Nascent sexuality and technological advancement have given birth to an epidemic known as “sexting” – sending nude pictures via text message.
In January three 14- and 15-year-old girls from Pennsylvania sent nude pictures of themselves to several male classmates. When the pictures were discovered on the boys’ phones the girls were summarily charged with manufacturing disseminating and possessing child pornography. Another 15-year-old Pennsylvania girl is facing child pornography charges this month after communicating with a 27-year-old man over MySpace in 2007because of “sexting.”
Similar charges have been filed in cases in Alabama Connecticut Florida New Jersey New York Texas Utah and Wisconsin. In a recent 2008 survey the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy estimated that 21 percent of teen girls and 18 percent of teen boys send or post nude or semi-nude images of themselves.
Though the new sexting sensation is worrisome more worrisome is the kneejerk response of police and district attorneys. If convicted of the charges brought against them the children will not only face possible incarceration but a possible 10 to 20 years on a registered sex offender list. The spirit of the child pornography laws to prevent the sexual abuse of children by dirty old men in raincoats is being twisted.
This current prosecution of minors is banal misguided foolish and wrong. It prosecutes minors for naivety and sexual curiosity. It also violates personal liberties by outlawing the dissemination of one’s own image. No matter how morally reprehensible pornography is it should not be legal for the government to prosecute a teenager for distributing images of themselves regardless of the content.
Understandably those arguing for rigid adherence to the law believe they are fighting a bigger battle. They seek to use prosecution to establish a precedent deter sexting and halt the incremental decline of traditional Protestant morality.
However they fail to see the dissonance that exists between the analog laws of yesteryear and the digital realities of now.
Children who make and disseminate nude pictures of themselves are not criminals worthy of jail or juvenile detention. They are not perverts to be registered on sex offender lists. They are not devils to be exorcized from the fabric of society. They are simply stupid crass na’ve oversexed kids. They will do stupid things; biology demands it.
All the regulations all the police initiatives all the forthcoming new school policies explicitly banning cell phones and sexting will not change the indelible fact that government intervention cannot solve this epidemic. It will try to inoculate society’s youth with new programs new rules new enforcement and policy but it will prove itself to be ineffective.
The answer to this epidemic of sexting is simple: personal responsibility and better parenting. Americans like to outsource blame. It’s fashionable to accuse Hollywood or pop culture of defiling society’s youth and opening up the floodgates of moral depravity. But Hollywood is not the problem. The problem is inattentive parents of which sexting is just a symptom.
There is no all-encompassing solution to the proliferation of child-made and child-spread pornography. It cannot be dealt with on a macrocosmic level; rather it must be dealt with microcosmically within the household. Parents must reign in their children and instill within them a certain degree of decency. Otherwise the government will attempt to do it for them.