The Cyber Effect

by Mary Aiken

  Self-Actualization

  In her compelling story, Tallulah Willis described feeling detached from her true self: so removed from my body and from my mind that it was like I was living in a cardboard replica of what life should be.

  I would argue that the cyber self, while it offers glimpses into who you are, is a literally detached self. This cyber self is like a hand puppet that is speaking for you but isn’t really you—and can actually be quite different from the authentic real-world you. In other words, the real you has turned the cyber you into an object: The selfie is proof of this objectification. By posting a selfie, you are required to experience yourself as an object that is presentable or not. You judge your selfie from a detached distance, even if it is posted impulsively.

  I would argue that this self-objectification, and the sense of detachment from true self, could explain many of the negative behaviors seen online and discussed in earlier chapters. It feeds disassociation. Detached from your cyber self, you can feel detached from your actions—and come to believe you aren’t truly accountable. Now let’s think about a teenager in the process of identity formation from the age of ten, eleven, twelve to late teens, a crucial window of time to create a strong foundation and sense of self. This process is critical to development, and can have an enormous impact on the rest of an individual’s life and sense of self-esteem.

  But wait. There’s another new complexity. Instead of one solid identity to create and accept, there are now two—the real self and the cyber one.

  Carl Rogers described “self-actualization” as an ongoing process of always striving to be one’s ideal self. A “self-actualized” person is one whose “ideal self” is congruent, or the same as his or her perceived actual self or self-image. Rogers believed that this sense of being, or having become, the person you want to be is a good marker for happiness, and a sign of a fully functioning individual. If you accept his description of happiness, then it’s troubling to see the results of a survey of children and teens, ages eleven to sixteen, in which half agreed with this statement: “I find it easier to be myself on the Internet than when I am with people face-to-face.”

  The transition from childhood to adulthood is a critical developmental phase, what psychologist Erik Erikson described as a “psychosocial stage.” For an awkward adolescent or teen, it may be a lot easier to avoid painful experiences performed on the stage of real life, but these are often important developmental milestones and come with consequences if missed. Identity may not be fully developed—and what one wants to do or “be,” in terms of a future adult role, may not be fully explored. Social coping skills may not be acquired. Learning to navigate the tension or lack of comfort that the real world sometimes brings is necessary for the developmental process, as youth explore possibilities and begin to form their own identity based on their explorations.

  Failure to successfully complete a psychosocial stage can also result in a reduced ability to complete further stages. For Erikson, the next stage is intimacy versus isolation, occurring between ages eighteen and forty, when individuals learn how to share more intimately with others and explore relationships that lead toward long-term commitments with someone other than a family member. Avoiding intimacy or fearing relationships or commitment can lead to isolation, loneliness, and often depression.

  This is why we need to talk more about the repercussions of teenagers failing to establish a sense of identity in real life as well as cyber life. The result of such a failure can be what Erikson calls “role confusion,” when young people become unsure about themselves or their place in society. Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo believes that contemporary boys are in crisis due to excessive use of technology. As he writes: “The digital self becomes less and less like the real-life operator.”

  The cyber self is a masterful creation—funnier, wittier, better looking than the real self. But the problem lies with the vulnerability of this split-self existence. And it’s a serious problem. Here’s what I mean: If you look at all the studies done over the past ten years on cyberbullying, you’ll see that few of the solutions and awareness campaigns have worked effectively. This is why I am working hard to create and employ an algorithm to target it. Each year, more and more teenagers are devastated, even destroyed, by experiencing bullying online. Why?

  Think of the time and energy that teenagers put into their cyber selves—the self-portraits they’ve painted. When the cyber self is attacked—called “stupid,” “ugly,” “a loner,” “a loser”—then, I believe, this could cause a catastrophic interpsychic conflict, an emotional clash of opposing impulses within oneself.

  If the best version of you that technology can produce is rejected, how does that make you feel about the only self that’s left, your real one? There are no studies in this area, but I believe it is critical to explore if technology-facilitated interpsychic conflict could lead to self-harm.

  Sext + Sensibility

  There are loads of scary stories about sexting, but I’ll start with a relatively unscary one. The story dates way, way back to the summer of 2007, a million years ago in the sexting debate time line. But it marks a turning point.

  Two thirteen-year-old girls from northeastern Pennsylvania, Marissa Miller and Grace Kelly, were hanging out together and goofing around on a hot muggy night when they decided to strip down to their white sports bras and underwear.

  They hammed it up—Kelly flashing a peace sign—while a third friend took a photograph of the two girls.

  This photo was shared and shared again. Eventually it traveled all the way to the administrator’s office of Tunkhannock Area High School, where the girls were both students. It was found when school officials confiscated five cellphones of other students. Boys at the school had been trading photos of semi-dressed, semi-nude, or totally nude teenage girls. When a local prosecutor threatened to charge Miller and Kelly effectively with the generation and distribution of child pornography unless they agreed to attend a five-week after-school program, the girls and their families protested—saying the picture was taken in innocent fun, and was never meant to be distributed. The intention behind the act of taking the photograph was hardly the same as the intention behind the generation of child abuse material, but the law does not yet make this distinction.

