Because it is a felony to possess or distribute child pornography, the charges could be serious. But because most of the people at fault are themselves minors and, in some cases, took pictures of themselves and sent them to others, law enforcement officials are at a loss as to how to proceed. “Consenting adults can do this to their hearts’ content,” said Thom LeDoux, the district attorney, but “if the subject is under the age of 18, that’s a problem.”There are so many questions and issues here. But let me just ask: Are we talking about anything other than nudity? If you take a picture of yourself naked, have you manufactured pornography? Maybe a little sanity could be injected into this perplexity by asking that question.
Here's something else that deserves scrutiny: The authorities are trying to divide the students into predators and victims. Students collected each other's photographs (using apps called "vaults"), "with boys and girls involved in seemingly equal numbers." But there's a focus on the football team:
Members of the high school football team, the Cañon City Tigers, were at the center of the sexting ring, [George Welsh, the superintendent of the Cañon City school system] said. On Thursday night, separate community meetings were held for parents of football players and parents of other students to address the scandal, which has shocked this quiet, semirural community of 16,000. The team was forced to forfeit its final game of the season.Separate meetings?! Why?
Mr. Welsh, the superintendent, said in a statement that “because a large number of our high school football players were implicated in this behavior, the coaching staff and administration, after careful thought and consideration, decided that stepping on the field to play this weekend to represent the Cañon City community is just not an option.”...I don't understand treating the football team differently. They're the "the center of the sexting ring"? It sounds like a huge group of students — female and male — were communicating, sending selfies voluntarily. It's obvious that the authorities won't accuse them all of felonies. I can't see any justification for treating the boys differently from the girls or for demonizing the football team.
I don't know what we should do about the problem of kids texting naked pictures of themselves, but it's such a widespread practice at this point that I'd lean toward educating students about why it's not a good idea. That assumes the adults really know why it's so terrible and are capable of communicating.
Posts
155 comments:
"I don't understand treating the football team differently."
Indeed.
Sounds live overall 'school spirit'.
Which means the focus should be on the Cheerleaders.
Scrutiny.
I am Laslo.
When I was a kid, we just took our clothes off.
You are going to inject sanity into the public schools system?
Well, oops, there goes another 10,000 KW dam!
More likely they had a separate meeting for the football team so that when they announced they were cancelling the next football game, the reaction would not derail/overwhelm the rest of the discussion for those not on the football team.
Girl standing nude in front of a mirror: Innocent.
Girl naked with legs spread wide: Naughty.
Girl nude and bent over, pulling her ass-cheeks apart to show her butt-hole: Very Naughty. Like stay-after-class Naughty.
Girl nude and bent over, with a cucumber up her ass: Pornography. Almost. Maybe. Who am I to judge?
Spankings for all, of course.
I am Laslo.
News flash. Teenagers are stupid.
The adults have lost their minds and the SJW contingent are rounding up the usual suspects.
Teenagers are not stupid, but they have no experience and think adults are stupid, so they won't listen.
Note the slanted language ring not group.
I see nothing wrong with putting 54% of our teenagers in juvenile detention (that's the percentage of under 18 year-olds who do this) and then on the sexual predator lists so that they cannot get jobs. And when we arrest them we can look through their cellphones and PCs for unlicensed copyrighted songs and movies and then maybe send 99% of them to prison for even more years. After all, they broke the law.
"Maybe a little sanity could be injected into this perplexity..."
That's asking a lot.
Why is the school involved?
I must admit: I'm not against teenagers wanting or having sex. Sex at that age is the best thing in the world. They just need to be careful about it. Maybe being careful about it is too much to ask of teenagers. But what the heck, it's also too much to ask of many adults--all adults at one time or another.
Anyway, forget sexting pictures, they should go to the drive-in movies and have torrid sex in the car, like I did when I was in high school. What fun THAT was!
Do drive-in movies even exist anymore? What a pity if they don't.
Here in the Midwest the drive-ins were open through the winter. Each parking spot had a heater you could put in your car on the very cold Midwestern winter nights. The windows would get all steamed up from the steamy sex you and your girl were having and you couldn't see the movie, which didn't matter because you weren't there to see the movie. Why is why they stayed open even when it was snowing heavily. And all around you car horns would be going off. You know why, right? Think about it.
Great times, great times!
This is what happens when you have a system that says that while it's perfectly legal for two teenagers to get together & have sex, it's illegal for them to email each other photos of their naked bodies beforehand.
At least, in the old days of "statutory rape" enforcement, it was the act, not the prep-work that got the male in trouble. Which, when you think about it, makes more sense from a biological as well as legal level.
Blogger Bob Ellison said...
When I was a kid, we just took our clothes off.
Ha! Exactly! You used to have to go on spring break and do wet t-shirt contests, or play some weird game in your friend's basement. There was face to face nudity and the occasional polaroid, not like today.
Teach 'em to put a condom on a cucumber at age 7, they'll be snapping and sharing nude selfies at age 14.
It's those nasty men again !
Especially football !
Eeeek !
Roughcoat @ 11:21
Oh, boy.
