Beware of risks when sending nude photos
May 29, 2018
Late on a Saturday night, a teen girl sits in her bedroom when she receives a Snapchat from the older guy she likes. She opens it, excited, until she reads the content of the Snapchat. “Want to send me nudes?” it reads. She hesitates. What if the pictures get out?
She finally decides to send the picture, hoping that doing so will make the guy like her.
This situation is all too familiar for many teenage girls. Sending nudes is a current and popular way of being close to someone, but beware, especially when sending nudes, because people can take advantage of you or your pictures.
That girl could come to school the next day and find that the photos she intended for one person have been shared with many. While this can happen between any two individuals, research from Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics reports that boys and girls participate equally in photo sharing, but girls feel more pressure to participate.
Some guys will manipulate girls into sending nudes by feigning romantic interest. Others will use blackmail to receive nudes by threatening to spread rumors if they don’t get a picture. After receiving the nudes, guys often feel entitled to use them however they please. Beware that the guy may want the nudes for a reason other than having a relationship.
If an authority figure finds out that you’ve been sending nudes, you might get in serious legal trouble. In Illinois, the age of consent is 17 years old. If you are under 17 and are caught sending nudes, you can face child pornography charges and have to register as a sex offender. This means that even if someone coerced you into sending nudes, you might still get into trouble. Many teens aren’t aware of the legal risks of sending or receiving nudes, but the reality is that the legal risks outweigh any benefits.
Without knowing the risks, it can be hard to say no to an older guy. When I was a freshman, I was approached by multiple senior guys who claimed they just wanted to talk. Since I was so naïve, I believed they actually like me and was happy that these popular and attractive guys were talking to me. They started to get more and more sexual, asking me to do things I didn’t want to. Now I realize they were trying to take advantage of my naïvité. This didn’t just happen to me or happen that year.
A boy may try to take advantage of a younger girl because he sees her as an easy target to get what he wants without realizing the emotional damage it could do to her.
