Teens, Technology, and Sexting: Criminal Acts or Teachable Moments?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new report on teens and “sexting,” a reference to teens who use their mobile phones to send nude or partially nude photos to their boyfriends and girlfriends. NPR did a story on the report which you can see here. Teens and Sexting was written by Amanda Lenhart of Pew in conjunction with Richard Ling who teaches at the IT University of Copenhagen and Scott Campbell of the University of Michigan. I know Scott and recently had a chance to share a panel with him on social networks. Their report is timely for several reasons. Here are a few of the findings from the study:

• 4% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images of themselves to someone else via text messaging.

• 15% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have received sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images of someone they know via text messaging on their cell phone.

• Older teens are much more likely to send and receive these images; 8% of 17-year-olds with cell phones have sent a sexually provocative image by text and 30% have received a nude or nearly nude image on their phone.

Sexting was just entering our societal vocabulary when I was finishing The Young and the Digital. When a small number of prosecutors around the nation began charging teens who engaged in sexting with disseminating and possessing child pornography the headlines grew. But does it make sense to treat sexting as a crime? Further, how do we make sense of teen sexuality in the digital age?

As I read the Pew report I recalled how some of my research for The Young and the Digital addressed issues of teens, technology, and sexuality. In one of my research interviews Mr. Walker, a high school teacher, discussed his students use of MySpace. He was clearly disturbed by some of the content they were posting and suggested that I see for myself the kinds of online identities his students were creating. So, we surveyed about twenty profiles. It was an eye-opening experience.

In nearly all of the profiles that we looked at, the online identities were incredibly theatrical and aspirational. Specifically, his students were living out many of their fantasies through the identities they created with social media. As we continued to scan the profiles Mr. Walker noted how many of his students were striving to appear older. One thirteen-year-old student, for example, listed his age as fifteen. Likewise, a fourteen-year-old pupil listed her age as sixteen. This, it turns out, is a typical tendency in young people’s online behavior. One study found that while most teens did not pretend to be someone else in the social sites they visit, 86% of teens did pretend to be older online.

In most instances the desire for a more mature persona took on a decidedly sexualized tone, an expression of online identity that worried Mr. Walker. But as we looked at the profiles much of what I noticed was pretty normal behavior. Both the young men and women flirted with the camera while playing to the gazes of the peers they presumed would be watching. The young men proudly displayed bare chests, meticulously places tattoos, and flexed muscles. Similarly, the young women performed in poses that were simultaneously provocative and submissive. I walked away from my conversation with Mr. Walker convinced that much of what I saw was playful and not profane; indeed, exploratory rather than explicit. Of course, sexting takes place in more private communication so we did not see anything even remotely similar to what has been reported.

Teens have long associated sexuality with greater independence, personal control, and a path to adulthood. Many adolescent researchers believe that teens’ exploration of sexuality occurs during a period of immense physical, hormonal, social, and emotional change. Today, teens are using social media to negotiate this period of great change.

Teens have been at the center of my research for more than ten years and one thing is clear. While they may not own much teens develop a very early and clever sense of the most important thing they will ever own: their bodies. In social network sites I noticed that teens take great pride in their rapidly changing bodies and use them quite literally to articulate what I call the “aspirational self.” The incessant desire to control and use their bodies as a source of pleasure and personal expression is a key theme in young people’s journey toward greater social, emotional, and physical maturity. In the universe of user-generated media this is realized in spectacular and sometimes troubling fashion.

Rather than prosecute young people for sexting, we need to use these as “teachable moments” about technology, sexuality, and intimacy. In the digital world teens are acting out many of the scripts and images they consume in popular culture. Unfortunately, the images of femininity and masculinity in pop culture provide narrow notions of gender identity for teens to experiment with. A 2005 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation titled Sex on TV4 found that between 1998 and 2005, the number of sexual scenes on television nearly doubled. In my 2006 book Hip Hop Matters I document the degree to which popular music and music videos marketed to young people incorporate increasingly sexualized content, bodies, and imagery.

