especially if the image portrays a minor).

2. If you send someone a sext, make sure you know and fully trust them. “Catfishing” - where someone sets up a fictitious profile or pretends to be someone else to lure you into a fraudulent romantic relationship (and, often, to send sexts) - happens more often than you think. You can, of course, never really know if they will share it with others or post it online but do not send photos or video to people you do not know well.

3. Do not send images to someone who you are not certain would like to see it (make sure you receive textual consent that they are interested). Sending unsolicited explicit images to others could also lead to criminal charges.

4. Consider boudoir pictures. Boudoir is a genre of photography that involves suggestion rather than explicitness. Instead of nudes, send photos that strategically cover the most private of private parts. They can still be intimate and flirty but lack the obvious nudity that could get you in trouble.

5. Never include your face. Of course, this is so that images are not immediately identifiable as yours but also because certain social media sites have sophisticated facial recognition algorithms that automatically tag you in any pictures you would want to stay private.

6. Make sure the images do not include tattoos, birthmarks, scars, or other features that could connect them to you. In addition, remove all jewelry before sharing. Also consider your surroundings. Bedroom pictures could, for example, include wall art or furniture that others recognize.

7. Turn your device’s location services off for all of your social media apps, make sure your photos are not automatically tagged with your location or username, and delete any metadata digitally attached to the image.

8. If you are being pressured or threatened to send nude photos, collect evidence when possible. Having digital evidence (such as screenshots of text messages) of any maliciousness or threats of sextortion will help law enforcement in their investigation and prosecution (if necessary) and social media sites in their flagging and deletion of accounts.

9. Use apps that provide the capability for sent images to be automatically and securely deleted after a certain amount of time. You can never guarantee that a screenshot was not taken, nor that another device was not used to capture the image without you being notified, but using specialized apps can decrease the chance of distribution.

10. Be sure to promptly delete any explicit photos or videos from your device. This applies to images you take of yourself and images received from someone else. Having images stored on your device increases the likelihood that someone – a parent, the police, a hacker - will find them. Possessing nude images of minors may have criminal implications. In 2015, for example, a North Carolina teen was charged with possessing child pornography, even though the image on his phone was of himself.

Reference Patchin, J. and Hinduja, S. (2019). It is time to teach safe sexting. Journal of Adolescent Health, 66(2020), 140-143.