Yesterday in the House of Commons, UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt took a break from discussing the all-important matter of suicide prevention strategies, to ask himself “a simple question”: “Why it is that you can’t prevent the texting of sexually explicit images by people under the age of 18?”
“Because there is technology that can identify sexually explicit pictures and prevent it being transmitted,” he asserted. He alluded to an existing “lock” that parents can allegedly apply to their children’s phone contracts to prevent the sending of such imagery. He urged social media platforms to use similar software to detect and censor “sexually explicit” images within their apps.
“I think social media companies need to step up to the plate and show us how they can be the solution to the issue of mental ill health amongst teenagers, and not the cause of the problem,” Hunt said, according to The Guardian. He generously reminded the house that “there is a lot of evidence that the technology industry, if they put their mind to it, can do really smart things.”
The question of what social media apps can or should do to protect the mental health of their users is an interesting one — Hunt also suggested that platforms could police cyberbullying using word-pattern-detection technology.
But the vague connection the Health Secretary made between “sexually explicit pictures” and teenage “mental ill health” sounds more like the moral panic of an aging relative at Thanksgiving. Hunt didn’t explain why the sending of consensual “explicit” images might be causing mental health issues for teens. Nor did he outline how banning them from users’ DMs would put an end to sexting, once and for all.
Luckily, a sexting ban probably won’t come into effect any time soon. According to The Guardian, rather than answering the Health Secretary’s “simple question,” “Members of the health committee urged Hunt to put more resources into suicide prevention.”
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Ash Kingston [The Street Issue, Pre-Fall 2013]