It seems that among a minority of teens exchanging nude or semi-nude images with each other is acceptable. In some instances, according to Pew, sexual images “are shared between two romantic partners, in lieu of, as a prelude to, or as a part of sexual activity.” Some teens believe that their peers are pressured by a person they like to send a sexual image via text. One fourteen-year-old girl told Pew that she sent inappropriate images to boys that she liked. “I felt like if I didn’t do it, they wouldn’t continue to talk to me.”

In my research one parent noted how some of the teens in her son’s peer group were using mobile phones to control a romantic partner. Text messages were used as a surveillance tool, “where are you!” or “who are you with?” The Pew report suggests that teens are also using text messages to harass, embarrass, and even pressure each other into some kind of sexual activity.

In the age of social and mobile media, teens’ exploration with sexuality will likely become even more curious and adventurous but not necessarily dangerous. The ability to seek out more information and even exchange their thoughts about sexuality creates the possibilities for learning how to manage sexual situations in ways that are both safe and healthy.

In the case of sexting, technology is not the problem. Consequently, the solution is not to criminalize sexting but to help our kids grapple with the natural curiosities they develop regarding their sexuality. The use of social and mobile media in teen courtship rituals is yet another reason for us to engage our kids about technology, formally in places like schools and informally in homes and media.

Studies like the Pew report illustrate why educating young people about the social consequences of social media is one of the great challenges of life in the digital world.

Rick Perry Gets Personal and Political: Social Media Politics Texas Style

Last week I learned that Texas Governor Rick Perry was embracing social media in an interesting kind of way in the run-up to his 2010 re-election bid. Take a look at this Perry personalized video ad.

In the ad Perry can be seen talking directly to a supporter; someone named Dennis. Apparently, Perry has hired a company to craft about 100,000 of these personalized videos. It’s politics version of Amazon.com’s, “since you bought this book we thought you might be interested in this one.”

According to the Perry campaign the videos are designed to create a more personal connection between the politician and voters. Elise Hue was doing a story for the Texas Tribune, a new non-profit news organization devoted to covering all things politics in Texas. Elise and I talked about the use of social media in political campaigns, the handling of politicians as products, and whether or not any of this is good for democracy. (You can watch her report here).

“So what are the implications for politics?” Elise asked me. “It’s a mixed bag,” I replied. Here is what I meant. It is clear that social media is, to quote author Michael Lewis, “the new, new thing” in politics. In the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election politicians of all stripes will be using social media. But how they use it certainly varies. Some use social media to raise money. Some use it to broadcast their message with great precision. Others use it to create a sense of intimacy and community. Needless to say, some social media strategies benefit democracy better than others.

One thing that we have learned about the migration to digital is that traditional hierarchies are being challenged like never before. Along the way, new kinds of relationships and conversations are emerging. Evidence of this is happening all around us as voters talk directly to candidates, news audiences to reporters, and students to teachers just to name a few examples. It’s no longer a one-way discussion. Conversation via social media is something that future generations of voters and candidates will assume. In a 2008 report titled, “Post-Election Voter Engagement,” the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than half, 51%, of then President-Elect Barack Obama’s supporters expected some form of communication from the new administration through social media including email, text messaging, or social network sites. Many of these voters expect to share conversations with the administration, too.

Politicians who cut their teeth on a very different media model–broadcast–are trying to adapt to the social media landscape. Whereas broadcast is top-down, passive, and one-to-many the social media model, at its best, is bottom-up, participatory, and peer-to-peer.

A few months ago we went out into the field with a new study. Part of the project considers to what extent the use of social platforms like Facebook develops a civic dimension. Just from some of the early data results I can tell you that social media is infiltrating just about every aspect of young people’s lives including their consumption of news and their engagement in civic life. Still, nothing in our research suggests that these kinds of targeted ads will resonate with young technology users.

The personal ads by the Perry campaign appear to be using social media techniques to deliver a broadcast style message. In short, new tools, same tactics. It is unclear if these videos encourage some of the signature features of today’s digital media culture like conversation, community, and sharing.

Meanwhile, the Perry personalized video is emblematic of what has long been troubling about the marriage between politics and modern media: the triumph of style over substance. This is not unique to our time; it dates back more than a century as the press and later, electronic images emerged as, arguably, the most powerful factors in American political culture.

