Technology +
Sexuality
Analyzing changing notions of adolescent sexuality and the technologies that aid and facilitate this.
By: Julian Maxymiw
Adolescents today are the first generation to have been born into a world of media where everyone is connected and advancements in technology have greatly altered our lives. The youngest members of society (those born in the late 90s and early 00s) have grown up with the Internet and mobile technologies as a determining factor in many aspects of their life. The young and tech-savvy have seen social and digital media shape their lives and become and indelible part of their own identity. Like any technological advancement, there are downfalls in the development of new digital forms of communication. The discussion surrounding the exploitation and sharing of sexually explicit media involving teenagers has been highlighted extensively in the media in the past couple of years. It’s hard to tell rather the teens have become more sexualized in recent years or whether previous to media boom that this sexualization was just less documented. A number of social media sites and apps have facilitated the use and spread of sexually inappropriate pictures and videos and in this article we will analyze those forms and the information surrounding them.
Personal digital media has allowed for adolescents to connect and share information completely under the radar of adult supervision. The adolescent years are characterized by greater personal independence, but when does this cross the line and have negative consequences? The act of “sexting”, or sending nude or sexually explicit photos via texts, has emerged from the increase in adolescents owning smartphones. The smartphone has become a tool for facilitating the exchange of sexually explicit media. The worst-case scenario for adolescents sharing these pictures is their unintentional spread. As Nora Draper explains in her article; Is Your Teen at Risk? Discourses of adolescent sexting in United States television news: “problems may arise when the individual originally responsible for producing the image loses control and it is shared widely via cell phone or the Internet. At the extreme, the image may “go viral” (Draper, 222). Draper explains that more often than not girls take on the role of the senders of pictures while boys are the receivers, and often distributors. For many young girls, sexting can result in embarrassment, ridicule and bullying.