Freedom of expression and access to information have been particularly idealized since the early internet. Yet the discussion of young people’s information rights regarding their access to or creation of sexual media is virtually nonexistent. That minors should be protected from seeing representations of sexuality is so deeply embedded in common sense that the harmful effects of these prohibitions are rarely discussed (Levine, 2002). Despite the restrictions, many youth access sexual content online (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2007) and some break laws in order to create and share sexual images (Mitchell et al., 2012). This book argues that granting young...

Adolescents are often described as irrational, impulsive, out of control, and even crazy or stupid. This pejorative characterization is usually attributed to teen physiology: raging hormones, still-developing brains, and an innate orientation to peers. Such explanations are typically seen as obvious, rational, and uncontroversial. Yet, a growing number of researchers are questioning the dominance of biological models of youth behavior (R. Epstein, 2007a; Lesko, 2001; Levesque, 2000; Males, 1996, 1999; Walkerdine, 1984). As Thurlow (2007) points out, the homogenization and biological determinism that is common in mainstream media (and some scientific studies) about teenagers would not be tolerated for most...

Since the mid-1990s, the standard advice to parents about internet safety has been that they should restrict and monitor their teens’ access to technology (Shade, 2011). But at the start of the widespread anxiety about teenage sexting in December 2008, a newspaper article offered some new advice to parents (Reimer, 2008). In this article, Bill Albert¹ suggests that parents should explain to their daughters that sending sexts to their boyfriends is “not what we meant when we talked about female empowerment.” Albert also advises against rationally explaining to teens that someone might distribute a private image; according to the “Sex...

If the question is: “Why are girls sexting?” one answer that might seem appealing is “sexualization.” The theory is that girls create suggestive images of themselves on their mobile phones because they are imitating what they see in mass media. Instead of considering how sexting might be, in some cases, a choice to express oneself sexually (Goldstein, 2009; Karaian, 2012), many people assume that sexting girls are misguidedly reproducing the sexualization of women in mass culture.

Since at least the mid-2000s, sexualization has been identified as a crisis in news media, documentaries (Newsom, 2011; Palmer, 2012), reports (Papadopoulos, 2010; Zurbriggen...

There is an interesting contradiction in how we think about the capacity and right to control information. On one hand, there is broad legal and public support for the control of commercially produced information and media. From intellectual property and patent laws to copyright infringement lawsuits, the law and the public seem to generally support companies’ rights to own and control the information and media content they create. Yet, on the other hand, users are told that the inherent qualities of digital media make privacy impossible and that giving up control over their information and personal content is necessary for...