  “There was absolutely nothing wrong with that photograph,” said Marissa’s mother, MaryJo. “I certainly don’t want pedophiles looking at my daughter in her bra, but I don’t think that was the intention to begin with. This is absolutely wrong….It’s abuse of his authority.”

  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a federal judge to block the D.A. from filing charges—stating that the teens didn’t consent to having the picture distributed and that the image was not pornography, in any event.

  While some may consider sexting to be only a social concern, the legal implications are clear. According to U.S. legal scholar Mary Graw Leary, “the production and dissemination of self-produced child pornography is, under the law, the production and dissemination of illegal child pornography.” Attempts at prosecution for sexting haven’t been confined to the United States. In Australia, child pornography laws have been enforced in connection with sexting, and between 2009 and 2011 more than 450 teenagers were arrested and charged with circulation of indecent images of minors.

  Prosecution is not a deterrent. The incidence of sexting has only risen. In 2008, the same year that Miller and Kelly were threatened with charges, a U.S. study reported that 39 percent of teens had taken a sexually charged or explicit image of themselves with their mobile phones and sent it via text message. Six years later, the numbers had grown to include half of all teenagers having sent a sext, according to a survey of undergraduates at Drexel University. Can we really try to outlaw—and describe as immoral and indecent—a practice that now involves half the population of teenagers in the United States?

  Sexual curiosity is a natural part of being a teen. From strip poker to spin the bottle, teens
have been doing this for generations. Back in the day, they went behind the cowshed and flashed each other. The difference was, nobody captured digital evidence and widely distributed it.

  “I’m not saying that it’s healthy or that it’s harmless, but it’s not a situation where kids who are depressed are doing this or kids who have very bad self-esteem are doing it,” said Elizabeth Englander, a professor of psychology at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, in response to the Drexel study. “It’s engaged in by many kids who are functioning well and not having problems.”

  Translation: Sexting is a new cyber norm.

  What do I think about this? As with any new and still-evolving behavior, I think a balanced approach is the route to the best outcome. But the debate itself—and the gray moral middle ground of sexting—just highlights, once again, the vulnerability of teenagers and younger adolescents in the cyber environment. And once again, courts, school administrators, parents, and child psychologists are desperately playing catch-up. But to stay ahead of the new problems emerging in cyberspace would require adapting our laws and installing new education programs at the same warp speed that new technology is developed and marketed, which is a practical impossibility.

  The competing views on the issue are fascinating. In their seminal article “Sext and Sensibility,” David Finkelhor and Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire argue that school officials, law enforcement, parents, and legislators have overreacted to the phenomenon of teenage sexting—and could do more harm by exaggerating the actual problems and then responding inappropriately. Finkelhor and Wolak caution against the “big stampede” to get educational programs into schools to warn kids to stop before they destroy their lives or end up in jail—or on a sex offenders registry. Scare tactics, they believe, are often the worst way to communicate a message to teenagers and have been shown to fail miserably “whether we’re trying to warn kids about the dire consequences of drug use, premarital sex or delinquent behavior.” Worst of all, it could have “boomerang effects” and result in reluctance to come forward out of fear of prosecution.

  Since the numbers of sexted images that actually show naked genitalia or breasts are minimal, Finkelhor and Wolak argue that defining these images as pornography is alarmist. “The child porn issue,” they say, “is really clouding our thinking about this problem.”

  The authors call for a moratorium on any sexting-education programs until the right strategy can be conceptualized. In my opinion, a good approach would be incorporating information about sexual images and sexting into the curricula of general sex education—which deals with bullying, dating, and interpersonal relationships. (And I hear this is now being done in some school systems.) The content needs to be developed in close cooperation with teenagers, and the message needs to be evaluated for effectiveness. Just telling teens not to do something isn’t enough. We need to understand the motive and psychology of the behavior as well as teach kids about legal consequences.

  The current laws do not deal adequately with the problem of sexting. At Middlesex University I have conducted extensive research in this area—involving the London Metropolitan Police, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Australian Federal Police under the umbrella of the INTERPOL Specialists Group on Crime Against Children. Following four years of research on three continents, I came to the conclusion that one of the problems is that sexting is viewed almost exclusively through the legal lens of child pornography, and while it is true that the images can look very similar, they are very different in terms of intent. In one instance, the explicit image taken by a teenage girlfriend and boyfriend is done voluntarily, and at the other end of the spectrum, the image is coerced from a child victim by a criminal sex offender. There needs to be an active review of the law in this area and the creation of a legal classification framework that differentiates between teenage voluntary sexual exploration and criminal generation of child abuse material, the defining criteria being mens rea, or intent. I am actively working on proposed amendments to legislation in this area through my involvement with The Hague Justice Portal in Europe.

