The meaning of sexting for teenagers A social representational, post-Jungian investigation

Recent findings concerning ‘sexting’ suggest that social status among same-sex teenagers is a major explanatory factor behind such a phenomenon (Ringrose et al, 2013). Alongside elements of immaturity, and (an alleged) disdain for boundaries in gender-based interactions, such research into social status may indicate the constellation of the trickster, a Jungian archetypal figure associated with mischievous characters in world folklore. Tricksters often subvert hierarchies and transgress limits, traits often associated with those rites of passage towards adulthood. To deepen the analysis of the social reactions to ‘sexting’ and the psychological dynamics involved, depth psychology theories are integrated with a criminological discussion of the moral panics and the moral regulation issues raised by ‘sexting’. The main argument justifying such an approach concerns the need to acknowledge the social construction of youth as ‘deviant’ and to consider the role of social development that is performed around the practice of ‘sexting’. The major aim of the research is to investigate teenagers’ understanding of such notions as social status and abuse, while analysing the impact of the sociocultural context of the Swiss Canton Ticino, where the data was collected. To achieve this aim, integration of social representation theory with Jungian and post-Jungian psychology has been used to inform the approach to data analysis, based on thematic discourse analysis. Findings from interviews point to issues of trust which lie behind the exposition of peers who are deemed morally reproachable. Such issues stem from a lack of self-confidence and an incapacity to deal with difficult feelings, which educational interventions must acknowledge.