People have been using media to talk about sex for a long time.
Love letters, phone sex, racy polaroids.
There's even a story of a girl who eloped with a man that she met over the telegraph
in 1886.
Today we have sexting, and I am a sexting expert.
Not an expect sexter.
Though, I do know what this means, I think you do too.
I have been studying sexting since the media attention to it began in 2008.
I wrote a book on the moral panic about sexting.
And here's what I found:
most people are worrying about the wrong thing.
They're trying to just prevent sexting from happening entirely.
But let me ask you this:
As long as it's completely consensual, what's the problem with sexting?
People are into all sorts of things that you may not be into,
like blue cheese or cilantro.
Sexting is certainly risky, like anything that's fun,
but as long as you're not sending an image to someone who doesn't want to receive it,
there's no harm.
What I do think is a serious problem is when people share private images of others
without their permission.
And instead of worrying about sexting, what I think we need to do
is think a lot more about digital privacy.
The key is consent.
Right now most people are thinking
about sexting without really thinking about consent at all.
Did you know we currently criminalize teen sexting?
It can be a crime because it counts as child pornography,
if there's an image of someone under 18 and it doesn't even matter
if they took that image of themselves and shared it willingly.
So we end up with this bizarre legal situation
where two 17-year-olds can legally have sex in most U.S. states
but they can't photograph it.
Some states have also tried passing sexting misdemeanor laws
but these laws repeat the same problem
because they still make consensual sexting illegal.
It doesn't make sense
to try to ban all sexting to try to address privacy violations.
This is kind of like saying,
let's solve the problem of date rape by just making dating completely illegal.
Most teens don't get arrested for sexting, but can you guess who does?
It's often teens who are disliked by their partner's parent.