Sexting – the sharing of unambiguous sexual content in a personal chat, incl. and mostly one’s own erotic photos and videos is the subject of the second video in a special series by Teen Station and the Media Literacy Coalition. It is dedicated to the dangers for children on the Internet and is one of the initiatives implemented within the Media Literacy Days 2020.
Like the first video in the series, which focuses on online harassment, the screenplay is again written by Paraskevi Konstantinu Karageorgu, a member of the Media Literacy Coalition, and the graphics are by the young composer, director and artist Dimitar Stafidov, part of Teen Station. The story is told in the form of a comic book and presents a real-life scenario in which a break in the intimate relationship between two partners leads to embarrassment through distribution of shared nude photos.
Although sexting (from the English words for sex and texting – sexting) carries some risk, when practiced by mutual consent of older people it is not a problem in itself. However, when minors engage in this type of communication, sexting can cross the thin line between innocent flirtation and the production and distribution of child pornography. If such photos or videos are shared with others or posted online, they can be used for online and offline harassment and for manipulation and extortion by pedophiles.
About 10% of the children interviewed for the representative survey \“Online behavior of children in Bulgaria\“, part of the international research project Global Kids Online, say that in the last year they have received messages with sexual content (photos, videos, text), and for half of them this has been an incident. For every second child who received such a message, it was an unpleasant experience, according to a study conducted in 2016 by the Applied Research and Communications Foundation, coordinator of the National Center for Safe Internet, in collaboration with MarketLinks.
The films in this series were made under a project of the Coalition for Media Literacy with the support of the Small Grants Program of the US Embassy. Partners of Media Literacy Days 2020 are the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, UNICEF, the US Embassy in Bulgaria and the Bureau of the European Parliament in Bulgaria.
The Internet Risks video series was produced with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria\’s Small Grants Program.