Comments on: Teen 'sexting': Stupid and illegal

Taking a sexually revealing picture of yourself, typically from a cell phone, and sending it to someone might be a fad, but where minors are concerned, it's illegal as well as stupid.

[ddanckaert]

Ummmm....

Isn't that what teens spend most of their time thinking about, if not doing.... things that are stupid and illegal?

[JFDMit]

Stop Press: Teenagers do stupid stuff! Details at 11.

Kids are supposed to do stupid stuff. They're kids and are still learning. Part of learning is making mistakes.

What is less excusable is adults (who should know better) dragging kids through court and ruining their lives. Now thats what I call stupid.

[lorcro2000]

Frankly, prosecuting a kid for taking pictures of him- or herself and passing those on with all the serious consequences that are added to a person with a child pornography conviction including restrictions on how close to a school they can be, etc, is completely insane.

Then again, nobody ever claimed the official response to anything sex-related in the USA was sane. It is perfectly fine to show people being slaughtered in job lots on TV for instance, but if someone exposes a breast on prime-time TV there is a national outcry.

Yes, sexting is a very stupid thing to do. Kids do stupid things and need to have their behaviour corrected by grown ups. The proper response on how to correct them is NOT to brand them as pedophile sex offenders for life. Sheesh.

[ducttape36]

agreed. i had sex when i was 15, does that mean i should go to jail for statutory rape? its stupid behavior, yes, but being labeled as a sex offender is far worse than any psycological damage taking a risque picture of yourself would be. these laws are supposed protect these kids, prosecuting them isnt the way to do it.

[thelemurking]

Same as ducttape, I had sex at 15 and it's sad to think that we've gotten into this weird mentality that teens having sex would be child porn. When you are a teenager, that's what you are supposed to do... a bunch of stupid crap. That's when you discover who you are, who you are going to become. I know it will be hard for conservative America to grasp, but sex is part of every day life and amazingly enough, people just don't wait until they are married to do it.

Next thing you know, we will have the moral gestapo arresting pregnant teens, searching cellphones at checkpoints and so on. Anything we can do to protect our children ya know, including arresting them!

[gsekse]

According to many "studies" that get bandied about, kids seem to have their first sex before the age of 16, let alone 18. Strangely enough, most parent report that it isn't their child in this majority group. Hmmm, go figure. Either the studies are wrong. (strong possibility) or the parents, (another strong possibility)

In some ways the "children" of our country are getting wiser at an earlier age. We teach them about "stranger danger". Sadly, we don't teach them about "friend danger" or "uncle/aunt danger" or "daddy danger".

Maybe we should teach them the facts of life and actually discuss topics that most parents just seem to gloss over. Try, "Honey, it's a bad idea to flash your T*ts at anyone, they could have a camera and then your T*ts will be all over the internet forever." Then take them to the newsgroups and show them what is on there. Reality is a great teacher, beats the heck out of "trust" and "belief" and all that other junk parents rely on.

[thelemurking]

You left out "priest/preacher/bishop/father/'insert religious leader here' danger" You also seem to imply that only girls are doing this.

[Bork342]

People should mind there own business.Peoples mobile phones are private.TXT messages are not like emails.They are sent over a secure network very hard to decrypt.If a person trusts someone to send this to them, then its there business.Other peoples opinions on it are what is stupid.Do you comment on how your neighbors have sex?No, I didn't think do.If these kids are under 18, and they are NOT being exploited by an Adult.Then its none of anyone's business.

[jamessamans]

Text messages are not encrypted and they are very easy to intercept. Moreover, private transmission of child porn over the airwaves -- or, for that matter, storage of such material "in the privacy of one's own home" -- is still a felony. Your inability to see that is really striking. Exploitation of a minor need not be done by an adult to be exploitive.

[jamessamans]

Child porn laws were NOT meant to "protect children from being exploited by adults." They were meant to protect children in ALL cases.

The prosecution of someone possessing child porn is not and never has been tied to whether the person being filmed or photographed was voluntarily participating or felt exploited. Intent is absolutely irrelevent. It is by nature exploitive, and a child distributing porn starring himself or herself is every bit as much as felon as an adult.

Any time this occurs, charges should be brought, convictions made, appeals rejected. If we do anything other than that, we are inviting a world where child porn and underage prostitution rings will be run by pimps 17 years old, all safely beyond grasp of the law.

[mb99]

First off, I completely disagree with your statement that "intent is absolutely irrelevent". Intent is ALWAYS relevant - but intent of the perpetrator has nothing to do with whether the victim actually feels exploited. Those are two separate concepts that you seem to be mixing.

Second, we as a society must be careful that the laws we make don't wind up victimizing people more than the original "crime" would have. In this case, creating life-long "sex offender" records on kids who sent a couple of reveling photos to their boyfriend/girl friends thus severely crippling their ability to become productive, employable members of society would certainly fill that bill.

Personally, I think that creeping nannyism, and completely irrational puritan sexual attitudes are a much bigger threat to society.

[revis750]

8th graders going to jail? U.S. has the biggest prison population in the world, & the highest number of inmates as a proportion of its population.

Now they are locking up teens that send photos & adults that unknowing have them sent to their phone.
If only I knew this when I was a teen I could have securely sent nude pics of me to the teachers I hated to get them jailed (just leave off head, arms so they don?t know who did it).

This is so sad laws meant to protect teens are being used to torture them.

[enovikoff]

This is another example of how we live in a Punitocracy (Punishment-ocracy) where punishment is is the only way that we seem to be able to interact with one another, and we nominate our government to do it for us. This is why education is being destroyed in California in favor of building more prisons to incarcerate people who take nude pictures of themselves or smoke a joint of weed. We have an aging population that is so afraid of everything that they vote for safety and hence punishment even if those votes themselves are what are destroying our way of life.

Get rid of "3 strikes" - a silly law designed to get votes for brainless politicians. Get rid of ridiculous and pompous prosecutors that use sexting to advance their careers at the expense of our children.

Wake up!

[monkeyfun14]

Let them have sex but god forbid them send naked pictures to one another makes sense doesn't it?

[LonePuma]

Personally, my opinion doesn?t hold much water concerning the topic, but I?m still pretty fed up with a holier-then-thou government. They should be looking at their own shortcomings, as they are responsible for removing the standard of God?s laws from our schools and government?whereby fostering their own wickedness and greed, and while rushing to create more outrageous felony laws! We are now a heavily policed country and with much fewer liberties! A single republican judge in our government was removed because he wanted to keep the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, go figure. Things won?t change until we address the root problem, which is reinstating God back in America!