Sexting & Snapchat

The issue of sexting is very interesting to me.  After our class discussion on Damned if you do, damned if you don't...If you're a girl: Relational and normative contexts of adolescent sexting in the United States (Campbell & Lippman, 2014), I was reminded of a course I took last semester, titled "Social Consequences of Mobile Communication," we were given the opportunity to design a research project about any topic we thought was important.  This issue also had to have very little previous research done on it in the past.  We weren't instructed to actually execute this project, and in our project design, we were allowed to pretend we were given unlimited resources and funds in our research.  So, I formulated a research question about how Snapchat may be having an influence on sexting.  I looked into not only how Snapchat may be affecting sexting in a behavioral sense, but also in a stigma sense.  I want to know how the effects of Snapchat may be changing the negative rap surrounding sending and receiving sexts. Now this stigma may be unavoidable, as there have been legal repercussions for those who are underage who send a receive sexts.  However, I personally have taken up some issues with this stigma, as well as some sexting experts that I came across when doing my research.  And I believe that Snapchat may be working in sexting's favor.

One of the main concerns we discussed in class surrounds the idea of consensual sexting.  In this sense, an individual takes a picture or writes a sext and sends it to another person--a person who they intended to see this image. This becomes nonconsensual sexting when that image or text gets distributed to those the author did not intend to see.

Amy Adele Hasinoff (2012) also discusses this idea of consensual sexting in her article, Sexting as media production: Rethinking social media and sexuality.  She writes that many of today's stigma surrounding sexting may be more harmful than helpful when examining sexting.  She feels that consensual sexting may be more productively referred to as "media production," and that there may be some beneficial aspects of sexting that many researchers fail to recognize (Hasinoff, 2012).  She goes on to explain that sexting may be a new and important form of sexual and self expression (Hasinoff, 2012).

I agree with Hasinoff, and to expand on this idea, Snapchat may be a helpful turning point for this self-expression.  Many individuals feel as though their messages sent through Snapchat are safer and more secure due to the self-destructive nature of a Snapchat.  Ideally, this allows for sexting to be done in a secure and safe manner, encouraging and enabling consensual sexting.  Therefore, the stigma surrounding consensual sexting may be slowly but surely diminished.

Nonconsensual sexting seems as though it has an opposite effect as one may expect.  For example, if a girl sends a naked picture of herself to her boyfriend, this seems like an act of consensual sexting.  However, if they were to break up or fight, the boyfriend may show his friends. This could potentially harm the reputation of the girl, not the boy, who is going against his unspoken consensual contract.  However, if this couple were to have sexted via Snapchat, the boyfriend would not be able to show his friends this sext at a later date.

I have high hopes for the realm of sexting and culture will progress as our technology and communication abilities are changing everyday.




Works Cited:

Hasinoff, A. A. (2012). Sexting as media production: Rethinking social media and sexuality. New Media & Society, 15 (4) 449-465.

Campbell, S., Lippman, J. (2014). Damned if you do, damned if you don't...If you're a girl: Relational and normative contexts of adolescent sexting in the United States. Journal of Children and Media, 8 (4) 371-386.