Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, will be using automated systems and giving parents more visibilityto protect teens on their platforms.

How Does Meta Currently Protect Teens?

Prior to these latest changes, Meta already did the following:

• Messages to teens from adults over 19 are blocked, unless the teen follows the adult
• Teens receive safety notices when messaged by adults who have previously exhibited suspicious behavior
• “Take a Break”
  • Suggests taking a break after scrolling for a ‘certain amount of time’
  • Daily Limit, allowing users to set a maximum amount of time in the app
• Quiet Mode: limits notifications and messages when enabled

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See the latest research on criminality related to social media:

• Social Anxiety and Loneliness in Online Solicitation Offenders

See more articles related to social media

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What are the new features?

The following features, available in the US, UK, and Canada to start, rolled out on June 27, 2023.

Invites for DM

Adults must now send an invite to connect via direct message. Only one invite is allowed to be sent per day, limiting the reach of potential abuse on the platforms. This limit is lifted if the teen follows the adult sending the message.

Text Only

All new message requests will be text only. No photos, videos, voice messages, or calls will be accepted until the invite is approved. While not perfect, it will limit abuse.

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Learn why it’s important for everyone, especially teens, to be able to control their online experiences. Dick Pic Culture: How do Teenage Girls Navigate it?

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Managing Time to Protect Teens

Meta has finally acknowledging that outside influences aren’t the only way their platforms can harm teens.

When a ‘Take a Break’ message comes up, it will recommend teens set a reminder to stop scrolling. During focus testing, “more than 90% of teens keep these reminders on.”

‘Take a Break’ will also expand to include Facebook. Facebook’s explicit limit will be 20 minutes. Unlike Instagram’s vague, ‘a certain amount of time.’

Meta is exploring a nudge that will suggest teens close the app if they’re scrolling Reels at night.

Quiet mode will be expanding globally in coming weeks.

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If you’re unfamiliar with sextortion, check out Dr. Jen’s article How to Protect Your Child from Sextortion.

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Additional Parental Supervision to Protect Teens

Meta is giving parents a bigger window into their teens’ activities online.

When a teen blocks someone, Instagram will suggest the teen allows their parents to supervise their account.

Parents with access will now be able to see mutuals of both followers and those following their teens.

Meta has also expanded options for notifications from Parental Supervision on Instagram.

Conclusion

All of these tools are a good start, but it can’t replace having an actual conversation with your child.

Don’t let a billion dollar company be the medium you use to communicate with your children. Sit them down and talk to them about the realities of an always-connected world.

Link to Meta’s Post on these updates.

For an in-depth guide on talking to your adolescents about cybersex and pornography, check out Dr. Jen’s book. Amazon | BookBaby

Are you a professional looking to stay up-to-date with the latest information on, sex addiction, trauma, and mental health news and research? Or maybe you’re looking for continuing education courses?

Stay up-to-date with all of Dr. Jen’s work through her practice’s newsletter!

The post What’s Being Done to Protect Teens on Instagram and Messenger? first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

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The #MeToo movement has brought long overdue attention to the experiences of women who have been victims of sexual abuse and harassment. 

If you look behind the sensational headlines, the movement has sparked a much-needed conversation about consent. 

I have previously written about how we teach consent in our practice in a blog on the topic. 

#MeToo, combined with some recent research published in the Sexuality Research and Social Policy journal, can help us shed some light on how young women navigate sexuality and consent in the digital realm.

The Study

Dr. Sara Thomas’ recently published research study looked at how young women handled pressure to send them a nude or semi-nude photograph from a peer. 

The study analyzed stories from teenagers about their experiences of digital drama. She then identified three main dilemmas that young women experience in relation to sexual photographs:

• Interpersonal negotiations
• Consequences
• Self-concept

The study found that the biggest concern was the possibility of the image being spread without consent.

She then identified six different categories of behavior for how women were induced to send nude photographs:

• Desire
• Personal gain
• Asked
• Relational scripts
• Bombardment
• Coercion

One of the first dilemmas faced by a young woman is the decision of whether to send a photograph.

The Results

The study found that 2/3 of young women reported that they engaged in this ongoing struggle to decide if they should send a picture, to whom and when. 

When a woman decided to send a nude photograph, the motivations ranged from it being consensual to giving in to pressure or threats from the person asking for the picture.

The young women in this study knew that if they chose to send a nude picture there could be consequences. 

These consequences ranged from the picture being seen by people they did not want to see (mass distribution) to social ostracism, rumor spreading, legal consequences, emotional distress and getting in trouble with parents. 

The study found that the biggest concern was the possibility of the image being spread without consent.

Why do young women send nude or sexual photographs? 

In this study, only 8% of the young women sent the photograph because they wanted to. 

If they didn’t want to send the image, why did they?

Compliance

Findings show that many young women were sending nude images because they wanted to please the person asking for the image or because they wanted to avoid negative consequences from the young men that were asking for the images.

One of the troubling findings from the study was the tacit nature of the compliance by the young girls. The young women justified the compliance by saying that they liked the young man who was asking for the image.

