photo: mesaj/ BY

I log on to MySpace regularly to talk to my friends, but a lot of times, I just want to log off.

It annoys me that a lot of my homegirls still insist on posting revealing pictures of themselves online.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm sick of the widespread practice of sexting or sextcasting, which is how the media (not young people) describe the digital exchange or posting of nude or semi-nude pictures. 

Given the many documented cases of cyberstalking, it's clearly not safe. And there are legal issues as well. Earlier this year, there was a case in Pennsylvania in which three young female "sexters" were charged with possessing and distributing child pornography (of themselves!). The ACLU sued on their behalf and won the case, which declared the type of provocative pictures (no overt nudity) you commonly see on MySpace to be well within the girls' consitutional rights of free speech.

In other words, sexting does not necessarily mean porn. Still, the fear is that semi-nude pictures could just slip into something more comfortable.

But all this is old hat.

Personally I don't think the girls from Pennsylvania should be let off the hook. Sites like MySpace and Facebook allow you to control who sees your picture (something that 66% of youth online take advantage of). But, someone with access to your profile could still copy and paste your pictures elsewhere. Those girls should have known better and shouldn't have been surprised that their pictures ended up in a school administrator's office. Teens regularly use MySpace for revenge. One sexting revenge plot even ended in a suicide.

Despite such news, young girls still post pictures of themselves on MySpace in their lingerie. And who knows who is adding them just to see. Maybe those who post inappropriate pictures like the type of attention they get online because they can't get it in real life.

My question is: why do they need that sort of attention in the first place?

What bugs me even more is that their parents don’t check their kids' profiles and don't seem aware of the real dangers of identity theft, predators, and internet scams.

To understand why in the age of identity theft and cyberstalking people still post sexy pictures of themselves, I surveyed some of my MySpace friends.

Out of the 7 people who took the survey, 4 were male and 3 were female. The average age was 18.

People who felt safe posting pictures of themselves in street clothes: 3 males & 2 females said yes; 1 male and 1 female said they weren't sure.

People who posted pictures frequently (i.e. everyday): All 7 said no.

People who said they picked friends based on their MySpace picture: 4 males and 1 female said yes; 2 females said no. 

People who said they would never post pictures of themselves in their underwear: 1 male said yes; 3 males and 3 females said no.

 The survey results were both heartening and disturbing.

On the one hand, the gender divide was roughly equal in terms of feeling safe about posting pictures in street clothes. And only one of the participants (male) actually would posting a semi-nude picture of himself. But none of those surveyed posted pictures on a daily basis. In other words, their online personae did not depend on their pictures, but on writing, layout, and other design elements that together form an online identity. 

On the other hand, all the males interviewed admitted to picking their MySpace friends based on the perceived sexiness of others' profile pictures. Only 1 out of 3 females admitted to picking friends based on profile picture alone. So while the males surveyed may not be willing to let everything hang out, their "friending" practices favored those profiles in which pictures were the dominant design element and, by extension, marker of online persona.

While the sample size of my survey is limited in what it says about the entire online community, it still disturbs me that there is a gender divide in how people pick friends online.

My only hope is that skin doesn't become the ultimate sign of popularity both online and off.

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