The use of media to sell candidates to the voter has a long history in American politics but it turned an important corner in the 1960s. In 1969 a twenty-five year-old writer named Joe McGinnis wrote The Selling of the President: 1968. It became an instant classic. On the front of the book Richard Nixon appears on the cover of a cigarette box.

In the 1960s there was a growing recognition that the techniques used by cigarette makers to sell their product to American consumers were dubious at best. McGinnis made a similar argument about how political candidates are packaged and sold. Nearly forty years after publishing “The Selling of the President” McGinnis writes, “In the summer of 1968…I learned something nobody wanted the American public to know: The two presidential candidates, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, had hired advertising agencies to package them like products and sell them to the American people.” Style mattered more than substance. Politicians, increasingly, were handled like consumer products and politics have never been the same. Democracy suffers as we see the blurring of the lines between selling cigarettes and selling politicians, performing and governing. In the digital age shouldn’t we expect a different kind of ethics in politics?

America’s experiment with democracy is entering a new era in the age of social media. What we must demand from candidates is that they use social media to encourage engaged citizenship, community, and dialog rather than as the latest tool to sell tested sound bites and packaged candidates at a time when bold and visionary leadership is needed now more than ever.

The Young and the Digital on KUT/NPR

Here’s a short interview I did recently with KUT’s Jennifer Stayton. In the interview we talk about a host of issues including the appeal of being constantly connected, why young people are attracted to the online world, what they believe is negative about their own engagement with social media, and just how tiring it is to be “always on” in the digital world. You can listen to the interview here.

Twitterball: Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Ochocinco and the Future of Sports

Earlier this week I was watching ESPN’s Sportcenter Live when producers of the show interrupted the program with a breaking news report. Minutes earlier, Tiger Woods, the world’s most famous athlete, used his website to post a public apology to his wife and kids and combat the rumors that were rapidly spreading about his private life. With the stroke of a keyboard Tiger used his website to, at least momentarily, reframe the press coverage about his recent troubles.

ESPN was not the only news outlet that immediately reported on the statement. Several other major news media organizations ran front page stories on their websites, too. What really caught my eye was the fact that each of the stories in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times used one source for their initial reporting–Tiger Woods.

After observing how Team Tiger was able to spin the news reporting I began to think about how social media is transforming the culture of sports. A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with Eddie Matz, senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. Eddie’s writing a piece on professional athletes use of social media platforms like Twitter.

Shortly before my chat with Eddie former Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson found himself in serious trouble and, eventually (albeit briefly), out of a job after he used a gay slur in a Twitter post. The firestorm that confronted Johnson was yet another reminder of how the sportsworld, like virtually every other institution in America, has been forced to grapple with the spread of social media. As a generation of athletes accustomed to social media and the “always on” norms of digital media culture enter pro sports the executives of billion dollars sports franchises have been forced to upgrade their knowledge about social media. In many NFL training camps this summer several teams instituted a no-social media policy out of fear that team secrets, strategy, and practices could be openly shared. In September the NFL established a formal policy regarding the use social media by players.

Eddie asked me what I thought about the use of social media by pro athletes. We talked about several things but here are six ways in which social media is changing the business and culture of professional sports.

1. Personal branding. A number of athletes use social media as a self-promotional tool, a way to package themselves for fans. With social media platforms like blogs, microblogs, social network sites, photo sharing sites, and video streaming who needs a multi-million dollar marketing campaign from Nike or McDonald’s? Many athletes use social media to announce public appearances—a direct appeal to fans that is social, casual, and personal. In a rising number of instances players even use social media to ask fans to vote for them in all-star balloting campaigns. Super Bowl XLIII MVP Santonio Holmes is using Twitter and Facebook to ask fans to vote him into the Pro Bowl. Think of social media in this instance as “me media.”

2. Lifestreaming. One of the most revolutionary aspects of the digital media landscape is that we are no longer merely consumers of media content but producers of media content, too. Online destinations like YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook tap into the voyeur in all of us. This particular aspect of social media reflects a generational ethos that blurs the line between the private and the public self. Young people today have very different notions of privacy and it is clear that they like watching each other. This is as much environmental as it is cultural. The constant presence of cameras–the ones we own as well as surveillance devices—suggests that we are constantly being watched and constantly performing. This is part of the appeal of reality TV, a genre that has turned watching people in their homes, at work, and elsewhere into a spectator sport. The hour-by-hour status updates posted by some athletes resembles production of their very own celebreality show. On any given day you can follow Lance Armstrong as he bikes, eats, and makes public appearances. Who needs VH-1, MTV, or FOX when you can create and stream your own life through the explosion of social media channels?

