Sending nudes can have dire consequences. So why are N.L. teens still doing it?

It should have been a gleeful moment for 12-year-old Mira Buckle.

"When I first got my phone I cried a little," Mira, now 16, recalled and not, she adds, due to happiness."I cried because I was afraid."

Overwhelmed by the sudden influx of messages, images and information,Mira promised her parents she'dguard against digital dangers. Today, she's on her third smartphone, but she's no less wary.

Mira, along with as many as one in four teensin North America,battles a particularly nuanced threat. Despite its legal status as child pornography, teen sextingsharing raunchy or explicit images, or requesting them from other minors quietly percolates in the digital underworld.

The students at her Corner Brook high school, Mira says, trade nude photos through cloud folders, text messaging and social media apps like Snapchat.

Mira hasexperienced it first-hand although not by choice.

"Luckily not too many times," she says. But on those occasions, when she unlocks her phone to a photo of someone's genitals, "they've been completely random and not provoked in any way."

Mira says she normally reacts with a pause, and maybe a wry smile at the absurdity.Then she blocks the sender.

But underneath that visceral reflex is a deeper concern.

"Your kind of brain just goes blank and you don't really know how to react," she said, likening the act to sexual harassment or assault.

But neither she nor her friends would feel comfortable telling police or school authorities, she said, fearing they'd be waved away.

"There would be no consequence," she said. "I just don't feel like it would go anywhere."

'It can really screw you over bad'

Mira says that while there's little she can do to stop nudes popping up on her phone, she won't send any of herself, echoing the concerns ofother teens.

Gonzaga High School students told CBC that while the one in four statistic might be a little high they'd guess it's closer to one in 10 students trading images they're well aware of the horror stories.

"Itcan end up anywhere. You don't know what's going to happen, even if you trust someone," said Lilly Mercer, 15."They could screenshot it and then it could go all over social media."

Even saving someone else's nude girlfriend, boyfriend or otherwise, if they're under 18 can land a teen in hot water.

"Someone could send you [a photo], and if you hold onto that, you're then breaking the law by holding that photo," Nicholas Cummings, also 15, said."It can really screw you over bad."

The practice can lead not only to embarrassment or child pornography charges, but to deep emotional scarring, says Courtney Cribb, a school counsellor from the Burin Peninsula currently working in Halifax.

Cribbwrote a thesis in 2018 on how schools are tackling sexting, finding counselors in Newfoundland and Labradorfelt unprepared to help.

They told Cribb sexting is "popping up more and more because of the technology increase," she said.

"They really stressed that it was an issue they were seeing it in their schools.They didn't think that enough was being educated or done about it."

Even if police are called in, she said, Cribb has heard from teens who've hidden a nude photoin online folders so the offending imagelooks as though it's been deleted. Because students are so connected online across schools and town borders, Cribb says, the photos are rarely contained.

"They're no longer in control of what they sent out," she said, describing students who've come to her office with symptoms of depression, injured self-worth and expressing suicidal ideation.

"It can have extensive emotional damage on students," she said. "You're already in a developmental stage where you're trying to figure out who you are, and how you fit in the world, and how you want other people to perceive you. Itcan be quite overwhelming and daunting."

Just say no?

Mira cautions that a prohibition approach will do little to stop teens from sending or asking for photos.

"Sex is not a dirty word and it shouldn't be treated as that," she said.

But minors still need to understand that it's impossible to retract an image once it's sent.

The pamphlets collecting dust at her school won't help much, either, she says.Instead, she's calling on educators to bring relatable stories to kids starting when they're young, and make digital citizenship a basic aspect of schooling.

Mira herself uses theatre to teach online safety to younger audiences, and says a similar strategy could work for adolescents learning by emotion, rather than study.

Cribb reinforces Mira's instinct: that it's not about forbidding experimentation, but delivering stories of caution in such a way that piques interest in the adolescent brain.

"Students will even tell you themselves unless there'sa 'wow-bang'factor they don't take it in the same," Cribb said. Instead, they need a narrative they can relate to.

Today's teens have a "completeinterdependence" with their tech, Cribb says. In order to help them grow up, educators first have to accept that some sexual development will happen online.

"They live in a digital society. They always have," she pointed out."Their phone is an extension of who they are."

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