Teen Sexting

From Neo-Neocon, "Sexting: Another reason I'm Glad I'm Not the Parent of a Teenager Today":

Technology marches on, and teenagers are in the vanguard.

With the ubiquity of cell phones that take pictures that can almost instantaneously be sent to friends, coupled with the driving force of sex in newly-pubescent bodies, we have a recipe for the disaster that can result from the practice known as “sexting.”

I may be behind the times, not having a teenager myself at this point, and having raised mine in the dinosaur days before people commonly had cell phones. But this news story alerted me to the fact that it’s not at all unusual for teenage girls to send nude or seminude photos to teenage boys in a sort of advertisement of their wares. Sometimes these pictures are then freely passed around by the proud recipients for all and sundry to ogle. In the case described in the article, the teenage girls were actually charged with child pornography for sending their own photos to three boys, who were also charged.

This seems far too Draconian, but it’s an understandable effort to stop the practice. Good luck, I say; I don’t think it will work. The temptation is too great, and the tools too readily available ...

More at the link.

I can't say the same as Neo-Neocon. My oldest boy turns 14 this week. He'll be freshman in high school in September. My wife and I just made my son take a girl off his MySpace account because she'd lied about her age (claimed to be 18) and she was making lewd hand signs in her profile pic (tonguing a "peace sign" -- and my son didn't know what that meant).

So, yeah, I can relate to Neo's post, although having young kids in this age of hyper-technology can also be fun. (He's really hip with the iPod thing, for example ... I don't even have one.)

P.S. I talked to my son about this and he's said that the counselor has consulted students about texting, and he says he's never received a "sext message" from one of his girlfriends.