Cyberflashing is now a criminal offense—but the normalization of this behavior among young people needs to change

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Cyberflashing is now a ********* offense—but the normalization of this behavior among young people needs to change

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In March 2024, a 39-year-old man became the first person in England and Wales

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of the new offense of cyberflashing, part of the Online Safety Act. He had sent unsolicited photos of his genitals to a 15-year-old girl and a woman.

Cyberflashing now being a ********* offense is

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, and

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of this offense was

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.

But as researchers of young people’s use of social media, we have concerns that this is not enough to to counter the

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of image-based ******* harassment and ******, including digital flashing, in youth culture. A significant problem is that young people rarely report that they have encountered this—and without reports, no convictions can take place.

In 2019,

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interviewing 144 teens about their experiences of non-consensual ******* images on social media platforms. We followed this research up with

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of 336 young people, carried out during the pandemic lockdown of spring and summer 2020.

Together, the interviews and survey data

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of how widespread cyberflashing is among young people.

We found that 75% of ****** from our qualitative interviews had received some form of unwanted male ******** images or videos. One

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:

“There was this guy on Snapchat, I didn’t know him but I thought my friend knew him, so I accepted this follow request and then on his story it was like who wants to see my big… you know, and then I saw like a text from him, because you know you do so I thought it was like a streak [an ongoing chat conversation], so when I pressed on it and it was a picture of his like ***** […] I blocked him.”

In our survey, we found that 37% of ****** had been sent an unwanted ******* image and of these 80% said it left them feeling “disgusted”.

The survey also found that young people rarely reported their experiences. Only 17% of the young people in our survey reported cyberflashing to social media platforms, 5% told their parents and just 2% reported it to school.

A 15-year-old girl explained in an interview that normalization and acceptance of the issues plays a role in lack of reporting:

“[Young people] they think it’s normal … yeah, it’s normal, or they didn’t do anything, and that is ******* ********, but most teenagers don’t know that, so they don’t do anything about it, and they just leave it.”

In our interviews, ****** explained that while images from strangers were often upsetting, they felt better able to ignore or block such images than when they came from boys they knew. It was much worse for victims if the sender was in their immediate peer group at school. A 13-year-old said,

“Yeah, if they go to the same school as you then you see them every day, and it just reminds you of like what they did.”

In some cases, the harassment comes from boys the ****** are close to. A 14-year-old said,

“I had a friend, yeah, and her boyfriend must have sent her a ***** pic, and then he carried on trying to pressure her to send one, I feel that’s what happens the most, these boys try and pressure them like into sending it back, because oh I send, or oh if you love me you’ll send it back to me.”

These “transactional ***** pics” are a

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: ****** are being cyberflashed accompanied by requests to send ******* content back. Our survey found that ****** felt much more pressure to send nudes (44%) than boys (15%).

A new ********* offense is a good step, but it doesn’t sufficiently address the culture shift that is so desperately needed.

Recommended changes

More extensive privacy settings for social media sites

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, given our research showed incidents of image-based ******* harassment and ****** from unknown adults as well as peers.

**** education at school should also give young people the tools to understand harassment online and digital consent. The current updated government guidance on education regarding

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does include a footnote to our own

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. But the government document still does not adequately cover basic elements of image-based ******* harassment and ****** including cyberflashing, upskirting and AI deepfakes.

Parents and adults in the wider community

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to help them understand and respond to tech facilitated ******, including how to talk to young people about these issues.

We have produced

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. In the

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, young people, school staff and parents had vastly improved their understandings of digital ******* ********* and bystander interventions.

Schools need to take an approach that builds in understanding of the impact of

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. It’s also vitally important that

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in this discussion.

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and boys’ voices may push them deeper into misogynistic ideologies. Creating peer mentorship programs and setting up youth discussion groups within schools around issues of digital consent are effective ways to shift attitudes.

A focus on education will help young people know their rights and give them the tools they need to stay safe.

Provided by
The Conversation

This article is republished from

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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Citation:
Cyberflashing is now a ********* offense—but the normalization of this behavior among young people needs to change (2024, May 2)
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