I think that this is an area in which we need to tread carefully. The exchange of photos may not have an impact — in itself. We don’t know enough about what the long term, wide-spread effects will be. Colleges and universities in the U.S. Are being forced to deal with environments in which eighteen-year olds (who do not have adult experiences upon which to base actions and make decisions, no matter how they or the law view their status) are engaging in frequently indiscriminate sexual behavior and creating situations wherein the male says “consensual” and the female says “not.” I suspect that they may both believe that they are right. Part of that is caused by the casual attitude toward sex and physical relationships/privacy that we have been engendering since the 1960’s and the sexual revolution. That casual attitude and natural human behavior can (and I will bet a paycheck does) create “projection” situations where the males project their attitude on the females and then behave based on that projection. What we’ve lost and what this group focuses on is the importance of privacy — will the sexting trend lead to a situation where today’s thirteen-year olds have no expectation of personal physical privacy? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone does. Humans developed cultures that value privacy over millennia — because it worked. To think that we can re-design those cultures (because, after all, we’re so much smarter than all those savages and barbarians that evolved those cultures) in a generation is arrogant and a false belief. By de-emphasizing privacy, personal, physical, digital, we may be risking an increasingly dystopian society. I’m not predicting that, I’m merely saying that there is a risk and we don’t understand it. In the immortal words of a Darwin Award winner, “Hold my beer and watch this.” Guy From: Christopher Herot <
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> Date: Sunday, October 19, 2014 at 10:24 To: John Havens < "> >, " "> " < "> > Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Why Kids Sext (Atlantic) VRM opportunity I did not hear the interview but I did read the article and came to somewhat different conclusions. The primary harm here is from the reactions of the authorities to a phenomenon they are only recently discovering is widespread and pretty evenly balanced between boys and girls. Despite all the dire warnings from the adults the kids have the data:
There are some parallels to the warnings given about drugs, where the evidence is that the primary harm comes from contact with the criminal justice system. From: John Havens <
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> Date: Sunday, October 19, 2014 at 8:43 AM To: " "> " < "> > Subject: [projectvrm] Why Kids Sext (Atlantic) VRM opportunity Just listened to an NPR interview about kids and sexting. It's the cover story for The Atlantic in November: http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/why-kids-sext/380798/ I was horrified on multiple levels. Top concerns for me were the fact that boys pressure girl 14 or 15 times with requests for sexts than after girls relent and send them, the boys send them to all tier friends and call the girls whores. Just as upsetting was how widespread the behavior had become, and that sexting is also perceived as genuine intimacy amongst teens, despite the massive risks of sending, let alone taking, pictures of this kind that live in the cloud. So, my personal (and parental) concerns aside, the author of the article felt any policy around sexting should mainly punish people publishing pictures (like on an Instagram page, which the NPR interview focused on) without people's consent. While I think this is a good idea in theory, without technological (and respect) frameworks in place to help with this, we'll have a "he said, she said" issue going on where people setting up these pages will just say, "she said I could post it." While Snapchat supposedly (and now they're dealing with a ton of ire about their privacy policies anyway) was a way to work around this, it's flawed. Having your picture available for longer than three seconds means someone can take a screen shot of the photo who is waiting for it. Long story short - if sexting is going to happen (and it is - over 30% of all teens in the US are actively taking or storing naked pix of themselves/others on their phones) VRM or P2P ideals would be really helpful here on multiple levels: -Parents can talk to their kids about respecting their bodies/intimacy enough to have solid tech protections around their photos. -Parents can teach kids a about legal implications. In nearly every state, having these pictures is considered child pornography - often it's a felony; while I'd like to see some of these asshole guys get fully prosecuted to be made examples of (the ones coaxing dozens of girls to send their pictures in supposed confidence and then posting them on public pages), I was a teenager once and realize the dumbass things you do at that age and don't necessarily want them to ruin the rest of their lives. So Dads can talk to their sons and teach them what CONSENT means. -VRM gets a really meaningful context. What data is more personal than naked selfies? So teach kids, the most tech savvy of any of us, to set up clouds and control who gets to see what. The "killing" of data would be a huge benefit here - a kid sees her photo where she didn't want it, and blam. Photos gone before the "prank" takes hold. The definition of "consent" is given tech parameters that allow genuine control. Final note - having worked in PR in the past, a great way to spread awareness about a new tech/paradigm (VRM) is to latch on to a well know cultural issue (sexting) with a new angle. The new angle - if it's happening and going to continue to happen but legislation moves too slow to help (duh), VRM provides a solution. Thoughts? |
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