“..compliance was frequently accompanied by an assertion they liked the young man who requested them.  These stories did not express coercion by the asker, but they also did not express a desire to send them. Rather the decision to send was a compliant ‘so I did’ to a male-initiated request for a photograph.”

Coercion

The majority of the women in the study experienced some form of coercion. 

The level of this coercion ranged from milder “If you loved me” statements from the young man requesting the image to more intense forms coercion. 

When a woman was unsure of sending an image, they reported feeling guilty that their partner questioned their love by not sending a nude image.

Many of the women had experiences of coercion that were more intense. The study found that some young men pressured, threatened, got angry or cut off contact with the young woman in order to try to obtain nude images. 

Some women also experienced threats of blackmail in the form of demands for more images. The blackmail threat was often that the images would be mass distributed. Those who experienced these situations didn’t feel like they had any options and that they had to send the images.

Can Young Women Refuse?

The answer to this is yes. 

In the study about 30% of the women refused to send a sexual image. 

As adults, we need to create an environment where our children feel safe to come to us with their challenging dilemmas and we need to react calmly and lovingly.

Of those 30%, 79% of those women faced consequences for not sending images. Partners would get angry. Relationships would end. 

Based on the consequences, several of the young women reported they ended up sending images to the young man who requested them. Only 12 women in this study refused to send nude images and did not experience any negative consequences for holding their boundary.

What does this study show us?

25 of 314 young women engaged in sexting with a partner because they truly wanted to, and the experiences were devoid of compliance or coercion. 

This means that most of these young women engaged in sexting that was truly without consent.  Their behavior was induced by compliance or coercion.

We, as parents, teachers, educators, need to do a better job at many things:

1. We need to teach all young people the true meaning of consent. 
2. We need to empower young women to say “no” to coercion and to feel strong enough to not feel the need to comply to an unwanted request. 
3. We need to give young women access to resources to help them make decisions about their sexuality.

The young women in this study did not seek adult help but turned to peers for advice. They often cited fearing an adults’ response as why they didn’t talk to parents or another adult in their life. 

As adults, we need to create an environment where our children feel safe to come to us with their challenging dilemmas and we need to react calmly and lovingly.

Reference: Thomas, Sara.  (2017) “What do I do?”: Young Women’s Reported Dilemmas with Nude Photographs. Sexuality Research and Social Policy.

This post contains affiliate links. The author or blog owner may earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links.

For an in-depth guide on talking to your adolescents about cybersex and pornography, check out Dr. Jen’s book. Amazon | BookBaby

Do you feel your sexual behavior, or that of someone you love, is out of control? Then you should consult with a professional.

Have you found yourself in legal trouble due to your sexual behavior? Seek assistance before the court mandates it, with Sexual Addiction Treatment Services.

The post What Young Women’s Experiences with Sexting can tell us about Compliance, Coercion and Consent first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

This post contains affiliate links. The author or blog owner may earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links.

I am writing to you today from the annual conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA). 

Each year, in addition to traditional talks, there are poster presentations. Today, Marion Desfachelles, a Ph.D. student at the University of Montreal, presented a poster on her research on girls and sexting.

Background on Canadian Laws

Canada’s laws regarding teenage sexting are different from the US.

In Canada, sexting is divided into two categories, Primary and Secondary. 

1. Primary sexting is defined as sending or receiving sexually explicit content in a private context.
2. Secondary sexting is defined as distributing the image or video to the public.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled this year that to establish an intimate photo exception to the juvenile pornography laws. This exception allows “two youths, who engage in lawful sexual activity, to consensually record their own lawful sexual activity as long as that recording is made or possessed for their personal use.”

In the US, two minors in this situation would face criminal penalties.

Are you a professional looking to stay up-to-date with the latest information on, sex addiction, trauma, and mental health news and research? Or maybe you’re looking for continuing education courses?

Stay up-to-date with all of Dr. Jen’s work through her practice’s newsletter!

Desfachelles’ Research

As most of the research on secondary sexting is focused on boys, Ms. Desfachelles wanted to look at how girls engage in primary or secondary sexting. To do this, she looked at the arrest records of 27 girls who were arrested or suspected to be involved in cases of juvenile pornography.

What did the study find? 

Girls are sometimes the primary sexter and the secondary victim, meaning a girl may have taken an image for a partner but it was then distributed outside the context of that relationship. Girls also distributed sexual imagery to others. 

An interesting finding was that the girls did acknowledge that sending these images would be hurtful to the victims, but the girls thought that the victims of the secondary sexting were responsible for the situation.

The study found three main motivations for secondary sexting:

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Learn more about Primary Prevention and its benefits in these articles:

• How to do Primary Prevention and More
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• Research: CSAM on the Dark Web
• You Are Not a Monster: Review of a Long Dark Shadow
• Search: Primary Prevention on Dr. Jen’s Recovery Readings

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• The most common motivation was that of revenge or hurt.
• The other two motivations seen were goodwill and fun, meaning peer pressure. 

Boys continue to be most frequently the originators of the secondary sexting, but girls sometimes start the process and definitely participate in the secondary sexting.

We know that there is significant emotional damage to the victim of secondary sexting. 

