Engl. transl.: ADOLESCENTS̕ PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE RISKS OF SEXTING. DATA FROM THE FRIENDS 2.0 PROJECT

"""Sexting, which is sending explicit sexual messages (text, video or photo) became, with the spread of the smartphone, a frequent practice, and not only among adults, but also among children (individuals, less than 18 years of age). Understanding sexting as, on one hand, a communication practice within the couple and, on the other, as an online risk (by the fact that it’s a practice diverted from the private space into the public space), the current study sets upon analyzing the diverted consensual sexting, among children and teenagers in Romania. The research questions are: 1. How widespread is this situation among children and teenagers in Romania, 2. What is the perception young people have on this situation (e.g., which are the consequences of it, in their opinion? Who is to blame?), 3. What’s the role of friends in such a situation? In order to answer these, the study based on the data collected through Friends2.0 project, within which a survey was conducted, in Bucharest and Cluj; 1,600 young people, aged 10 to 18, answered."" (Velicu et al., 2018, p. 37)"

"5% of the children we surveyed have declared they have posted publicly or sent to other people nude or semi-nude pictures that have been initially sent in private to someone else. 6% declared this happened to them personally, while 17% said it happened to a close friend (p.46). Most teenagers perceive consensual sexting which has been hijacked as problematic, 75% declare it is a serious problem, while 14% say it is somewhat of a problem. However, 6% of them say it is completely unproblematic (that it is OK), while 5% say it’s OK if it is done as a joke. (p.47). “It is more likely that boys are more involved in this type of situation, both as victims and perpetrators (..) However, from a public and media discourse perspective, most often girls are seen as more exposed to this risk and not the boys.” “The high percentage of those who blame the victim for an act of aggression is a well-documented attitude in the cyber-bullying literature (Weber et al., 2013) and this has been proven as a deterrent in addressing this phenomenon, on one hand because the victim is not encourage to step forward and denounce the act, for fear of being re-victimised (Weber et al., 2013), and on the other, because we have a permissive attitude as a society towards the aggressor. Oru data confirms that adolescents are more likely to blame the victim for the hijacking of the consensual sexting, and not the person who forwards the pictures to others or those who post such messages publicly on social networks. Theoretical attempts to understand the specifics of cyberbullying have pointed out to the shift in responsibility that the presence of the witness implies. Far from being just a passive bystander, through the distribution of such messages, the friend becomes the aggressor (Grigg, 2010). Nonetheless, our data shows a lack of accountability of the witness, very few of our respondents stating that the friends who distributed the pictures publicly to be responsible/ accountable for the public hijacking of the communication which was personal up to that point.”(Velicu et al., 2018, pp 54-55)