The case of the Real Madrid youth players who have allegedly spread a video of the sexual act of a 16-year-old teenager with one of them (the four involved are between 19 and 20) through WhatsApp to other friends or colleagues is not a case isolated. It happens, and it does so frequently, although it does not acquire the notoriety of what happened in the Canary Islands. In fact, half of young people between 15 and 29 years old are aware of sending intimate images or videos in their environment, according to Alejandro Gómez Madrid, sociologist and researcher at the Reina Sofía Fad Youth Center.
The reasons for these behaviors are multiple, but fundamentally they are explained by ignorance or not wanting to understand the serious consequences that this has for the person (mostly women) of whom these images are disseminated without consent, as explained by the experts. “They don’t think about the victims,” they say.
And they also do not consider the legal consequences that could involve prison sentences. Because spreading intimate images or videos without consent on social networks (including WhatsApp) is a crime. It has been so since 2015 and even more so with the law of only yes it means yes, which not only punishes the protagonists who spread them, but also the third parties who forward them.
Don’t teenagers and young people know it yet? Alejandro Gómez’s response is clear, no, at least not as they should, because the information does not reach them through the channels they manage, which are none other than those of the always volatile social networks. “Ten years after the beginning of intensive use of networks, we continue not knowing what can or cannot be done and disseminated,” he acknowledges.
This lack of knowledge adds to the little concern that young people have about the risk of sending videos or photos of their intimate and personal lives. Only half of those between 15 and 29 years old (and the majority are women) are concerned about the dissemination of photos and images without consent, explains Gómez Madrid. That percentage decreases to between 70 and 80% in adolescents.
The lack of knowledge regarding the rights (and duties) related to data protection is also detected in the limited use made of the priority channel for reporting cases of cyberbullying, disclosure of images of sexual content or humiliation that it offers. , since 2019, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD). “The complaints that arrive are read in less than 24 hours and if the case is serious, the contents are ordered to be removed immediately as a precautionary measure. But last year only 46 complaints came, mostly from women under 30 years of age who were victims of the dissemination of images of sexual content,” explains the president of the AEPD, Mar España.
But the fact that there is little awareness regarding privacy and the right to honor among both minors and parents does not exempt from responsibility, warned Spain, who recalls that sharing this type of digital content entails sanctions in the civil sphere (fines that, in In the case of minors, parents must pay) but also criminal and labor consequences.
And he was blunt in stating that the AEPD policy is “zero tolerance”, even though the authors are minors. “We are applying fines of between 5,000 and 10,000 euros, because we believe that children and adults should avoid these behaviors and if they do not do it out of conviction, perhaps they do it out of fear of sanctions,” he emphasized.
To do? From the Fad they are clear: raise awareness from a young age and conduct practical workshops so that adolescents understand what intimacy is.
