Spirito Young People who self produce sexual images.

SPIRTO
Young people who self produce
sexual images
Context and Consequences
BASPCAN Edinburgh 2015

What is it?
• A research project funded by the European Safer
Internet Programme as a Knowledge
Enhancement Project (Dec 2012 – Jun 2014).
• Goal is to build an evidence base of the risks
associated for adolescents with the move to
merged technology, in particular mobile or hand
held devices.
• Focus is on risk related to the capacity to
generate sexual content (often described as
sexting).

It’s aims?
• Understand the different contexts behind the
creation of these sexual images and their
consequences.
• Develop training materials for professionals
and parents to provide information, enable
further discussion with young people about
risk, and examine effective ways of sharing
knowledge.

Who are we?
• The project is managed and co-ordinated by
the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in
partnership with:
– Linköping University, Sweden.
– Innocence in Danger, Germany
– Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre,
United Kingdom

Output?
• A written review of existing publications and
an online bibliography.
• Reports related to the analysis of archival data
and interview data.
• A piloted ‘tool kit’ for professionals and
parents, which will include digital media.

Extant research?
• Definitions are diverse (Drouin, 2013).
• Inconsistencies in the way that research in this area
has defined:
– the content of messages;
– the medium used to send them, and
– the relationship context within which the messages have
been sent.
• Conflation of texts and images in many studies
(Keltke, 2014).

Prevalence?
• Estimates of sexting among adolescents vary
widely.
• Estimated estimated mean prevalence across
studies tha specifically measured sexting with
photo content (AP‐MTV, 2009; Hinduja & Patchin,
2010; Mitchell et al., 2012) was 11.96%.
• Two studies carried out with a research
population of university students found that they
disclosed sexting rarely (Dir et al, 2013; Perkins et
al., 2014).
• Increasing prevalence with increasing age.

Relationship to risk-taking?
• Some evidence individuals who sext are more
likely to be sexually active (Houck et al., 2014)
• Had sex at a young age (Perkins et al., 2014)
• Taken part in recent high-risk sexual
behaviours (e.g. multiple partners, oral and
anal sex, and unprotected sex) (Benotsch et al,
2013)
• Show problematic alcohol and recreational
drug use (Temple et al., 2014)

Primary motivations for
adolescent sexting?
1. Form of flirting and/or to gain romantic
attention.
2. As part of a sexual relationship.
3. Experimental adolescent phase.
4. Pressure from partner/friend(s).
Klettke (2014)

Self-produced images
• Mostly taken in domestic contexts – bedroom
or bathrooms.
• Coercive activity through sites such as
Chatroulette, Omegle, Meet-me and Teen-
video-chat: facilitates live self-generated video
content.
• Live video chat now widely available on smart
phones through applications such as Skype,
Facetime and Tango.

Deviancy discourse.
• Number of studies highlight potential negative outcomes of
sexting behaviours; neglects to address that young people
may derive pleasure from their experiences and enjoy sharing
sexual images consensually.
• Hasinoff (2013) points out that in order to accurately
recognise non- consensual, harmful, malicious behaviours, it
is a prerequisite to understand that sexting can be consensual.
• Powell & Henry (2014)suggest a need for more ‘nuanced
understandings of sexting’ to distinguish between the
‘consensual and non-consensual creation and distribution of
sexual images’ and to more usefully inform legal, policy and
education resources

Frequency and the ICSE-DB

Prevalence of sexual exposure online
in a relation (ever) and
sexual behaviors online last 12 months

Experiences of voluntary sexual
exposure online in a relation
(Jonsson, Priebe, Bladh, & Svedin, 2014. Computors in Human Behavior, 30:181-190)
All % Boys % Girls %
a) Flashed in webcam/mobile 14.4 11.9 16.4
b) Posted partially dressed
pics/film
9.8 11.0 8.7
c) Masturbated on webcam 5.4 6.1 4.9
d) Had sex on webcam 2.2 3.4 1.2
a-d Online sex exposure 20.9 19.2 22.3

Experiences of volontary sexual
(Jonsson, Priebe, Bladh, & Svedin, 2014. Computers in Human Behavior, 30:181-190)
Social background Risk
group
Non-risk
group
stat sign
Youth education n.s
Family composition n.s
Parents employment n.s
Father’s education n.s
Mother’s education n.s
Financial problems in family G***
Parent immigrant background G*
Child immigrant B** G*
B=boys, G=girls, *=p<0.05, **=p<0.01, ***=p<0.001