"Maybe a little sanity could be injected"
Faux advice, right? Your fisking law prof act notwithstanding, you do come across as very sweet and trusting sometimes.
"I don't understand treating the football team differently"
Faux befuddlement, right? After all, we are talking about 1. football, 2. men, hence a perfect two-fer target for the Prog-Puritan anti-sexting police.
To be clear: I didn't take my clothes off or watch guys take their clothes off. But there was plenty of it going on. It just wasn't filmed.
The parent of the 12 year old girl receiving naked pictures of older boys should have posted the pictures anonymously on Reddit, with some withering commentary.
Obviously things were always much livelier in America than in Norway.
Our parents, stuffy authoritarians as they were, had some notion of what teenagers would take as a double dare.
when officials received anonymous tips through a system called Colorado Safe2Tell.
This appears to be some of the fallout from the anti-bullying campaign. I'll guess this organization is supported by tax dollars.
If you take a picture of yourself naked, have you manufactured pornography
If you are an adult...no. However thanks to your fellow lawyers, if the photo is of a nude minor, the assumption is yes, even if the pictures were taken by the minor or a family member.
What Granma said: "We spent more time doing it and less time talking about it" if my beautiful grandmother had know about digital photography she'd have added "Don't take pictures. Ever"
oh, yeah....here's the link
All of those "art" books of pictures of nude children from the 60's and 70's are considered child porn today.
I have a set of pictures of myself taken by my "artistic" aunt at the time that would be considered child porn today.
I know a medical professional who says this is commonplace. Everyone knows it is happening. I asked what networks they are using, I think of myself as someone who knows what the networks are. I did not even recognize the names of the networks.
I'm most states, maybe all, I can marry a minor and do anything with her that she allows. If we take a photo of her with her tits out, though, it's felony time and a lifetime on the registry. This is bizarre and stupid. The situation is one of dozens that show we are nothing like free people any longer. Free people would hang a legislature that allows this.
The sexting "problem" is similarly mindless and abusive. I did this with any willing girl who was not my sister. And probably only ruled my sisters out because they would tell mom. Lacking a cell phone, I had to persuade the girls to examine the goods in person. I'm sure it was a crime then, too.
The problem here is that we have let the assholes (prosecutors) off the leash like never before at the same time as teenage sexuality has gone digital, preserving the acts for wider distribution and misuse than I was ever liable to cause in my youth. This situation is no mystery to kids. They know it full well. They do it anyway. The questions here are all about reigning in the buttholes. Teenagers will do this, if they're allowed enough freedom, from now till eternity. Will they be allowed the freedom? Will any of us?
This is the question of my lifetime. What will become of the freedom we have left?
This is admittedly weird, but all this sexting sounds a lot healthier than being adopted, having had sex ed in 6th grade so I could put two and two together and understand how it is my birth parents got themselves in trouble, and then having puberty essentially instantly turn me into a werewolf by Christmas break in 7th grade, giving "force of nature" a shockingly literal meaning. I'd have given an arm and a leg to have been comfortable with my sexuality as a pre-teen and teenager. Not active. Just comfortable.
"The parent of the 12 year old girl receiving naked pictures of older boys should have posted the pictures anonymously on Reddit, with some withering commentary."
And the parent of a boy receiving pictures of older girls should do the same?
Bet Laslo could help with the commentary.
Pictures are forever, of course. But if it's just a matter of curiosity about Timmy or Bette Lou just self-identify yourself into the appropriate (?) locker room and feast your eyes. No piccy, no tickey.
As noted, OF COURSE the football team was singled out. Boys (!), jocks (!), violence (!) it's a three-fer.
We have a strange new world beginning. As noted we teach kids how to put on condoms. We pass out birth control in schools. Some even have day care. Yet, horrors, the little darlins use today's technology to share information on sex! Who could have guessed? Of course 90+ percent of it is pre-rape/PIV so there is that to worry about.
Maybe Laslo can help me understand if PIT (penis in throat) is rape too.
Pardon me, gotta sit down, this is making me dizzy.
As I was giving a test yesterday, one of the students used the word "flashlight", but pronounced it (I am convinced unknowingly) so that it sounded like "fleshlight". My first reaction was to ignore it, but I was upset when the class not only heard the same thing, but obviously knew what a fleshlight was.
What was worse, one of the boys didn't, and refused to finish his test until he was told was a fleshlight was.
Oooops. In my mash up I forgot one. Perhaps some of the pics were videos of actual intercourse. Perhaps the boy videoed the act as an anticipated need of defense about consent. It ain't porn, it's legal defense.
Bet Laslo has a written agreement with his attorney directing him to video everything.
Bob Ellison said...
I think of myself as someone who knows what the networks are.
I probably wouldn't mention this in a public forum if were you.
Yeah, AReasonableMan, I noticed that after I posted the comment. Oh, well. I'm too old and broken to be beaten up.
Only four things in life are certain: death, taxes, the German counterattack, and teenagers having sex.
