Would you rather your parents walk in on you having sex or have them find your naked pictures all over the Web?
In an age where technology rules all, secrets don’t stay hidden for long. There are many benefits to these new technologies, but they come with some risks.
Technology has become one of the main sources for couples to communicate to each other. Sex texting, or “sexting,” has become popular among college students and young teenagers.
Like heiress Paris Hilton and “High School Musical” star Vanessa Hudgens found out, it’s not uncommon for nude pictures and sex tapes to leak onto the Internet.
Even pictures that are promiscuous or that seemed funny at the time can come back to embarrass you later.
ASU Mass Communication Law professor Joseph Russomanno said, “It is virtually impossible to claim invasion of privacy with a lot of Web content, especially when so much material is posted voluntarily. In the age of Facebook, this reality is more acute than ever. There is no privacy in public.”
What many people need to realize is that once you hit publish with any status update or picture, it will forever remain live on the Web.
“The web makes maintaining privacy more difficult. But that's largely in part because Web users aren't careful enough. Users need to recognize that anything that goes onto a website has the potential to be taken,” Russomanno said.
The National Campaign surveyed 1,280 people aged 13-26 (653 teens ages 13-19 and 627 young adults aged 20-26). They found that 58 percent of young adults and 38 percent of teens send sexual messages.
Over the past couple years the concern of sexting has grown extremely high. Since people under 18 years of age are considered minors, the people they send explicit pictures to could be looking at legal action for creating and distributing child pornography.
According to the National Conference of State Legislature, in 2010 there were at least 16 states that passed or were considering putting laws on sexting to stop minors from sending nude or semi-nude pictures to each other, including Arizona. The bill states that minors will receive a misdemeanor if they are caught sending a nude picture or even possessing one.
Even if you send a nude picture to a cell phone it takes a simple button push to e-mail it or forward it to Facebook and it could be life altering.
According to The Huffington Post, Jessica Logan, an 18-year-old fresh out of high school, had sent nude pictures to an ex-boyfriend who showed them to other people.
She was being harassed and called degrading names over this. After she went to the funeral of a friend who committed suicide, she hung herself in her room leaving her cell phone in the middle of the room.
Be careful what you send people. It will probably be seen by more than one pair of eyes and can even have an impact on your future.
Before making the decision to start sexting, remember that most breakups don’t end well and the ultimate revenge is forwarding these pictures along to friends or even worse posting them on websites like The Dirty.
Contact Lindsey at lindsey.kupfer@asu.edu
