What does the law say about underage sexting?
Sexting is sending indecent images of yourself or others or sending sexually explicit messages. Sexting is commonly known as “trading nudes”, “dirties” or “pic for pic”.
The term ‘indecent images’ includes:
naked pictures;topless pictures of a girl;pictures of genitals;sex acts including masturbation; andsexual pictures in underwear.
The Protection of Children Act of 1978 states it is an offence to take, make, have or publish photographs of a child (under 18). This includes selfies; if you’re a teenager and take an indecent photograph of video of yourself, you are committing the offence: producing indecent imagery of a child”.
If you are under 18, and you take a sexually explicit image of yourself, you have committed the offence of making an