The extra-curricular dalliances of Tiger Woods and the story of Jessica Logan, a Cincinnati teen who committed suicide in 2008, and whose parents are now suing her ex-boyfriend, several of her peers, and her school, have an unlikely point of convergence. Both have brought sexting into the media spotlight.
Sexting, for those who are only dimly aware of texting, and don't even know how it's done--is the sharing of sexually explicit photos and chat via digital media. Sending a nude picture of oneself via cellphone text is the most common "sext," it seems. Tabloids have recently reported that Rachel Uchitel and Jaimee Grubbs kept in touch--and kept things interesting--with Tiger Woods this way. Recently Woods's texts to Uchitel and Grubbs about what he wished they were doing were splashed across the pages of Us Magazine and the New York Post for all of us--certainly not the intended recipients--to see.
In 18-year-old Jessica Logan's case, and that of another girl, 13-year-old Hope Witsell of Riskin, Florida, the images they sent were shared with others, who forwarded them to still others, without the girls' consent. The two girls, humiliated and shamed, killed themselves after the merciless teasing, bullying, and branding with words like "slut" and "skank" that ensued.
Sending nude or provocative pictures via one's cell might be relatively new, but it's nothing unusual with the under 18 set. A recent AP/MTV poll found that one quarter of the more than 1,200 teens interviewed "sexted," and a University of Plymouth, England online survey found that just under 40% of 13 - 18 year olds admitted sharing intimate pictures and videos with a boyfriend or girlfriend via "sexting." A full quarter of those 1,000 kids surveyed in the English study admitted they did it "regularly or all the time." And 17% of the kids surveyed by AP/MTV said they had passed along "sexts" they'd received to others without permission.
With predictable results. Girls, while only slightly more likely than boys to send the naked images of themselves, seem much more likely to experience a kind of "social death" if the images are widely disseminated--branded "whores" and "sleezes" by peers. Not surprisingly, this can render them utterly distraught. Hope Witsell wrote in her journal, "Tons of people talk about me behind my back and I hate it because they call me a whore! And I can't be a whore i'm too inexperienced. So secretly TONS of people hate me."
And in the cases of Hope Witsell and Jessica Logan--both previously socially successful girls with no emotional or conduct issues--adults at school were no help. For example, in spite of the fact that she was bullied, hectored, and showered with hatefully sexist names by her peers, those in charge at her school found it best to punish not the namecallers, but Hope herself. First, she was suspended, which her friends and parents say devastated her.
Then, when she showed up at school with cuts on her legs, the school social worker had the girl sign a "no harm" contract. No one notified Hope's parents. She strangled herself to death the next day. She was 13 years old.
We know that judgment, executive function, and thinking ahead are not a teen's strong suit. Preteens and teens have always taken stupid risks and been reckless for these reasons. Cell phones and social networking sites have merely provided another outlet for them to make bad choices, a broader canvas upon which their humiliations can be played out.
But when a teen's poor judgment and poor decision making collides with adults acting punitively rather than compassionately, and a social script that brands girls "slutty" before they've even had sex, punishing them rather than propping them up and helping them move on, it is hard to argue with the sense these two girls had that all is lost.
