Guidelines issued to professionals about child 'sexting'

Published: September 22nd, 2016

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- Education
- Social

An NHS watchdog has issued advice for professionals in how to monitor 'sexting' amongst young people, which is a growing problem across the UK.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) warns that little is known about the effects of sexting on young minds, and advises that teachers, doctors and social workers judge appropriateness for age.

It also stresses that inappropriate sexualised behaviour, which can include 'sexting', is often an expression of problems or underlying vulnerabilities.

Traffic light system

The guidelines advise using the Brook Sexual Behaviours Traffic Light Tool to gauge the severity of the behaviour. Red would indicate likelihood of actual harm, with sexting, which involves sending sexually explicit language or images, falling under the amber category. Amongst young children, amber warning signs would include the use of sexual themes in language and play.

Actions considered a normal part of growing up would be labelled green.

'Grey areas'

Dr Abdullah Kraam, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist who helped write the NICE guidelines, said that it was timely, given the growth in online grooming and pornography.

"The advice is useful. It gives people some idea as to whether a child's behaviour is concerning or not.

"Some things will be obvious, but other behaviours may be harder to judge. There are grey areas."

Need for family involvement

Jon Brown, of the NSPCC, said that in 'sexting' cases, the child's family needs to be aware and involved: "Steps to change behaviour will only be effective if the family and support network understand there is an issue and are supportive."

Rise in 'sexting' cases

In March this year, an investigation by The Times discovered that since 2012, 1,218 children from 50 secondary schools had been caught in incidents of so-called 'sexting'.

"When scaled up nationally, the figures suggest that at least 44,112 secondary school pupils have been caught sexting in the past three years", the paper stated.

The freedom of information requests also revealed more than a third of all 'sexting' cases involve children aged 12 and 13, while more than one in ten pupils have sexted a "non-school adult".

Pornography use

The rise in 'sexting' seems to correspond with young people's increasing access to online pornography. Earlier this year, a study commissioned by the NSPCC and the Children's Commissioner for England, showed that 53% of 11-16s have been exposed to online porn. 94% had seen it by the age of 14.

Of those who were still seeing online pornography, 46% (476) reported searching for it actively and 4% did so every day.

More than half of the boys (53%) surveyed in the NSPCC study said they thought porn was a realistic portrayal of sex, as did 39% of girls. Over a third (39%) of 13 - 14-year-olds and a fifth of 11 - 12-year-old boys also said they wanted to emulate the action they had seen.

Parents must be vigilant

Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, has previously said that parents must be more vigilant in protecting their children, in light of increasing use of pornography and sexting.

"We are seeing here that children who have not even hit puberty are being sexualised and made extremely vulnerable," she said.

"We need to be teaching our children to respect their bodies, and not to bow to pressure from their peers to get involved in these kinds of messages."