Generation "sexting"
90 young people in UK "have been cautioned as a result
of posting sexual material of themselves or their underage friends online or on
their mobile phones," the Daily Mail reports.
This phenomena known as "Sexting" is becoming increasingly
commonplace with children and young people.. The accessibility of adult content
online means that children as young as 8 are being exposed to (often) hard-core
pornography online from their own homes. However for some young people this is
taken a step further with them actually creating their films or posting
provocative images online.
Whilst undertaking a report into Online Pornography for BBC Radio 4,
Penny Marshall spent time working with young people to find out their
views where she began to find out more about "sexting" and how children are
creating these images and posting online such as in social networking and video
sharing sites. The full article can be read here
In the past year,
there have been at least two cases in the UK where police have been called into
schools after footage of pupils performing sex acts has been discovered on
their phones; one involved children as
young as 13.
'What some of today's youngsters are doing is, by any
civilised, contemporary standards, obscene,' says John Carr of the UK's
Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety. 'It also happens to be illegal. It's a
genuinely new problem which is the result of the emergence of new technology
together with an increasing cultural tolerance of pornography. It's horrifying,
and we are only now becoming aware of the full extent of the problem. Publishing
any photograph of a child - that's anyone under 18 - which is of a sexual
nature is illegal. So children who put pornographic photographs of themselves
online or share the material via their mobile phones are, technically, breaking
the law.'
The story of Jessie Logan, can show young people the devastating
effects this can have on their lives. Jessie, 18 posted nude photos of herself
to her 19 year old boyfriend, when they split up those images were forwarded
and Jessie was bullied (both online and offline) before eventually hanging
herself.
John Carr says young people who behave inappropriately or
obscenely and post their material online could do lasting and irreversible
damage to their future chances of success.
'Children feel invincible online. They believe the material
they are producing is private. But they are wrong on both counts. We've had
documented accounts of employers, and universities and colleges, trawling the
net looking for information about prospective candidates. This behaviour can
have long lasting effects. What goes online stays online - for ever.'