School of Arts and Media

Same-sex attracted young people & mobile media

Kath Albury, k.albury@unsw.edu.au

Young people and sexting in Australia: ethics, representation and the law

Investigators: Dr Kath Albury (UNSW); Associate Professor Kate Crawford (Microsoft Research/UNSW); Associate Professor Ben Mathews (QUT)

Partner Investigator: danah boyd (Microsoft Research)Research Assistant: Mr Paul Byron

Funding body: ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT, $60 000This pilot project aims to both develop a nuanced taxonomy of sexting (ie sexual

representations and self-representations using mobile and online media), that takes account of young people’s understandings of intimacy, friendship, ethics and representation as well as bullying and harassment. The project will examine legal, professional and popular media discourses around sexting, and will also involve consultations with young people aged 16-18, and adults who address sexting in a professional capacity (ie policy makers, educators, legal aid workers, police and youth workers). The pilot aims to inform Australian legal, educational and policy responses to sexting, as part of the CCI’s Risk and Representation project

18-29 year olds

F4: With my close friends, at the end of a week if you were to ask for a progress update on how they were getting on with their certain person that they're interested in or whatever, and they were like, oh, we sexted. It would kind of be like that would be a threshold crossed kind of thing, like a certain level of intimacy achieved. As opposed to just like texting, like normal shit.

M4: The word sexting itself doesn't actually really come up in any kind of conversations, like informal conversations that I've witnessed or have done. It's just like a very grownup, you know, kind of you’ve never involved yourself in so…

Finding other queer people

F5: Just out of curiosity so it would be funny, right. I don’t know if it was designed for that purpose or it was just designed for like, you know, finding other queer identifying people in the area. Because that to me, coming from outer suburbia, is a fun thing, because I turn it on when I'm at my mum's place in [outer West suburb] and it's like other young, other queer girls in [outer West suburb]. I haven't seen them.

M3: if people don’t send [photos], it seems weird. …it’s becoming so common now that the person that doesn’t send… it’s strange, so they probably won’t meet as [they would] if people exchange the pic.

(and also) M3: Hornet makes it so easy and that’s why Hornet grew so fast. I just discovered, it’s quite new. It’s a few months ago and I discovered here. Because Grindr is too slow to send a picture. As Hornet, just a click and you can see ..

Legal questions

M2: …sometimes, with a lot of my friends, they often get confused, like, at - my 18 year old friend, he - there’s another guy who’s 16 and they’re talking and, like, everything and they’re wanting to date, but he keeps saying to me that, “I’m not sure, because even though he’s, you know, old enough for sex, I’m still the adult and he’s technically not an adult yet, so does that count as paedophilia?” That’s what his concern is, because yeah, I mean, that’s where it’s really contradictory. Because they say under the law an 18 year old is technically an adult, but you’re allowed to have sex and do all that at 16, which, kind of, it’s - I don’t - even I don’t understand it really. It’s weird.

Safety and risk

M3: I’m quite surprised that the apps I found, but I don’t know, maybe I need to learn more, but I was surprised – I found it quite safe, in the sense of, I never – I will take so many pictures, and I never found any of them in a porn website, because somebody could send it to somewhere…

(apps seem safer than online profiles)

M3: …as it comes from a phone, which is more personal, all profiles seems more real and more personal.

(and also) M3: I was afraid when I was younger to find, on a dating website, to find homophobic people and hidden behind a profile and we don’t know who we meet. As with a date, with the apps, we go to meet very quickly.

Safety & risk

M1: It feels more personal. It feels like you have a lot - a little bit more control over the phone than online.

M2: Yeah. Like, with your history and everything, you don’t necessarily - well, you can easily get rid of the history and everything.

M1: Yeah. M2: And you know that no one else is monitoring it. Because my mum monitors the

computer at home. The main one. Not my iPad, thankfully, but yes.M1: Yeah. No. It’s the same. Like, being at that home PC thing and I had a computer in

my room, when I was a kid, and you’re always clearing your browser history in case Dad wanted to come on or Mum wanted to come home. Especially when you were still experimenting and you didn’t know. Well, my phone is password locked. No one knows it. No one touches my phone, so it’s a lot - you think you’re safe, but in reality…

M2: You’re not really, no.M1: The same risks are there that they were 10 years, but you think there’s some kind of

false security, because it’s your phone.