Let's not make criminals of our stupid teenagers

3-1-2009 National:

'Sexting' may be foolish, but should it really be an arrestable offence, asks Carol Hunt

"Just don't video them," I said, "or we'll be done for kiddie porn."

Later on, while the eight-year-old took a bath, her brother followed and snapped a picture of her with his new favourite gadget -- my iPhone.

"Better erase that," I joked to a friend, "or he'll be done for manufacturing child porno-graphy [he's five] and I'll get done for possession."

Yes, it sounds insane, but a few weeks ago in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, three people were charged with manufacturing and disseminating child pornography.

Their subjects were arrested simultaneously. That's because they were one and the same: three girls, aged between 14 and 15, had been joking around together taking nude shots of themselves on their mobile phones. One of the girls decided to send them to a few male friends.

The three boys (all in their teens) who received the "pornography" have been charged with possession.

Local police captain George Seranko was horrified by the images. "They weren't just breasts," he declared. "They showed female anatomy!"

And it's not just Greensburg's local cop who is getting himself in a tizzy about the new breed of child pornographers who are a danger to themselves. Kids in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Florida, Utah, New York, Connecticut and other US states have been arrested for "sexting": sending softcore photos or video pictures of themselves to others.

A mother of a young boy who was arrested after a female student texted him a naked picture of herself, said: "He doesn't know what a 'felony' means. He doesn't understand what 'pornography' means -- he's a 13-year-old child." Yes, and he's now a 13-year- old child who will have to register as a sex offender for the next 10 years or so.

OK, so no parent really wants to hear that their precious, innocent little Sadbh has been "sexting" lewd photos of herself to the lads in the schoolyard -- but is this really as serious a problem as people like Captain Seranko seem to think, or can it be viewed as high-tech flirting?

"It's very dangerous," Seranko warned an astonished public. "Once it's on a cell phone, it can be put on the internet where everyone in the world can get access to the juvenile picture. You don't realise what you're doing until it's already done."

Fair enough, but there seem to be two conflicting issues here. First, the responsibility of parents and society in general to protect children from sexual predators.

Second, the right of teenagers to express and explore their sexuality through a medium with which they are extremely comfortable: mobile phone technology and the internet. ('Sexnology' anyone? We had to make do with spin the bottle, strip poker, kiss chase and, if we were very racy, Polaroid pictures.)

And it's a tad ironic that -- in an age where little girls' dollies look like Jordan in a dominatrix outfit, sexy bras and thongs are sold to seven-year-olds, and lap-dancing kits are marketed to 12-year-olds -- teens are being charged as sex offenders for taking pictures of their own nude bodies.

Kids today have a very different notion of "privacy" than do their parents. Just have a look at the stuff they put on Facebook and MySpace. Instead of a real local village where everyone reminds you for years afterwards about the time you went skinny dipping for a dare with the local boys, teenagers today have their own "cyber villages", where photos of them mooning or stripping will still be circulating for years to come.

Personally, I think "sexting" is pretty stupid. And, thankfully, so do most teenagers.

One told me she would never put anything online that didn't pass the "uncle" test -- if she wouldn't show it to her uncle, she wouldn't post it. Another pointed out that the boyfriend to whom you send naked pictures today may very well be the ex who humiliates you by passing them on to his mates tomorrow.

But at least one in five teenagers have admitted to "sexting". That's what some teenagers do: stupid things. (So do adults but that's another story entirely.)

And a study released from Harvard this month, Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies, concludes that "the risks minors face online are in most cases not significantly different from those

they face offline ... bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face, on and offline".What the report is saying is that the kids who get into sexual trouble online tend to be the ones who are at risk offline. Social networking sites just reinforce pre-existing social relations.

The teenage girl who posts pictures of herself getting her tits out for the boys on YouTube is the same girl we all knew in school who would flash her boobs down the back of the soccer pitch for 50p for a gawk.

Would she have been arrested as a child pornographer? Would the boys have been registered for 10 years as sex offenders for watching? No, I didn't think so either.

"Sexting" seems to be just a new way for immature teens to engage in risky, irresponsible behaviour. Arresting them and charging them with manufacturing, disseminating and receiving child pornography is a ridiculous way of reacting to what is essentially bad judgement and stupidity.

We can warn them all we like about the potential consequences of posting drunken naked pictures on their social networking page -- but these are teenagers, for God's sake. It's their duty to ignore their parents and learn life's lessons the hard way. It's called growing up. ..News Source..