3. Intimacy with fans. One of the reoccurring complaints about sports over the last ten to fifteen years is that the gentrification of the sports landscape—the luxurious facilities, food, services, and amenities has made it near impossible for the average family to attend games. As a result, the distance between pro sports and fans has grown wider. Likewise, as their salaries have scaled to unprecedented heights professional athletes have entered a whole new class that creates a great disconnect between them and the fans that cheer for them. Enter social media. A number of athletes are using social media as a way to connect with fans on a more personal level. Baltimore Ravens’ standout linebacker Ray Lewis invites fans to enter the “Meet Ray Lewis” contest via Twitter. Chad Ochocinco posts updates about arriving for the team plane or what its like to prepare for a tough rival. Much to the chagrin of coaches and team owners athletes are inviting fans into places like the locker room, team meetings, and on board chartered flights. Social media in instances like these takes the mantra made famous in the sports biz by legendary television producer Roone Arledge, “up close and personal,” to new heights.

4. Civic engagement. Athletes use social media to promote the various social causes and philanthropic efforts they join. Social media in this arena is a civic tool. Lance Armstrong uses Twitter to update his 2 million-plus followers about cancer related news and medical discoveries. In preparation for the launch of his annual Shaq-A-Clause “Toys-for-Tots “ drive Shaquille O’Neal invited his 2 million plus followers to make donations to their local toy store. We tend to think of social media strictly as “me media” but pro athletes, like many others, embrace these tools as “we media,” too. In efforts like these the power of celebrity and social media converge for some worthwhile results.

5. Empowerment. Throughout most of the 20th century management ruled pro athletes with an iron fist. The control of pro athlete’s—what they say, what they do, what they wear—is still a source of great tension. Starting with the social and political upheaval of the 1960s athletes grew more defiant, outspoken, and empowered as they waged war against a system that treated them like property rather than partners. Not surprisingly some athletes are using social media to express their dissatisfaction with the control culture of sports. This past summer the San Diego Chargers fined Antonio Cromartie $2,500 for a tweet that attributed part of the team’s poor performance to the bad food served at training camp. Cromartie explained later that he was speaking out about health and nutrition. After the fine Cromartie proclaimed that his right to free speech had been violated. Ochocinco is constantly defying NFL executives. After the league fined him a hefty $20,000 for pretending to bribe a game official with a $1 bill Ochocinco used Twitter to fight back. “Wait till you see what I do in Pittsburgh,” the receiver said in a Tweet. “Remember I set aside fine fund before the season started. I’m just starting!!!” For some athletes social media will certainly feel like a source of freedom and empowerment, a means to say what they want and not be muted.

6. Me-Journalism. Pro athletes commonly complain that sports reporters often bend their words, take comments out of context, and practice what they consider unfair press coverage. Today, social media gives them something that they have never had before—a tool to tell their own stories and directly challenge what they perceive as bias reporting. In his book The Breaks of the Game, the late David Halberstam discusses what he calls a cultural and generational clash between pro athletes and the reporters who write about them. Over the years this clash has intensified. Some athletes refuse to talk with reporters, a move that likely contributes to even more unfavorable coverage and animosity. I’ve never understood why athletes like Terrell Owens fight with reporters—the power of the pen is mighty. It was a battle that until now athletes were never fully equipped to fight. But social media gives them a platform to speak without fear of misquote and misrepresentation. When the BALCO scandal began to break Barry Bonds avoided reporters and chose, instead, to use his website for public comment. And though their public images and “Q-scores” (likability) can not be more opposite Tiger’s use of his website to offer a public comment about his personal transgressions parallels Bonds’ decision to avoid the press and make a statement through social media.

The digital world is a busy and constantly changing world. As a new generation of athletes outfitted with all the tech tools available step into the arena the sportsworld promises to be busy and constantly changing, too.