Prevention campaigns often focus on not sexting at all. 

The author suggests that, as sexting is becoming a more normative behavior for teens, the prevention efforts be moved to focus on prevention of secondary sexting.

What can you do as a parent?

Help teens understand that they should keep something that was sent in the context of a relationship private. 

Teach teens about consent and that consent also applies to distribution of images sent with the expectation of privacy.

As always, parents should be talking to their children about sexting. 

We also need to expand our discussions about how, if their child does engage in sexting, they can do so in a safe and respectful manner and to understand the risks involved in sending an explicit image to another person.

This post contains affiliate links. The author or blog owner may earn a commission if you make a purchase using these links.

For an in-depth guide on talking to your adolescents about cybersex and pornography, check out Dr. Jen’s book. Amazon | BookBaby

Do you feel your sexual behavior, or that of someone you love, is out of control? Then you should consult with a professional.

Have you found yourself in legal trouble due to your sexual behavior? Seek assistance before the court mandates it, with Sexual Addiction Treatment Services.

The post Girls and Sexting first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

The Center for Healthy Sex has posted the Webinar in full on their YouTube channel.

Please follow the link to watch the full webinar.

The post Sex Ed by Porn – Full Webinar first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

Join me this Friday for a free one hour webinar hosted by The Center for Healthy Sex at 12:00 pm (PT) to talk about the effects of cybersex and sexting on children.

Click here to see the event details  http://centerforhealthysex.com/sex-therapy-resources/upcoming-events/

You can also check out my book on the topic:  The New Age of Sex Education:  How to Talk to your Teen about Cybersex and Pornography in the Digital Age.  

The post Sex Ed by Porn: Free Webinar Friday first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

When it comes to resources for parents to help their children address online pornography, there are very few options. Really, for many years there were none. The organization Porn Proof Kids (www.pornproofkids.org) sought to remedy this by publishing the illustrated book Good Pictures, Bad Pictures: Porn Proofing Today’s Young Kids. The target age of the book is not completely clear, but based on the introduction, I would say that it is targeted at an 8-10 year old child. A child much older than this may be too sophisticated for the picture book, though it is a good starting ground for discussion.

There are some really great things about this little book. It is the story of a young boy talking throughout his day with his mother and father about “bad pictures.” The book does a brilliant job of describing in understandable language the concept of addiction, the thinking brain and the feeling brain. Introducing these concepts to children at an early age can be very helpful in teaching them to use their thinking brain to overrule things like impulsivity. The book also does a great job in teaching what it calls the CAN DO plan, a behavioral plan to manage exposure to pornography, which includes telling a trusted adult.

As with anything in print, there are both good things about a book and some things of which I am not a fan. My issue arises because I am acutely aware of the impact of shame on addiction, particularly sex addiction. The authors of the book do devote a small paragraph to this in the introduction, stating that a parent needs to stay calm because “shame and secrecy only increase the power of porn.” Because of my awareness of the impact of shame, I have become incredibly careful in the language I use when working in the sex addiction field. Words, even if unintended, can be shaming. It is my insistence on non-shaming language that causes me to have an issue with Good Pictures, Bad Pictures. It is right there in the title. “Bad” pictures. I understand that the authors had to write in a way that young children would understand. However, if I am a young child and see a pornographic picture and it has been labeled “bad”, what happens to me emotionally if I am excited by that picture? Am I then bad too?

The book likens pornography to rat poison, calling it dangerous. Research studies show us that incidental exposure to pornography is not necessarily dangerous to children. Those children who have problems with online pornography are frequent users. From a sex positive therapeutic stance, pornography is not “bad”. Pornography simply is the depiction of nudity or sexual acts between adults that a child is not prepared to see or process appropriately. Pornography is inappropriate for children. I personally dislike the use of scare tactics that involve shaming language that may make a child feel bad about themselves for having a physiological response to sexual imagery.

Another issue I have with the book is how it talks about the dopamine system in the brain. The book states that pornography “tricks” the brain into turning on powerful feelings. This statement is entirely untrue, the use of the word “trick” here is misleading. Dopamine is released by pleasurable activities (they use ice cream), drugs, or sex. This is not trickery but a biological process. The book also calls the reward center the “attraction center” which is not accurate. Attraction is a multifaceted concept that involves more than brain centers and neurochemistry. I do wish that they were more accurate in their description of these processes.

I feel like I just spent three paragraphs talking about what I don’t like about the book. I will own that these issues come from my background in neuropsychology and an obsessive desire to never shame anyone about sex and sexuality. That being said, the book is really the best resource of its kind that I have seen. It provides a short, readable story for a parent and child to go through together. It provides a clear behavioral plan for a child to follow if they are accidentally exposed to pornography.

The book is best for younger children who perhaps have not been exposed to online pornography yet. The average age of first exposure to online pornography is about ten years old, though this data is old and the age is likely younger. Therefore, the earlier you start talking to your child about sex, pornography and sexuality the better.

For more blogs like this one, please check out our site The New Age of Sex Education

The post Book Review: Good Pictures, Bad Pictures: Porn Proofing Today’s Young Kids first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.