ABSTRACT
This chapter explores young people’s perceptions of sexting. I contextualise their perceptions in terms of their general perspectives and experiences with digital communication technology. Sexting is, somewhat, just ‘another’ form of digitally mediated communication. Its significance and impacts can, however, be understood in terms of broader sociocultural meanings surrounding gender, sex, relationships and the body. Taken-for-granted constructs of risk – notably, of unauthorised distribution of images – meant that most young people distanced themselves from sexting (at least in terms of direct involvement in the production and exchange of personal sexual images). While their accounts suggest that risk is socially contingent, their attitudes toward risk management were shaped by common-sense, individualistic (albeit normalising and moralising) notions of ‘smart’ choices. Specifically, there was gendered stigma attached to producing or appearing in an image, while heteronormative discourses shaped judgements about the decision to share or send images. Regardless of young people’s professed involvement in sexting, they thus contributed to giving the practice meaning in line with the norms and value systems within their situated peer and relational cultures. Young people were, as active meaning-makers, implicated in sexting as a youth cultural phenomenon, while sexting also represented a platform upon which they expressed and developed gendered sexual subjectivities.
