With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, you may be thinking of a way to spice up your love life. Sexting may not do the trick; you should think twice about posting your love life online or texting it. Sending photographs of a sexual nature via electronic media is considered sexting. Technology has transformed the way we interact; unfortunately due to the ease by which we communicate with cell phones, Facebook and email it has also led to dangerous and destructive behaviors including forms of sexual harassment.
The problem in sending something via electronic media to another person is that your privacy is lost forever. The content can be resent to anyone; you, as the original sender, actually does not have control once the send button has been hit and you can only trust that whatever you have sent will not go viral.
In recent years adults have been sending sexual photographs to other adults as a way of flirting. Students have been using sexting as harmless fun; some even consider it to be a lower form of intimacy. The current sexting laws say that electronically distributing photographs of minors that are sexual in nature is considered to be promoting Child Pornography. In the case of adults, there is a fine line between flirting and harassment as we saw in the recent allegations of sexual harassment involving Brett Favre.
The analogy that I like to tell people is texting, email, YouTube and Facebook is as permanent as tattooing – it takes a lot of effort to remove it. If you don’t want your employer, family, friends or spouse to see it, then you want to think very hard before sending or posting it.