Are lots of teens really 'sexting'? Experts doubt it

By JUSTIN BERTON

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Seventeen-year-old Natalie Tracey recently adjusted her cell phone plan to accommodate her growing text-messaging addiction. But the Sacramento high school senior had never heard of anyone at her school "sexting" -- sending a nude photo via cell phone.

"Everything about it sounds lame," Natalie said, noting that she was unaware of the term until an adult introduced it to her and that the online humiliations suffered by young celebrities such as Vanessa Hudgens and Pete Wentz might serve as a cautionary tale for her generation. "All that stuff just creates drama," she said.

Natalie's attitude toward sexting echoes a view shared by sexual-health educators, teen advocates and academics gathering in San Francisco this week for Sex Tech, a conference that promotes sexual health among youth through technology. They believe that the sexting "trend" is a cultural fascination du jour and is way overblown.

"Sexting is the latest way adults are getting panicky about teen sexuality and for mainstream culture to get panicky about technology," said Marty Klein, a Palo Alto author and sex therapist who is leading a panel discussion on the topic. "And when you mix the two together, there's always a lot of anxiety and misunderstanding."

In December, a study from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy reported that 20 percent of 653 teenagers polled said they'd posted nude or seminude pictures of themselves at least once via computer or cell phone. After school administrators and law enforcement agencies nationwide learned of the activity, USA Today reported that since January at least two dozen teenagers in six states were being investigated for sending explicit images by cell phone, including two Massachusetts teens who faced felony child pornography distribution charges. Last week in Los Alamitos (Orange County), as many as nine middle school boys were suspended after they digitally shared a nude picture of a 14-year-old female student.

But whereas some see evidence of teenagers growing up too fast in an increasingly technologically connected world, those within the youth sexual health community have a more sober take on the behavior: They see sexting as an educational opportunity.

Deb Levine, the executive director of San Francisco's Internet Sexuality Information Services, who helped start the city's nationally recognized texting service to promote sex education for youth, said if 20 percent of hormone-fueled teenagers are sending nude photographs, that means 80 percent aren't.

"This shows us that the majority of teenagers understand this is not the best place to snap a photo and send it out there," Levine said. "The teenage years are years of sexual curiosity, and there are various ways people act out on their curiosity. This is just one of them."

Anastasia Goodstein, author of "Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online," said that when she interviewed teenagers recently at a Texas high school, none was aware of the term "sexting," and no one copped to engaging in the activity.

Yet for those who do click and send, Goodstein said the images are intended for immediate friends.

"They're not thinking through the consequences that digital images can go viral," Goodstein said. "They're growing up with these tools, documenting their lives in public spaces and not thinking down the line as to who might see it."

Instead of punishing these teenagers, Goodstein suggested, "Parents should be asking their teenagers what their real motivations are for doing this. Is it peer pressure? Is it based on ideas of what being sexy is?"

Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy, said his organization's study was meant to give a glimpse of teenage sexual behavior. Despite the advent of sexting, Albert said teenage sexual activity and pregnancy rates have continued a steady decline since peaking in 1990.

But the newest study suggests that teens remain unaware that information shared about their sex life in digital media is not private. "This is not a diary you keep under your mattress," Albert said. "Things go from zero to viral in a nanosecond."

Still, despite disagreement over the prevalence of sexting, some legal advocates who track online crimes are alarmed by the extreme punishment doled out by some jurisdictions.

Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, said law-enforcement agencies that bring felony charges against minors are misusing the federal child pornography laws, which he said were written to protect children from adult predators.

"We may not want teenagers to engage in this behavior," Tien said, "but police officers and schoolteachers and judges should not feel like they need to bring up criminal charges on these kids.

"It's become a frenzy of people who are trying to out-moralize one another and come out strongly against it," he added. "I'm hoping people will come to their senses and this will result in less sexting but, more importantly, less overreacting by the authorities."

Sex therapist Klein warned that prosecution of teenagers could lead to unintended consequences. If convicted of federal child pornography charges, the teens would be required to register as a sex offenders.

"I recognize that some teens are using sexting in a desperate attempt to be popular or liked," Klein said, "and we need to address that sense of desperation with the kids themselves in a conversation.

"Hopefully, that adult would have the kind of conversation that is not about punishment or morality but asks first, 'What is on your mind and can we talk about it? Have you thought about the feelings of the boy or girl whose picture is getting sent around school?' But in order to have that conversation, we need to first understand sexuality is not bad."

E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com