Teen sexting: stupid & illegal
I like Larry. He’s a nice guy, very smart, and I applaud his work. I agree with most of what he says, but we do share a fundamental advice difference (won’t go into it here)… Still, I think the blog post he wrote about “sexting” is pretty much accurate. Here it is for some light Friday reading…
Remember, one way to find out if your kids are sending or receiving naked images of themselves or their friends online is to use computer monitoring software like our PC Pandora. I don’t care how “open” your communication is with your child, there are just something I guarantee they WON’T tell you!
March 30th, 2009
Teen sexting: stupid & illegal
By Larry Magid”Sexting” is the practice of taking a sexually revealing picture of yourself, typically from a cell phone, and sending it to someone. Legal consequences aside, it’s a dumb thing to do, especially for younger age groups in which it has become something of a fad.
Even if you are comfortable with the person receiving the image, you never know for sure where else it might land. Digital images are easy to copy and forward and, even if you trust your friend’s discretion, it can be accidentally forwarded or seen by others with access to your friend’s phone or computer. It’s not uncommon for such images to find their way to other people’s cell phones and even Web pages, where they can be seen by anyone, copied, searched for and redistributed, perhaps forever.
For minors, there’s another risk — serious legal consequences. Creating, transmitting and even possessing a nude, semi-nude or sexually explicit image of a minor can be considered child pornography. It can be prosecuted as a state or federal felony and can even lead to having to register as a sex offender.
Crazy as it seems, some prosecutors have gone after kids for taking and sending pictures of themselves. There was a case in Florida a couple of years ago where a teenage boy and girl photographed themselves nude and engaged in “unspecified sexual behavior.” One kid sent the picture to the other and somehow the police got involved. They were tried and convicted for production and distribution of child porn and the teen who received the image had the additional charge of possession. An appeals court upheld the convictions.
In January this year, three teenage girls from Pennsylvania were charged for creating child porn and the three boys who received the images were charged for possessing it. And, according to CBS News, a Texas eighth-grader in October spent a night in jail after a coach found a nude picture on his cell phone, sent by another student.
It’s sadly ironic that the very child porn laws that were written to protect children from being exploited by adults could wind up having a devastating impact on the lives of children who, while acting stupid, have no criminal intent. For some perspective on whether this issue is or isn’t overblown, see Anne Collier’s piece in NetFamily News.
It’s hard to know how prevalent the practice is. But if you believe the results of an online survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, about 22 percent of teenage girls and 18 percent of boys admit to having “electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.” I’m not completely confident about the results of this study, which was carried out by a market research firm and not subject to academic peer review. But I think it’s fair to assume that a significant number of kids are doing this.
Perhaps more interesting than the survey’s overall number is the breakdown of why teens take and send these pictures. Of those who reportedly sent such pictures, 71 percent of girls and 67 percent of boys said they sent or posted content to a boyfriend or girlfriend, while 21 percent of the girls and 39 percent of the boys say they sent it to someone they wanted to date.
As you might expect, peer pressure plays a role. Of those who sent such content, 51 percent of teen girls cited “pressure from a guy,” while 18 percent of teen boys blamed pressure from girls.
While sexting is troubling, I think it’s important for us all to take a deep breath and refrain from passing new laws or using child pornography laws that were designed to protect children from exploitation by adults.
I suspect that sexting will diminish over time. Kids aren’t stupid and, faced with the facts, most will wise up. We also know that kids who get in trouble online are the same kids who get in trouble offline, so when teens repeatedly do sexting or other stupid or risky things online, it’s important to intervene early and often.
The best thing for a parent to do is to have a non-confrontational conversation — perhaps over dinner — to ask your kids if they’ve heard about sexting and what they think about it. You might not get a straight answer but you’ll open up a dialog that can go a long way toward helping your kids understand how to minimize legal, social and reputation risks. There are more tips on ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety site I help operate.
Boy, am I glad the Internet and camera phones weren’t around when I was a kid.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:31 AM
Mom Blogs – Blogs for Moms…
…
April 18th, 2009 at 9:48 AM
Possible First Amendment protection for teen “sexters?”
The justification for not protecting child pornography under the First Amendment is that it is necessary to take prurient advantage of a child to make the picture. Hand drawn or computer generated child porn is not illegal (unless they use a live child for an artist’s subject I suppose) – one thinks movie scenes in “The Glitter Dome.”
A sexting teen who transmits her own is not being taken advantage of by an adult or anyone else. If she sends nude pictures to an 80 year old her part in the transaction might very well be protected under the First Amendment – once the first principles of the scenario are considered. Ditto for her side of sexting to a friend.
There is an outside chance a child possessing such the “sext” should be considered to be taking prurient advantage of a minor under the First Amendment (depending on which generation of judges gets hold of it maybe) – but does it make sense to make a teen boyfriend — who may even have made legal sexual contact with the girl — the equivalent of an adult who possesses child pornography?
The free speech crossover seems to be when boys distribute nude pictures of girls among themselves without the girls permission – certainly not free speech. But to begin with no child was hurt making the image. The kind of personal damage to a child making pornographic images may be much more devastating than that of having the image passed around (again, once thinks of “The Glitter Dome”) – at least most of the time.
Wouldn’t we feel more comfortable with law that punishes such a gross invasion of privacy in a case for case damage way – not rounding up dozens of students and plastering them all with sex offender status and heavy jail time – but treating the offense as the privacy offense it really is?
May 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 AM
Please read your statistics again, they are slightly misleading. You said:
“As you might expect, peer pressure plays a role. Of those who sent such content, 51 percent of teen girls cited “pressure from a guy,” while 18 percent of teen boys blamed pressure from girls.”
Your information was based off of the following statistic from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy:
51% of teen girls say pressure from a guy is a reason
girls send sexy messages or images.
Notice that it says 51 percent of girls SAY pressure is a reason GIRLS SEND sexy messages. If you put the three capitalized words together, you get the simplified version of the statistic. In other words, 51 percent of girls believe that pressure is a reason other girls send messages. The statistic you are looking for is much further down on the survey on page 12.
“What are the reasons that you’ve sent/posted suggestive messages or nude/semi-nude pictures/videos (of yourself )?
Please think about any/all of those you’ve ever sent/posted and mark all that apply.”
In response to that question, 10% of teens say pressured to send, 6% of young adults say pressured to send, and 7% of the total surveyed say they were pressured to send.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:03 PM
I didn’t say it… it’s from the article
June 12th, 2009 at 1:40 AM
I am a teenager who just found out that there cracking down on this whole “sexting” issue. And I completely understand why its illegal. It is in a sense porn, but charging a teen for sending dirty pics via text or email is like putting a kid under 18 in jail for watching porn. And I’m pretty damn sure adults know this is going. Teens have been doing it for years, and yet I dont see cops arresting anybody. And I can understand this from an adults point of view, but having a teen see a body of someone from the opposite sex isnt that bad. I often wonder about about the female anatomy. Does that make me a sex offender? No, I’m just a curious teen. I’d rather my girlfriend(if i had one) send me a pic and help me learn about her body then to be clueless until I’m in college. I dont understand why everyone is stressing over this when theres more important things to worry about in this corrupted world anyways..
June 17th, 2009 at 9:54 AM
Excellent reply Mr. No Name… I am glad you responded this way because I want to help clear up confusion… it’s not necessarily the VIEWING of the material that folks are upset about. you have to understand that it is a moral issue and that kids (e.g. anyone under 18) should NOT be taking nude pictures of THEMSELVES and sending it along to others. It’s not the viewing, it’s the PRODUCING and DISTRIBUTING that is the cause of concern here.