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Loading...Sexting Is Not Illegal. But Child Pornography Is.
Last Sunday’s New York Times carried a story that I believe all parents of teenagers need to read.
How Sexting Changed So Many Lives
Here’s how the article began:
LACEY, Wash. — One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.
Both were in eighth grade.
They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.
“Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.”
In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools in this racially and economically diverse suburb of the state capital, Olympia. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received her photo and forwarded it.
Charged With Dissemination Of Child Pornography
Rick Peters, the county prosecutor, decided against charging Margarite. But he did charge three students with dissemination of child pornography, a Class C felony, because they had set off the viral outbreak.
After school had been let out that day in late January, the police read Isaiah his rights, cuffed his hands behind his back and led him and Margarite’s former friend out of the building. The eighth graders would have to spend the night in the county juvenile detention center.
The two of them and a 13-year-old girl who had helped forward the photo were arraigned before a judge the next day.
Charge Amended To Telephone Harassment
The New York Times reports that eventually a deal was brokered for the three teenagers who were charged. The offense would be amended from the child pornography felony to a gross misdemeanor of telephone harassment. Isaiah and the two girls who had initially forwarded Margarite’s photo would be eligible for a community service program that would keep them out of court, and the case could be dismissed.
There are many disturbing aspects to this story of “sexting,” or sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another.
Double Standard: Girls Are Sluts, Boys Are Show-Offs
One aspect is the double standard, the same double standard that plagues all women. A boy caught sending a phot of himself might be seen as a fool or a show-off, but a girl whose photo goes viral is likely to be branded a slut. Sound familiar?
The casual nature of this sexting struck me too. Again, from The New York Times:
How had the sexting from Margarite begun?
“We were about to date, and you’ll be like, ‘Oh, blah blah, I really like you, can you send me a picture?’” Isaiah recalled.
“I don’t remember if I asked her first or if she asked me. Well, I think I did send her a picture. Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Mine was, like, no shirt on.
“It is very common,” he said. “I’d seen pictures on other boys’ cellphones.”
They weren’t even dating, and she sent him a naked picture of herself?
Sexting Can Have Fatal Consequences
As the New York Times article points out, sexting is not illegal, but if it involves an under-18-year-old, then it may be child pornography. And it may have much bigger consequences, as Care2′s Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux explained here, writing about the sexting-related suicide of a young woman.
The reality is that teenagers are surrounded by highly sexualized messages, including endless songs and music videos that promote sexting.
So it is all the more important that parents stay in touch with their teenage children, talk to them, monitor their behavior, let them know that sexting is dangerous and demeaning – in short, that parents do some parenting on this issue that is not going away.
Parents And Teachers Need To Take Action
Adults in positions of authorities need to take action too. Many school districts have banned sexting and now authorize principals to search cellphones. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 26 states have tried to pass some sort of sexting legislation since 2009.
According to The New York Times, an Internet poll conducted for The Associated Press and MTV by Knowledge Networks in September 2009 indicated that 24 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds had been involved in “some type of naked sexting,” either by cellphone or on the Internet.
That is a scary statistic. Parents, please talk to your children!
Read more: child pornography, education, lacey washington, middle school, school discipline, sexting
Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital via Creative Commons
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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101 comments
+ add your ownwhy is our AOC so high? and would it be better if it were nation wide 15? with no stupid age gap caps, like "if you are 40 and they are 16, wait untill they are 20"
seeing how a 15 year old would want nothing with someone 40.
it can lead to porn
I'm almost entirely unconcerned about most of this. Maybe 14 is too young, but mid-to-late teenagers are fully sexually mature, and pictures of fully sexually mature persons shouldn't be considered child pornography. The US has the highest age of consent that I am aware of in Western nations. In the UK women can pose topless in magazines at age 16; Sweden sets the age of consent at 15.
Of course, parents need to prepare their children to make their own decisions, but there's no reason to think a 17-year-old is a child.
how would they make an app? not all phones have applications. the previous phone I had hardly had games on it.
When I am in middle school, my friend told me that he receive few naked images of the underage girl from a popular boy. My friend removed the naked images from his cell phone to avoid the child porn charges and spend time in juvie. Sometimes, the naked images of children and teens are in gray area because of the law allowed the naked children long as they are not used for sexual purposes in theory, but socially, it is illegal. For example, in 2008, a Virginia assistant principal was charged with possession of child pornography and related crimes after he had been asked to investigate a rumored sexting incident at the high school where he worked. Upon finding a student in possession of a photo on his phone that depicted the torso of a girl wearing only underpants, her arms mostly covering her breasts, the assistant principal showed the image to the principal who instructed him to preserve the photo on his computer as evidence, which he did. The court later ruled that the photo did not constitute child pornography because under Virginia law, nudity alone is not enough to qualify an image as child pornography; the image must be "sexually explicit". Loudoun County Prosecutor James Plowman stands by his initial assessment of the photo and says he would not have pursued the case if the assistant principal had agreed to resign. Instead, the assistant principal got a second mortgage on his house and spent $150,000 in attorneys' fees to clear his name.
The phone companies should make an app that makes the child's phone send a copy to the parent's phone as well as to whomever the child is intending the message to go. Many problems solved!
This is another curious example of how kind of seriously repressive our society is. Things that should be seen as "going through a phase" end up threatening to become a federal case. Kids should be warned how repressive things are. I have tried to warn younger friends to be cautious and sometimes it works other times I just get laughed at and told I am claiming the sky is falling.
Thanks
This is some advice that I came across when I was worried about my child sexting:
Don’t wait for an incident to happen to your child or your child’s friend before you talk about the consequences of sexting. Sure, talking about sex or dating with teens can be uncomfortable, but it’s better to have the talk before something happens.
Remind your kids that once an image is sent, it can never be retrieved -- and they will lose control of it. Ask teens how they would feel if their teachers, parents, or the entire school saw the picture, because that happens all the time.
Talk about pressures to send revealing photos. Let teens know that you understand how they can be pushed or dared into sending something. Tell them that no matter how big the social pressure is, the potential social humiliation can be hundreds of times worse.
Teach your children that the buck stops with them. If someone sends them a photo, they should delete it immediately. It’s better to be part of the solution than the problem. Besides, if they do send it on, they're distributing pornography -- and that’s against the law.
If you are concerned about your child sexting, I used an app called Mobileminder to keep an eye on what my son was texting. With Mobileminder I was able to check his text messages, pictures, call logs, etc. from my computer. If you are concerned about your own child I would highly recommend using Mobileminder. The website is www.mobileminder.com
Parents should be involved in the lives of their children....period.
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