ABSTRACT
In the contemporary moment, especially in countries of the Global North/minority world, children's and teenagers’ lives are deeply imbricated with media technologies as they use cellphones, laptops, tablets, and other devices to engage in an array of social activities. The interface with these technologies blurs traditional distinctions between the “real” and the “virtual,” subject and object, body and machine. Sexuality, once primarily considered a corporeal practice, is also navigated via media technologies. In this chapter, using the moral panic around sexting as an example, I examine children's and adolescents’ sexual development through the lens of “mixed reality,” acknowledging young people's views of online sex to explore its liberatory potential as well as its repressive and regressive significations. I argue that in a world increasingly configured by media images at macro-and micro-levels, we need new “cognitive maps” for understanding the technologized bodies and sexualities of youth.
