Naked Snapchat movie and sexual selfies: Welcome to the fresh frontier of bullying

‘Snapchat’ – it sounds so harmless. Those two syllables denote a world of adorable mouse ears, rainbow symbols and facial distortion filters that burst onto our smartphones as messages for a matter of seconds, before disappearing forever. The app now seems to be as common among 50-somethings as millennials (judging from my friends’ parents who have just discovered the #LOL filters).

T he only time we hear a negative report of the app, is when it’s used by teenagers to sext. That’s when alarm bells embark ringing – mainly for parents and teachers, often at a loss to know how to stop kids exploring their sexiness on social media.

But that – the consensual sending of sexual messages inbetween teenagers who fancy one another – is by no means the thickest danger. What we all need to truly wake up to now, is Snapchat being using as a form of bullying.

T he frontier of bullying has been switching for years. For my generation (twenty-something millennials) cyber-bullying embarked on AOL dial-up via MSN messenger. In the last decade, it has spread across mainstream social media – from Facebook and WhatsApp to more niche sites, popular with teenagers, like Ask.fm.

Cyber-bullying can look like trolling: being excluded from online groups; a refusal to ‘like’ a picture; ironic ‘likes’ on a picture; body-shaming; slut-shaming – you name it. It’s all-encompassing and when it comes to teenage chicks, a lot of is focused on their bods.

Much of this falls into the category of vengeance porn.

T een chicks have told me stories of being tricked into sending ‘nudes’ (either braless or vaginal) to the school ‘mean women’ on Snapchat, or to boys they fancied – who then spread them around. The consequences of this are horrific.

These ladies are essentially victims of vengeance porn – but as UK law only recognises this as a crime that affects over 18s, they cannot take legal activity unless they go after perpetrators for child porn. And if a damsel (or boy) sent the nude themselves, this could result in her also facing legal sanctions.

This legal and emotional minefield can result in self-harm, mental illness and – as in one tragic case, in Florida last week – death.

T ovonna’s aunt Angel Scott told WFLA-TV: “Everybody was out there talking about her and calling her names and they said it went up on social media, Snapchat.”

The police are looking into it but say they have no evidence that she was being bullied, and do not know if she consented to being filmed nude in the shower.

But that shouldn’t matter. What seems to be clear is that Tovonna did not want the movie to be collective on Snapchat. She was being ‘called names’ and ‘talked about’ as a result of it. That is not something any teenage lady opts into, and to me it just proves she was being bullied.

Her mum agrees telling that bullying had occurred in the past, and her friends are now using the hashtag #StopBullying to spread the message.

B ullying no longer looks like it used to and it certainly isn’t restricted to the playground. It is elaborate, subtle and exceptionally aggressive.

Teenagers nowadays know that what hurts more than a physical punch, is social abjection. The shame of having your lunch money stolen used to face and hooligans weren’t there 24/7. But cyber-bullying is different. A Snapchat message or movie can be captured in a screenshot and remain for ever. Photos can circulate the web for life.

Slut-shaming online is the fresh frontier of bullying, and it’s about time we called it that. Sharing a nude movie without someone’s permission is not ‘a bit of a laugh’ or #awks. And, in the UK, if those involved are over eighteen they could be sent to jail. It’s that serious.

The US doesn’t yet have the same laws – but that doesn’t matter. We need to still label these incidents as ‘vengeance porn’ and recognise them as bullying. Only then when we give it the right name can we begin to deal with it decently and make sure no other teenage has to suffer in this way ever again.

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