Sexting And the Child's Right to Play: The Uncomfortable Use of Technology To Reconstruct Childhood

Abstract

In recent years law enforcement agencies in many countries have applied child pornography laws to 'sexting' involving the sending by young people of nude images of themselves by mobile phone or other social media. Arguments against the use of those laws include the claim that they have been designed to protect children not from themselves but from paedophiles and other online pests. The criminalisation of sexting by young people has also raised the concern that the penalties imposed can be draconian and out of proportion to the offence. In some jurisdictions young people can even be registered as sex offenders for sending nude images of themselves to others.