A qualitative study of children, young people and 'sexting ... - NSPCC

A qualitative study of children, young people and ‘sexting’
of the photo on his phone, by physically showing friends his phone, and the digital distribution of the
image in order to expose the girl; the latter, he said, he would not do. Girls, though, were understandably
fearful of exposure. Both boys and girls talked about the possible impact of exposure on students’
emotional wellbeing. Below a group of year 10 girls talk about what they think the effects of exposure
might be.
R: I think so. It has an impact on people mentally.
I: Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
R: I mean if I was the girl who got exposed I would have mental problems after that.
…
R: I would cry – I could go in depression because of it, because you are going to be known, you
are going to be talked about. You are going to be like seen in a different way.
R: Because everyone is going to be talking about you.
R: Because you are going to know that there is more rumours about you.
R: Yeah, like people talk about you and stuff.
R: I think people like talking about people in a bad way, more than in a good way. There is more
haters – (Focus group, year 10, School Two)
A ‘munch screen’ is a particular form of exposure. It’s called this as when the screen grab happens, a little
monster munches with a sound effect over the screen. Munch screens include capturing cruel messages
(often from boys) such as boys telling girls they’re ugly or insulting them in other ways.
Screen munches like this would get forwarded, posted as the young person’s default picture on BBM or
young people would tag their friends in the picture on facebook. Screen munches that participants were
posting were therefore not necessarily from conversations they had had themselves. Girls sometimes
munched conversations with insults as ‘evidence’ that a particular boy was not to be trusted.
Sexting scenarios: Exposure: the ‘munch screen’
R: There is something called munch screen and like sometimes it can get people upset and
sometimes it is for a laugh. Say like you was in a conversation with someone and then if a
girl said something like, ‘Oh do you want me to suck your dick’ or something and then he will
munch that and then he will put it as his profile picture and people will see what the girl said.
Some of the boys in our focus groups and interviews took a critical stance on exposure. However, when
we probed boys who took this view it seemed to be very difficult for them to see a way to publicly
disagree with the practice. Peer surveillance and recording was normalised to the extent that many young
people felt they had few friends they really ‘trusted’. There seemed to be a certain resigned individualistic
attitude in the sense that nothing they could do would change anything, so as long as it didn’t effect them
personally, there was no point in trying. This difficulty also arises in the context of homophobic bullying
in schools, in which boys failure to perform a particular kind of macho masculinity carries with it the
risk of being labelled ‘gay’. This is captured in the exchange below:
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