Rachel was in seventh grade when she got her first sext request. "A guy texted, 'Send me a photo of your boobs,'" recalls Rachel, now a seventeen-year-old junior in a suburb of Boston. She didn't ("I drew a picture and was like, 'Here they are!'"), but she knows of many girls who would have.
Like the girl whose fully naked likeness landed in Rachel's inbox a few years back. The boy who'd originally received the picture, Rachel remembers, forwarded the image to another girl who circulated it all over town. "The whole high school either had the picture or saw it," she says.
In fact, while few students will cop to having sexted—loosely defined as having sent a sexual photo, video, or text message via cell phone—a greater number will admit to having received, or at least viewed, someone else's sext. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project revealed that 18 percent of fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds have been texted photos of completely or nearly naked acquaint-ances. And while passing along a revealing photo of another person is obviously incredibly cruel, what most teens don't know is that forwarding or receiving a sext (even one you didn't ask for) can get you in trouble.
In recent years more than 20 states—including California, New York, and New Jersey—have introduced laws aimed at teens caught sexting. Sexually explicit images of under-eighteen-year-olds are considered child pornography; depending on the state's laws, district attorneys may prosecute anyone who's gotten hold of such a picture, from the subject and photographer to the distributors and recipients. Recently, in Cincinnati, when a teenage girl killed herself after a sext she'd sent to her boyfriend went public, her parents sued the boy for invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress.
Last year three teens in Lacey, Washington, were charged with dissemination of child pornography—a felony punishable by up to 36 weeks in a juvenile detention center and mandatory inclusion in the sex offender registry—after forwarding a nude photo of a former friend that was eventually seen by what some estimate to be hundreds of local kids. (The eighth-grade girl in the photo was not charged, though in some states she could have been.) In the wake of its sexting scandal, the Lacey schools implemented programs to educate students, but other districts have been slow to catch on.
Kat, a seventeen-year-old from San Francisco, says her friends sext all day long, ducking into bathrooms between classes to snap provocative shots destined for their boyfriends or simply guys they're interested in. She says the pictures almost never remain private. In one case, Kat says, she heard about a boy from a different school printing a photo he'd received and handing out copies. While Kat has never sexted, she admits she's thought about it: "I have a boyfriend now, and sometimes I feel like it might lighten the mood or make things fun," she says. "To be honest, I didn't even think about the legal stuff at all."
Many teens don't. "A lot of kids don't know what can happen when they sext," says Stephanie Mihalas, Ph.D., a psychologist in Los Angeles who has worked with many clients who have gotten into trouble for texting explicit photos and videos. "Teenagers tend to think they're invincible: 'That won't happen to me,' 'No one will ever find me,' 'It's just a picture,' et cetera." Morgan, a sixteen-year-old in Rhode Island, says, "I think kids are aware they can get in trouble, but no one ever thinks they'll get caught."
The pressure to sext—even when the social and legal consequences can be so catastrophic—can sometimes compel even the most reluctant of participants. "Boys have asked me to send them pictures, and when I tell them no, they say I'm not adventurous or exciting. I mean, who doesn't want to be fun?" says Charlotte, a seventeen-year-old senior at a boarding school in New Hampshire. Boys feel the pressure too, she says: "I think guys ask for pictures with the expectation that the girl will say no, but they ask anyway because they feel like that's part of being a guy."
While both genders create and send around risqué images—sexting often seems to include a promise of reciprocity, an "I'll send you mine if you send me yours" sort of thing—in almost all instances reported in the media, it's the girl's photo that goes viral, which can make the exchange far more dangerous for her. "Guys are more open to showing their friends pictures of a girl, either because they think she's hot or because they want to make fun of her," Kat says. "But when a girl gets a photo from a boy, she thinks it's special and just for her." Teens who pass along licentious texts sometimes do so as retaliation against a kid they don't like, Mihalas adds.
Some teens argue that sexting shouldn't be illegal and that exchanging racy photos with a boyfriend you trust can be a nonthreatening way to explore sex without the repercussions of engaging in the act itself. "When teachers are hammering you with the scary, nitty-gritty details of sex—yet your friends are pressuring you to do it—engaging in an act reminiscent of sex is almost like a safe compromise," says 20-year-old Lauren,* who often exchanges suggestive pictures and texts with her long-distance boyfriend. "In a mature relationship with someone I trust and am able to talk to, sexting can be really nice. It reminds us of being together, even when we can't be." But others say, why bother? "If you want your partner to see you undressed or barely wearing anything, just do it in person, where you know it's in private," Charlotte says. "Pictures are pointless. It's just not worth it."