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?