For Goodness Sex (25 page)

I think it’s essential for parents to talk to their kids about sexting and other cybersexual behavior—and that conversation needs to start with a discussion of
privacy
. How do your kids define privacy in a world where their everyday behaviors—what they eat, what they wear, where they go, whom they talk to—are on public display via any number of social media outlets? How can they be expected to understand the difference between information that can and should be kept private and information that is meant for “sharing,” after they have come of age in a digital era when virtually every bit of personal information is in the public domain? Talking about privacy with your kids means discussing family values about privacy, pointing out the long-term implications of sharing private information digitally, and allowing your sons and daughters to speak candidly about their views on privacy and what their friends and peers are doing online. You may find that your child isn’t entirely comfortable with so much sharing but feels pressure to keep up socially by mirroring friends’ behavior.

Another part of the online privacy conversation should focus on the impact of online sharing on your kids’ future goals. Many teens are concerned about getting into their choice of college, so they’re particularly shaken when they hear that college admissions officers probe Facebook pages when considering whether or not to admit a student. “If an admissions officer can see sixty-five photos of you drunk at a party,” I tell them, “that’s going to have an effect on their view of you.” Some students have changed the name on their Facebook account to something other than their real name, but if I see that “Party Flo” is friends with thirty kids whom I know are seniors at the same school, it’s not rocket science to figure out who Party Flo really is. Besides the fact that Big Brother is watching, safety is another issue that needs to be discussed in conversations about privacy. The potential of what kids post online to be used to harass or bully them is very real and needs to be made clear.

There’s a lesson called Circles of Intimacy that was originally designed to help teach young people with developmental disabilities about establishing and maintaining physical boundaries.
13
The lesson uses a visual aid—a series of colored concentric circles, with one large circle on the outside and smaller and smaller circles contained within it. The innermost circle represents the student alone. It’s a person’s private space. Moving outward into each succeeding circle, students place the people in their lives in terms of the amount of physical contact they would share with each: who they would hug, shake hands with, wave to, or have no contact with. The activity has been adopted and adapted by many sexuality educators into a lesson about online privacy, and it may be a helpful way for you to talk about this issue with your child. Simply draw a series of concentric circles on a piece of paper. The innermost ring—the bull’s-eye—represents the things a person doesn’t want anyone else to know. These are the most private things in a person’s life, things one doesn’t share with
anyone
else. The next circle out contains information you would share only with the people you trust the most. Ask your child to think about who would be in that circle and what kind of information they would share with each of them. The people in that “most trusted” circle could range from a best friend to an aunt, a sweetheart, a teacher, et cetera. (When teens are being honest, parents are unlikely to be in that first circle. Don’t panic, it’s normal.) Ask the same two questions as you work your way to the outermost circle—who’s in this circle and what information will you share with them? The last circle represents strangers. What would your child want a stranger to know? Once the circles are established, it’s time for the big question: how do you keep the information inside its own circle and prevent it from leaking to people in an outer ring? The answer is, of course, that you
can’t
absolutely keep that from happening. You can certainly create stopgaps and systems to minimize leakage, but once you release information into any of the circles besides the innermost one that contains only you, you’ve lost control of it. That’s why it’s so important to carefully consider who is in each circle and what information you want to share with them.

I like this exercise because it helps kids understand that they have control over what people do and do not know about them, but
only if
they define and enforce their own privacy policies. One of the ways in which we keep our information private is to maintain clear boundaries between the concentric circles. How do you keep things in that inner circle and what are the consequences if private information leaks out? It’s important for your kids to see that what seems like a simple text can have ripple effects on their lives. Would your child want to face classmates after everyone saw a nude photo of him or her? If a racy text is sent out to a kid’s broader circle of friends, will it change those friendships? What if their teachers or friends’ parents see it? How might it change those relationships, and how might it influence the way your child feels about him or herself?

For example, if a person takes a naked or partially naked “selfie” and sends it to three people in his or her innermost circle, how likely is it that the photo will stay in that inner circle? Does the name Anthony Weiner ring a bell? He’s the New York congressman who was unseated after provocative photos he sent through Twitter surfaced online. Even if a teen’s closest friend shows it to only one other person, then all of those barriers between the circles can break down. The illusion of control is lost. If your secret can get out of the inner circle, then it can get out of any circle. As soon as the walls are penetrated, the circles disintegrate, and there’s no reason why a complete stranger couldn’t see the picture of your body. And that can lead to harassment, bullying, and in the worst-case scenario, college officials and employers may see things online that will damage a kid’s future.

What ups the ante in the lives of today’s teens is the speed at which kids can share provocative photos and sexually suggestive texts. Even a decade ago, if you gave a sexy photograph of yourself to your sweetheart, it might have been passed around the school, sure. But there would have been time to contain it, to find out who had it and demand the photo’s return. You could have ripped it up into pieces and buried it in your backyard. Kids today aren’t so lucky. Now a provocative photo sent electronically can be passed to dozens of kids within seconds. It gets to those outermost privacy circles faster than a child can run a lap on the track. Some kids think using Snapchat, an app that allows you to upload a photo, share it, and have it vanish after ten seconds, is a way to maintain privacy. In the same breath, though, they’ll admit there’s a way around the ten-second delete—take a screen shot of the pic so you have it forever.