Internet and mobile phone
behavior
Risk
group
Non-risk
group
stat sign
High consumers >3hours/day G***
Text messages 10-50/week B** G**
Sharing email adress B*** G***
phone number B*** G***
meating IRL B*** G***
Watched pornography G***
High consumer of pornography G***
Sent/recieved sexual messages B/B***
G/G***
Harassement of others B*** G*
Harassement by others B*** G***
B=boys, G=girls, *=p<0.05, **=p<0.01, ***=p<0.001

Psychosocial health and parental
relations
Risk
group
Non-risk
group
stat sign
SCL-25 B*** G***
Rosenberg, Self esteem G*
KASAM Sence of coherence B*** G***
PBI Parental bonding
Mother care B*** G***
Father care B*** G***
Mother overprotection (control) B*** G***
Father overprotection (control) B*** G*
B=boys, G=girls, *=p<0.05, **=p<0.01, ***=p<0.001

Different forms of sexual behavior
online last 12 months (n= 3 432)
(Jonsson, Bladh, Priebe, & Svedin, (2015) Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry, DOI 10.1007/s00787-015-0673-9
Boys % Girls % All% sign
a) Sex online 6.9 2.7 4.6 ***
b) Sex offline (IRL) 15.2 8.5 11.6 ***
c) Sent sexual pictures# 4.5 4.1 4.3
d) Sold sex online 0.9 0.6 0.7
Any of a-d 18.4 12.4 15.2 ***
0) Reference group 81.6 87.6 84.8
All 100.0 100.0 100.0
# Posted sexual pictures online: “Have you during the last 12 months posted sexual pictures of yourself
on the Internet or via mobile phone?”
d > a-c > 0 , concerning background and psychosocial health
e.g. sexual abuse 6.3% (0) – 62,5% (d)

SELLING SEX ONLINE
[<1 %]
ONLINE SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR
[15 – 20 %]
NO ONLINE SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR
[80 – 85 %]
Associations With Online Sexual
Behaviours
1. Sexualised life
2. Poor health
3. Maltreatment
4. Risk taking behaviour
5. Online harassment / abuse
SUMMARY
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What do the police see?
Reported to or by the police:
identified children

ICSE-DB
International Child Sexual Exploitation image database
n = 472
• Child ID
• Location (country where the child was located)
• Date (the year claimed by police)
• Child sex
• Child age/image (the age of the child at the time when the image was
taken)
• Child age/ID (the age of the child at the time of identification)
• Relationship (relationship with producer of image/s)
• Ethnicity (the ethnicity of the child)
• Offender (whether the offender was known by name in the database)
• Contact abuse (whether a child was known to have been subject to contact
abuse).

Subjects
• 430/472 (91.1%) of the cases coming from the
UK
• 94.9% being white

Number of cases per year in the
ICSE-DB

Distribution of the ages in the
images
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
0-2 3-4. 5-7. 8-9. 10-11. 12-13. 14-15. 16-17.
Number

Relationship of the child to the
producer of the image/s

Date and distribution of self-taken
and non-self-taken images
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
ST
N/ST

DateCount Count Female % Male %
2013 175 46.9 53.1
2012 82 74.4 25.6
2011 78 57.7 42.3
2010 60 76.7 23.3
2006-2009 77 71.4 28.6

Family friend
Child age/image
by Relationship
9
Intra-familial
9
Self-taken/C
15
Self-taken/NC
14
Stranger
12
Trusted adult
11
Unknown
12
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Analysis of 20 interviews:
• 10 from Sweden and 10 from the UK
• Purposive sampling from multiple contexts
• 15-25 years old who, before 18, had sent or
posted images that included them showing
their breasts, genitals or bottoms (or parts of
them).

