Facts on Young People Sharing Explicit Pics
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The show that asks the questions other shows are afraid to ask. The Last Show with David Cooper. For young people, sexting each other is often framed as harmless experimentation, as fun, or a serious problem. But new research suggests a somewhat more complicated and troubling reality for teens navigating intimacy digitally, where their privacy can disappear in seconds. I'm here with Justin Patchen, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, to discuss just this topic. Justin, welcome to the show.
Hey, David, thanks for having me.
So I think every parent's fear is photos exist of their kid that their kids are willingly taking at the time and they're going to get out there. Do parents wildly overestimate how much of this activity is actually going on with young people?
Well, there's a couple ways I can answer that question. I think parents sometimes maybe underestimate the risk, but in the media and generally speaking, we overestimate the risk. So our research shows that about one in four
What alarming trends did the sexting study reveal about young people?
teens has sent an explicit image of themselves to others. Now that number is higher than it once was. It's gone up over the last 10 years we've been studying this. But that still means more than 75% of kids aren't doing this. So I think that's important to stress because I think the more we push this narrative that all teens are doing this, the more it actually might encourage the behavior, because if we know anything about adolescents, it's that they want to do what they think their friends are doing. So it is a concern, certainly, and it's something parents need to talk to their kids about.
Let's talk about some of the harms because I do think the media overblows it. I'm sure there are instances where two kids or young people are engaging activity. It never gets out on the internet. Fine, whatever. We were all kids once. But what about the cases where some harm really occurs?
Well, that's right. And I think as much as, you know, I'm a parent of a teen, as much as I wouldn't want my son to engage in these behaviors, if, you know, he was doing so in a private relationship, nobody else found out about it, you know, committed consent, the whole thing, then fine. The real concern, of course, lies in when those images are shared beyond their original target, right? So If boyfriend and girlfriend share them with each other, whatever. Again, we might have some concerns with that. But the concerns are when it's shared with a friend, when it's posted online, when those images get distributed widely. And of course, the other concern is, technically speaking, If a 15, 16, 17-year-old creates an image like this, shares it with somebody else, they've now created and distributed child pornography.
So technically, by the letter of the law, there could be some significant legal implications for that. Thankfully, I think we're getting a little bit better at handling those situations more informally, but the reality is there could be some pretty serious consequences.
Got it. Now, what percentage of teens who engage with this behavior experience some level of harm, some level of consent breach, friends seeing it and ending up on the internet in the extreme cases?
Do parents overestimate the prevalence of sexting among teens?
What percentage of kids sort of experience that?
Well, we explored a couple angles of that in our most recent research. And so among the 25% or so who had sent an image to somebody else, nearly half said that image was shared with a third party without their knowledge. That's a concern, right? Nearly half. And about a half had experienced sextortion, meaning somebody threatened them for harm, usually threatening to share the images with family and friends or posting them online. If they didn't acquiesce to some demand, oftentimes you need to send me more images or you need to send me money, gift cards, cash app. And so at least with respect to those two potential harms, the risk is basically 50-50.
That is extremely alarming to me. When you saw those numbers as someone who researches this stuff, did you kind of do a double take?
We very much did, and I'm the one who analyzes the data, and I looked at it and just triple-checked to make sure we didn't put the decimal in the wrong place.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:07
2
What alarming trends did the sexting study reveal about young people?
1:07–3:18
3
Do parents overestimate the prevalence of sexting among teens?
3:18–5:38
4
What percentage of teens are actually sharing explicit images?
5:38–8:24
5
What are the potential harms associated with sexting?
8:24–9:59
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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