My students report that sexting among their peers mostly happens between romantic partners. It would be wrong to assume that every teenager in a relationship sexts, though—I think there are plenty of kids who don’t feel comfortable being that explicit with their sweethearts. For those who do sext, I have to think that part of it comes from wanting to feel closer to their partners—and because part of loving people is trusting them, sometimes this kind of electronic bonding can give students a false sense of security about maintaining private information. They trust that their sweethearts aren’t going to show the pictures or sexually charged texts to anyone, but what if they do? I also challenge my students to think about what happens to the texts or photos after a breakup. We would hope that an ex would maintain a former sweetheart’s privacy. But what if there’s a person inside a sweetheart’s inner circle who isn’t in one’s
own
inner circle?

Whether your child is in a relationship or not, you can easily start the conversation with a “why” and a “what if.” Why would you take a provocative picture of your body in the first place? What’s the motivation behind it? Did your sweetheart ask you to do it? Is it because “everybody’s” doing it? Are you just curious to see what it will look like? Once you take a provocative photo or video of your body, how would you ensure that it’s going to stay with the people you sent it to? What are your options, if it’s sent to someone else? Some kids might get smart and say that
if
they took a naked photo, they’d only take it of their body, not their head, to avoid any identity markers. “Does someone really have to
know
it’s you?” I prod. “Wouldn’t a rumor or a suspicion that it’s you cause just as much trouble, maybe even more? If there’s no proof that it’s you, what’s to stop anyone from watching it or sharing it with someone else or posting it to a website? And the farther the photo or video goes, the more people who see it, how likely is it that someone who
does
know it’s you will eventually get a hold of it?”

In the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we used to tell people to assume that everyone they were engaging in high-risk behaviors with
was
HIV-positive, because the best way to protect yourself was to take universal precautions instead of judging each experience on a case-by-case basis. That same lesson applies to digital privacy—a blanket rule should apply. I tell kids to assume that anything they put online can and will be seen by everyone else who is able to go online. Universal precautions are still the best way to maintain safety.

I wish there were “dumb” phones for parents to buy their kids. They would look like smartphones, but they’d allow you to make calls and send texts only to preset numbers. Kids wouldn’t have wide-open access to the Internet, and they wouldn’t be able to send or receive e-mails, share photos, or access social media from their phones. Parents can and should set boundaries about smartphone and computer use, but the truth is . . . kids can type anything into a search engine and get hundreds of results at their fingertips. Statistics show that kids are getting phones around age ten or eleven, and according to a 2011 study by
Consumer Reports
, 7.5 million preteens have established Facebook profiles; 5 million of them are younger than ten. It’s difficult for parents to talk to teens about sex, let alone younger children. But it’s becoming clear that conversations about sexting and establishing and maintaining online privacy need to start taking place earlier and earlier.

Most middle-school children are fully online. At this age, I think it’s extremely important to keep tabs on what your child is doing online and to establish clear boundaries and full transparency when it comes to social media, e-mail, and even texting. Parents should have
full
access to these accounts at all times. That means that you should be able to see your child’s friend list, status updates, and private messages. That doesn’t mean you’ll constantly be snooping, but it does mean your child knows that part of the deal with their digital access is that
you
have access to all of their online information, and that can be an important factor in helping them make good decisions. It’s perfectly reasonable to scroll through your child’s text messages or e-mails at the end of the day or on a weekly basis—and do it
with
your child. Show your kids that you’re interested in only their safety and you’re not trying to ruin their lives. Don’t feel sheepish or skittish. You are responsible for their safety—they’re still children, and as much as they think they know everything, they are incredibly vulnerable. It’s our job to use a heavy hand in helping them navigate this new world they’re encountering. If you see something you think is inappropriate, don’t yell or take the phone away. Use the opportunity as a way into some of these conversations about privacy. Make every moment a teachable moment.

On a practical level, here are some tips to help foster a safe environment for technology use:

• Maintain family rules and practices about technology use. Make sure your kids understand that access is a privilege, not a right, and that they need to respect the parameters for using technology in your home (or out of it).

• To keep your child from wandering too far afield on the computer, keep the family computer in the TV room or in a place where there’s lots of foot traffic.

• If your child has a laptop, allow Web browsing on it only in public spaces. Disable the wi-fi when it’s going to be used in private.

• Establish nonscreen time. It’s OK to say that the family’s offline during dinner or during homework hours. And maybe at ten thirty p.m. everyone unplugs to wind down before bedtime. Some parents even collect cell phones and laptops and bring them into their room with them, returning them to the kids at the breakfast table.

• Here’s an idea that I stumbled upon on Facebook, ironically enough: some parents collect cell phones when their kids have friends over for a sleepover or party. They put them in a basket with a tag that reads, “Parent calls only. Enjoy the people here. They’re awesome!” This practice also prevents kids from taking and sharing pictures in your home that might be inappropriate.

When kids leave middle school and grow into the high school years, parents find themselves in a delicate dance when it comes to accessing their kids’ social media accounts and cell phones. As liberal a sex educator as I am, I still encourage parents to make sure they have their kids’ social media passwords and the codes to unlock their smartphones. It’s even OK to drop into their pages or texts for a look sometimes. But here’s what’s not OK—reacting with punishment to anything you find. For instance, let’s say you scroll through text messages and see that your child has been cursing like a truck driver or saying inappropriate things about (or to) her or his sweetheart. This is not the time to yell and punish your kid for bad language. If a clear boundary had been set—don’t send texts with curse words—and it has been violated, that’s different. But if you suddenly yell at your children for things said in a private conversation, they’re going to resent you and most likely trust you less. Kids break rules; they push boundaries—and language is one way they experiment with that. It’s part of being a kid. When parents jump to conclusions or anger rather than teachable moments, they open a chasm between them and their kid, which is the last thing you want with an already aloof (or private or mysterious) teenager.