Earlier this year I visited a school in turmoil. It began with two students: a sixth-grade girl who I’ll call Emily, and her 14-year-old boyfriend, who I’ll call Justin. Justin begged Emily to send him some photos. “Nothing raunchy,” he said. Their parents would never know, he promised.
Emily did as he asked in the privacy of her bedroom. She pulled down her shirt to reveal the curve of her breast. (Like many other 12-year-old girls nowadays, she could easily pass for 15.)
Justin promised Emily that nobody else would ever see the photos, and it seems he meant to keep that promise. But Justin left his phone unattended at a party, and another boy, we’ll call him Brett, picked up Justin’s phone, scrolled through the photos, and saw the ones Emily had sent. Brett forwarded the photos of Emily from Justin’s phone to his phone, and then posted the photos on Instagram, using an account with a fictitious name.
Within their suburban community, the photos went viral. Other girls began calling her “Emily the slut.” Boys came up to Emily and asked her to put on a show for them. She was uninvited from a ski weekend with friends when the parents of one of the other girls said they didn’t want their daughter to be around Emily’s bad influence.