Sexting and Privacy Violations: A Case Study [CMAF 1010]

Running Head
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Lara Al Kabbani, ID –
Instructor: Steve Jankowski
GA: Amanda Milanis
CMAF 1010, Lab 52
03/02/2020
SEXTING: AS A MEANS OF PRIVACY VIOLATION
The key idea of this research article is the impact of sexting among the young generation.
In this regard, the concept of sexting should be defined before steeping into the consequences.
Sexting refers to the process of sending and receiving unsolicited images, videos, and messages.
The young generation is very much into this procedure due the raise various social media
applications and online dating applications (Hasinoff & Shepherd, 2014, p. 8, 24). The research
states that there is zero percent privacy in the usage of the medium of internet to send or receive
sexually explicit pictures or messages. Many researchers consider this practice as a merely
foolish and unsafe way spreading continuously among the young generation.
The legal and psychological consequences of sexting often raises issues including child
pornography. The paper provides some examples of legal consequences of sexting. However,
there are researchers who do not consider sexting as a negative act (Albury, Hasinoff & Senft,
2017, pp. 527- 545). They consider sexting as a part of risky sexual behavior and attributes.
These researcher consider the consequences of sexting as equivalent to the outcomes of overdose
of drugs, casual sex, and even the unprotected sex.
The paper also mentioned that, irrespective of the offensive impact, the community must
avoid the act of shaming young people for the activities of consensual sexting. Instead of

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shaming, they must acknowledge the teenage group and their entrance phase into adulthood and
engaging sexting as a mode of interpersonal intimacy, expression, and communication. In this
regard, the expert mentioned the nature of norms and policies of online privacy.
Experts from the domain of digital media argues about considering the entire internet
thing as an automatically public zone. According to the study, the pictures or messages sent
through online mediums are generally stored in the cloud that has kept the privacy of users into a
questionable situation. The privacy concerns attached with networking services of social media
is considered as a subset of privacy of data. It involves the right of authorizing the subjective
privacy regarding keeping, re-purposing, endowment to third parties, and exhibiting information
concerning to an individual through the internet.
Researchers often state that during this 21st century information are as important as
currency (Wright & Xie, 2019, pp. 123- 140). Hence, giving away the access of the personal
information is not a wise decision of the educated society. All the social networking sites
provides a set of policy and norms before joining. Being an educated individual, a wise
suggestion is to go through all the policies and norms before joining the social networking sites
rather merely skimming the entire content to save time.
A safer way is not to share any image, text, or erotic posts on the reputed social media
platforms. However, majority of the population consider the matter of not sharing explicit
contents through digital media as unrealistic (Klettke, Hallford & Mellor, 2014, pp. 44-53). On
other terms, it is a way to allow the social networking reservoirs to preserve the contents posted
by any particular individual. Sexting is becoming a way of violation of privacy. This concept has
a close connection with interpersonal trust, expectation, privacy, and intimacy.