Another day, another series of sensationalist sexting headlines (nothing to do with selling newspapers, honest!). Here’s one of the more balanced ones from the BBC which is based on the latest figures from the police. Not wanting to become another voice shouting “Aaaagh, sexting!”, here are a couple of things to bear in mind when thinking about the issue of sexting in schools:
- If you are a school, general advice isn’t enough. Yes you can find all kinds of great educational resources online, and lots of sources will tell you what to do if you have a sexting incident. But there is one single document for schools from UKCCIS with what you need to do, how, in what order, and when you should or should not report to the police – you don’t always have to. If you haven’t heard of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, it is a key body with representation from the DfE and other government departments.
- There’s sexting and sexting. So when you read scary articles about it, you need to bear in mind that lots of young people regard a risqué chat as sexting. Imagine what then happens when someone hears about this but that person thinks sexting means exposed genitals. And then tells someone else who would think a bikini shot is a sext…or maybe it is for a child but not for an adult…or it is if it is sent privately but not if it’s posted on Facebook. Yes I’m muddying the waters, but that is the pond we are in. So yet again, we can’t get around the fact that to address sexting we need more talk, not more tech.
- Did you know that very few young people talk about sexting anyway unless they’re talking to an adult who first used the word?
If you want to read a bit more about sexting, the image that I have added to this post is from an article I wrote for one of our magazines and may be useful to share with staff when talking about sexting.
Otherwise, head straight to sexting.lgfl.net to find all the best resources (from a wide range of providers) to use with pupils and parents (handy before the summer holidays), and of course that key UKCCIS reference document (which includes great CPD activities for September safeguarding updates).
Right, now back to the headlines…
