Teen Vogue, Snapchat urge teens to send sexually explicit sext messages during COVID-19 quarantine
Online magazine Teen Vogue and multimedia messaging app Snapchat are encouraging their teen audience and users to create porn while they're at home during the coronavirus quarantine, according to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“Like anything worth doing, sexting takes practice,” said a Teen Vogue story published Monday on the Snapchat Discover page, according to The Daily Caller. “Here are 7 things you might not have known about sexting.”
Another read, “Sending someone details about what you want to do to them and getting back even more detail about what they want to do to you should be fun, easy, and ultimately joyful. Anything less than that isn’t worth your time.”
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The nonprofit group NCSE called on Teen Vogue to “stop encouraging” the creation of “child sexual abuse material by sexting during quarantine.” It also urged Snapchat “to cease promoting these messages by Teen Vogue via Discover,” which they said is putting kids at risk of sexual exploitation.
“Snapchat and Teen Vogue are playing right into sexual predators’ hands,” Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and executive director of NCSE, said in a statement.
“With the likely surge of young viewers on Snapchat due to quarantine, it is socially irresponsible for Snapchat Discover to encourage minors to self-produce underage pornography (i.e. child sexual abuse materials), thereby increasing their vulnerability to sexual predators,” Hawkins continued.
The proliferation of online child sexual abuse material has increased exponentially in recent years and more children are being targeted and groomed by predators via social media apps, Hawkins pointed out, saying Teen Vogue and Snapchat “must be held socially accountable for promoting trends that put people at risk for exploitation.”
“Research shows that sexting is often linked to offline sexual coercion, leaving teens inherently vulnerable,” Hawkins said, adding that sexting can also make teens vulnerable to sexual extortion, sexual abuse or trafficking.
“Sexting is not harmless fun, as Teen Vogue would like teenagers to think, and Teen Vogue and Snapchat would be wise to stop promoting sexting to young, impressionable teens,” Hawkins concluded.
Last April, Teen Vogue pushed the idea that prostitution is acceptable to its young readers.
In an op-ed called “Why Sex is Real Work,” Tlaleng Mofokeng, a medical doctor, noted that sex tourist destination Amsterdam would soon legally bar guided tours through the red light district but that many “sex workers,” — a euphemism for prostituted persons but is often used to include brothel keepers and pornographers — are opposing the ban.
“Not all sex workers engage in penetrative sex, though, undeniably, that is a big part of sex work. Sex-worker services between consenting adults may include companionship, intimacy, nonsexual role playing, dancing, escorting, and stripping. These roles are often pre-determined, and all parties should be comfortable with them,” she explained.
In 2017, Teen Vogue encouraged its audience to engage in anal intercourse and minimized its health risks.
