Children as young as 10 years old are sending sexually-explicit images to friends

A REPORT today suggests Aussie children as young as 10 are sexting. We took a closer look at the numbers to see how big the problem really is.

Children as young as 10 are sharing sexually-explicit content with friends, experts say.

THE bar keeps getting lower and lower. Or, younger and younger.

Children as young as 10 are sending naked pictures of themselves to friends and classmates via text and social media, according to a leading child psychologist.

“I don’t reckon (sexting in primary school) is as rare as people think,” Michael Carr-Gregg told news.com.au.

“I’d say it’s at 20 per cent (of all students).”

It was reported on Monday that school principals were turning to sexual assault groups for help with the fallout when young people sent and received messages containing nudity or sexual content.

The statistics suggest the problem is bigger than previously thought, and getting bigger all the time.

An Australian Institute of Criminology report from December showed a staggering jump in pre-teens’ use of mobile phones for sharing sexual pictures and videos.

It revealed that 38 per cent of teens aged 13-15 had sent a sexual picture to another person and 62 per cent had received a sexually-explicit image or video of a peer.

Almost half of girls aged 13-15 has sent one image to another person in the past 12 months and 34 per cent had sent between two and five images.

Girls were sending more pictures than boys in that same age group: Only 30 per cent of boys aged 13-15 had sent one image to another person and 27 per cent had sent multiple images.

The reasons differed for boys and girls, too.

Male teens cited the main reason for sexting was to be fun/flirty and the second biggest reason was to keep a girl’s attention.

Female teens said they also wanted to be fun and flirty but almost 20 per cent of the time they were sending images as “a present to a boyfriend” and 13 per cent of the time they were doing it because they were pressured.

Mr Carr-Gregg said it was “naive” to think sexting was happening only via text. He said the results are “catastrophic”.

“Children are getting their hands on phones from older siblings and being signed up to social media too young by their parents.

“We’re giving them a passport into a very adult world and they don’t have the maturity to manage that.”

Moral and ethical considerations aside, there are also legal concerns. Legal Aid NSW released a statement in May explaining the risk.

“Thousands of children and teenagers are at risk of a criminal record — which can seriously impact their life forever — for sharing nude photos, even if the subject agrees,” lawyer Julianne Elliot said.

“It is a little known fact that 16-year-olds can legally have sex, but if they take nude photos and share them with one another, they could face serious criminal charges.”

Social media sites where picture sharing is popular and private, including Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, all have age restrictions banning those younger than 13 years from opening and owning an account of their own.

But parents are often pressured to intervene and speed up the process for their children — to open an account in their name. Experts say that’s a bad idea.

“Parents need to find their digital spine,” Mr Carr-Gregg said. “Just because your children are pestering you, and because everybody else is on it, doesn’t mean you can’t stand your ground.”

The office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner, whose staff aim to ensure Australia’s young people are safe online, said it had seen a sharp rise in complaints relating to sexting and intimate images but most of those have been from high school students.