  Do I agree with Finkelhor and Wolak that there’s been an overreaction to the rise of sexting? No. As a society, we need to pay attention to cyber effects, the ongoing evolution of behavior, and, importantly, how we react, adapt, and respond. It is impossible for me to ignore the stories of truly vulnerable individuals who have been tragically impacted by the behavior.

  The darkest place where the practice of sexting can take a teenager is actually part of my work. The risks of any online behavior need to be discussed carefully and thoroughly rather than swept under the rug. We have to make sure we’ve educated kids properly and created adequate measures to protect them.

  Revenge + Sextortion

  Jesse Logan was a vivacious, artistic girl, a junior in high school in Ohio, whose boyfriend asked her to send him nude pictures of herself. After Logan and her boyfriend broke up, he shared the nude images with younger girls at the high school, who started calling Logan a “slut” and a “whore.”

  Miserable and ashamed, Logan began missing class—a cry for help, and a sign of a teenager in crisis.

  Her mom, Cynthia Logan, didn’t discover that her daughter was cutting classes until she was notified by the school. When Jesse told her about the photographs—and the bullies—Cynthia Logan pressed the school to take strong action. But when administrators didn’t do enough to satisfy her, Cynthia convinced her daughter to appear on a local Cincinnati TV station and tell her story. That was May 2008.

  “I just want to make sure,” Jesse told the interviewer, “that no one else will have to go through this again.” Two months later, she hanged herself in her bedroom. She was eighteen.

  The point of this story isn’t just to shock and scare you. What it tells me is that how sexting is handled—by parents, by the media, by schools and courts—may be more potentially risky than the behavior itself. Jesse’s tragic suicide brings me to another important point. The number of teens—and even younger children—who are engaging in self-harm is now more evident than ever. This urgently needs to be researched and investigated. I believe self-destructive behavior is amplified and even encouraged by information readily available on sites and forums that target vulnerable youth—the worst cyber effect of all.

  There’s a name for the sharing of indecent images by an embittered ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend as a way to “get back”: revenge porn. It’s a burgeoning trend and discussed in the media. But is it appropriate to call it “porn”? As I’ve mentioned, the intention behind the taking of these images is very different from marketed pornography—and calling it “revenge porn” just seems to further victimize a victim. But whatever you call it, there are many efforts now under way to try to combat the escalation of this behavior. But until recently, before it was given a name by the media, authorities had a hard time figuring out how to talk about it, or act on it.

  Jesse Logan’s story resonates with another well-known case, that of Amanda Todd, a fifteen-year-old girl in Canada whose circulated sexual image led to her becoming a target of online bullying in 2012. Teenagers usually don’t have the resilience and strong sense of self in place to handle the fallout from being stuck in the role of a whistleblower or an anti-sexting missionary. Why put this responsibility on a vulnerable child who has already been a victim? An investigation of Todd’s hard drive provided more details. It wasn’t a shared sext that got her into trouble, but an indecent image. Todd had been in a webcam chat room with more than 150 people when she decided to lift her shirt and flash her breasts to the camera.

  It was an impulsive act, but one that she was unable to leave behind. Someone took a screen capture of the image and sent the link to all of Todd’s Facebook friends. That’s how the image of Todd’s flashing moment fell into the hands of online predators, individuals who troll the Web looking for embarrassing pictures, like hers, and then contact the subjects f
or sextortion purposes, or blackmailing, typically by threatening to post the explicit images more widely on the Internet.

  Victims of sextortion are sometimes asked for money, but more often they are asked for more photographs—or to perform sex acts for the camera. Todd had been approached by sinister blackmailers, as the disturbing records of her chat log revealed:

  [I am] the guy who last year made you change school. Got your door kicked in by the cops—give me 3 shows and I will disappear forever…if you go to a new school, new bf, new friends, new whatever, I will be there again, I am crazy yes.

  Hindsight is 20/20, and maybe vulnerable Amanda Todd should have stopped having an online presence at this point. Instead, she created a haunting video and posted it on YouTube. Without showing her face, she told her moving story of depression, anxiety, panic disorder, and self-harm in cue cards. One month later, she killed herself.

  Two years later, a thirty-five-year-old man living alone in an isolated resort town in the Netherlands was charged with extortion, Internet luring, criminal harassment, and child pornography in the Amanda Todd case. He was suspected of numerous other instances of online abuse in the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S.

  Let’s backtrack a bit. What was behind Todd’s original act—which led to her tragic ending? Impulsivity. It is certainly a psychological factor that contributes to the production of a sext, but it is also linked to immaturity. Young people have less self-control and have a much harder time resisting an impulsive urge. Their desire to explore overrides the risks of impulsivity.