Context for image
production
Internet and app
use
Social networks
Social expectations
Images: motivation
and management
First occasion
Content
Af irmation
Romance/sexual
Flirtation/fun
Excitement
Trust
Consequences of
image sharing
Immediate
Ongoing
Advice to others
Figure 1: Themes and subthemes

Like every single second of
every single day… Facebook
and texting… WhatsApp,
which is like texting as well
(UK15)
Yes, I have my phone on me
constantly and then I use ...
smartphone … I have Instagram,
Facebook, Snapchat and it is ju…oh,
all put out there (SW9)
Facebook, can talk to friends. Eh,
Snapchat, you can send pictures
(UK20)
Contexts

YP: Well people that I know, it’s just like... it’s just
‘cause like, it makes them feel good about
themselves. With girls mainly, it’s all about…
because whenever girls do that they get confidence
back from like, guys, and it makes them feel more
confident and nicer in themselves.
I: Right, because they get flattered or…?
YP: Yeah but guys, they don’t really need flattering
because they’re pretty full of themselves as it is, but
I think, I think they just probably do it just to
encourage maybe, more of it – I don’t know (UK10)
Social
expectations

Persuasion?
Yeah. I was just sleeping over at a friend’s. And he
um, he said like, would you mind sending me a
picture? ‘Cause the fact…I was really reluctant to do
it at first so I said ‘well no’. I trust him a lot because
I’ve known him so long but like there’s still that
thing that he might show other people and stuff like
that. Erm, so, yeah I was just like… but then
eventually my friend, erm this girl, managed to say
like she had done it before and it was fine so she
kind of talked me into it [laughs] (UK10)

Coercion?
… yeah it started with people contacting me and
then from that I got more and more contacts
from loads of people so… and then they would
like ask for pictures and stuff and I was really
reluctant at first ‘cause I was only 13 so I didn’t
really know very much about that, but then they
kind of persuaded me and encouraged me to do
that… to do more and more (UK1)

Cause I wouldn’t want, cause I would
never put my face in it just in case like…
they did show somebody then I wouldn’t
even be able to deny they were mine if you
get what I mean? If my face was in it...
and we, cause we’re on Skype I know he
can’t like show anybody it… (UK16)
Yes but if I sent sms with a
picture then I know that if I send
it to someone I trust it will go to
that person. But with Skype so
you can invite and stuff. (SW9)
Managing risk

Yeah, he was being nice, like, saying nice things and… I
think it was the fact that he wanted the pictures that
made me feel good…. I didn’t really think that much
about it, like he said some more nice things and I guess
that made me feel good (UK3)
I started chatting with my boyfriend and he wanted
pictures. But it felt there was nothing wrong because I
wanted to be with him. I was in love with him already.
He was in a parallel class. He wanted pictures of me...
more sexy pictures. (SW6)
Eh, an’ the rest of the time it’s just for the fun of it
(UK16)
Motivations

I wasn’t like that bothered because I’ve
been talking to him for so long and it’s like
he’s done the same, it’s like a switching
thing. So I do it, I trust him completely and
stuff so I wasn’t as self-conscious as I was
the first time I did it. (UK10)
Yeah so like, if it got out, then I would
obviously have something on him as well...
I didn’t quite mind because I trust him....
(UK15)
Trust?

Consequences
• Immediate:
– Why the fuck did I do that?... It’s too, like, it makes
makes me, I don’t know how to explain it, it makes
me feel awkward, if if you know what a mean
(UK22)
– ...it is a bit like that exciting for you to know what
you are getting. Meanwhile, it's like this, one feels
quite flirty and you feel great. Afterwards, you
may feel fine but it still feels a bit like that’s
disgusting. (SW2)

Consequences
• Ongoing:
– … cause it was like morning I was like, what if he
shows somebody, so a started writing to him
again, I was like you better not show anybody
them and he was like no a won’t. And then he
made me promise not to show his (UK16)
– … at night, I get panic when I think about it. Then
it feels like there is no point to live, I can’t control
it, it stresses me, but I try to ignore it. (SW5)

Advice
• Just get to know the person first, don’t send
them if… you don’t know them. Make sure
you’ve got a bond… with the person. Don’t just
go sending it to anybody cause who, God
knows, who’ll see your picture… or where it’ll
go (UK16)
• … you should post pictures that you are
comfortable with. (SW9)

Contexts and consequences
Case studies

Nude selfies: What parents and carers
need to know

Film 3: When should I be worried?

Contact details:
spirto@ed.ac.uk
www.spirto.health.ed.ac.uk

Spirito Young People who self produce sexual images.

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