Sexting: innocent or fraught with dangers

Doctor Pavlov would ring a bell at his dog's feeding time and after a while the dog would salivate whenever he heard a bell.

It would be interesting to test the theory on US politician Anthony Weiner and his former "sexting" partner Sydney Leathers by measuring their levels of sexual excitement whenever they heard a cellphone message alert.

Of course, cellphones are also instruments of mass information dissemination, so now the message alert causes Weiner to blush, and Leathers to check her bank balance.

But they are by no means the only couple indulging in the sexting phenomenon.

For the uninitiated, sexting involves sending explicit messages or photographs via cellphones or the Internet to someone you know.

According to a recent survey conducted by an American polling group, Pew Research Centre, only 15% of adult cellphone users have ever received a sext, and just 6% admit to sending one. That's still a lot of unmanned body parts floating around in cyberspace.

As with most things technological, teens are hopping on to the bandwagon far faster than adults.

Sexting behaviour

According to a July 2012 issue of Archives of Paediatric & Adolescent Medicine, one in four adolescents in the US admits to sexting behaviour.

What these sacks of lust don't seem to realise is that their one-on-one messages are by no means private.

Research conducted by the Internet Watch Foundation revealed that up to 88% of self-made explicit images were ''stolen" from their original upload locations and made available on other websites, in particular porn sites collecting sexual images of young people.

The report also highlighted the severe depression suffered by ''sexters" who lost control over their images, either because they had been shared by the intended recipient, or hacked from private devices.

A study by Michelle Drouin, assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University, which analysed sexting behaviours, found that males of all ages commonly showed sexually explicit photos of their girlfriends to their friends.

Even with the advent of apps like Snapchat, which started out as a sexting game for people who wanted to message without fear or consequence, content is not safe.

Technology changes the game

Snapchat (and the Facebook version, Poke) is an app that is meant to allow you to control how long you want your recipient to see your message before it self-destructs. But there are loopholes.

A screen-grab of an image can be taken before it disappears and it's also possible to download simple software that saves images and videos to a hard drive.

Although technology is changing the ''game of sex" with sexting and apps like Bang With Friends (a supposedly anonymous way to find out if any of your Facebook friends are interested in sleeping with you), in some senses, sexual roles have stayed the same.

According to psychologist Jennie Ashwel, a guidance councillor at St Stithians College in Johannesburg, girls are under even more sexual pressure than ever because of sexting.

''They are persuaded to send explicit messages and pictures by their boyfriends," she said.

"It's astounding what comes up on a 12-year-old's phone," Ashwel said.

Teens, no matter how much counselling they receive, tend to remain unaware of the serious legal and emotional implications that sexting can have.

Sexting is fun and flirtatious, but hopefully the many scandals around the practice have taught us to think before we click - and to ask ourselves: Would we put that picture or text on the school or office noticeboard?

Source: The Times via I-Net Bridge