In the 50's and 60's We played "doctor" as children, ran around the house naked as 12 year olds, skinny dipped in the ocean and surfed naked as teenagers. And the authorities are going to prosecute those kids for a few snapshots traded with each other? I'm embarrassed for the pathetic adults in this story. Our country has lost it's ever loving collective mind.
Bob Ellison said...
I noticed that after I posted the comment.
It is a weird world we live in these days.
Really. Is anyone surprised about any aspect of this?
Stop giving teenagers smartphones. That's a parental duh.
The problem seems really clear to me. If you have a loophole for self produced and distributed child porn, then all child porn will become self produced and distributed child porn. It will be like the folks who send their 7 year old into the store to shoplift. Not only that, but you'll find that teenagers LOVE having thousands of dollars flowing toward them via the internet. Combine that with a natural teen tendency toward fame whoring (exacerbated by our lovely Kardashian Kulture) + the total idiocy and lack of forethought of a teenager, and the market will be flooded.
In addition, the fundamental principle on which child porn is considered illegal is that it is abuse. That is why there is an exception for drawn or animated child porn in most jurisdictions, because no living child was actually abused to produce it. Child porn obviously willingly initiated by, produced by, and distributed by children removes the abuse angle entirely. The resultant confusion will boggle the courts for decades. So it is easy to see why authorities want to be hard line about it, because without a hard line there will quickly become no line. And no one wants no line, do they?
This "sexting" panic is the 21st century equivalent of the satanic ritual child abuse panic of the 1980s.
And both are caused by the same thing: Parents' refusal to accept the fact that their innocent little darling children are neither innocent nor darling.
Freud had this right over a hundred years ago: Children are sexual beings, just like adults. They discover how to "play doctor" and masturbate at a rather early age. The nerve endings in your genitals were functioning long before your 18th birthday.
And given that children are sexual, sexting is a lot safer than seeing each other naked in person. That could lead to actual sex, with all of the possible consequences.
A girl can't get pregnant or an STD from a selfie. There can't be rape or accusations of rape. All there is, is kids finding out about their bodies. Parents should be glad.
And parents need to be able to talk openly with their children about sex. They shouldn't blanch or faint when darling little Susie tells them that her classmate Sam really turns her on. Or that she has an urge to show herself to Sam. Ditto for Sam and his parents.
Those kids should be severely punished for sexually preying upon themselves.
And then they should use these Four Weird Tricks to avoid getting caught preying on themselves again:
- Use "throw-away" phones with no associated name.
- Avoid distinctive photo backgrounds.
- Encryption, you dummies!
- Wear a mask. That's the fun part.
surfed said: "In the 50's and 60's We played "doctor" as children, ran around the house naked as 12 year olds, skinny dipped in the ocean and surfed naked as teenagers"
But did your parents know that you were doing all that?
Kevin said...
If you have a loophole for self produced and distributed child porn, then all child porn will become self produced and distributed child porn.
... it is easy to see why authorities want to be hard line about it, because without a hard line there will quickly become no line. And no one wants no line, do they?
This seems like a good argument but it is not obviously different to the argument for banning marijuana because legalization will lead to junkies on every corner.
The smart thing to do would be to imprison @20% of the children coming of age in Canon city, in the next year or two (that's what this amounts to, it seems there are @250 kids in a graduating class in Canon City, overall) and cripple their future earnings potential for life.
Or perhaps that actually wouldn't benefit the community.
Maybe realism is required.
What was that about the law not being a suicide pact?
Its been seeming like it is, frequently.
Stop giving teenagers smartphones. That's a parental duh.
Yeah, I gotta disagree with that. It's like everything else. You have to talk to them about safe behavior, have a good relationship, raise them to understand consequences, and then hope for the best.
The best thing you can do for your kids is to raise them to make good decisions. Taking away common tools and decision points isn't a good way to do that.
Don't let teenage boys and girls spend time alone together would also be a parental duh, except it is also not a good idea. I mean, in the 1860's it was a parental duh. But you've got to deal with teaching kids how to live in the world we are actually in.
@Sinz - yes to some and no to others. But they sure as hell didn't call the police on the other kids. Hell, the police didn't even call the police when they caught us skinny dipping on deserted (at the time) Florida beaches. They just made us put our clothes back on, give them all our beer or wine, and told us to "Get out of here and go the home or we'll call your parents. You have 30 seconds to be gone." We were gone in 20. No fuss no muss.
I don't know what we should do about the problem of kids texting naked pictures of themselves...
Me neither, but I think it would be helpful in reaching a solution to carefully examine the evidence. And since there's so much of it we'll need a division of labor. I'll take the cheer-leading squad.
Progressive morality. Dysfunctional families. "Secular" cult.
Self-moderation and personal responsibility are frowned upon in a progressive liberal (i.e. libertine) society.
"Maybe a little sanity could be injected into this perplexity by asking that question"
Good luck with that.
Teenage girls today understand how much attention (and, they think, power) they get/have by displaying their bodies, naked or almost naked. There is an encouragement to do this, and men/boys are not going to complain.
So much of our society celebrates the youthful body and at least semi-nudity, and adults make it very clear they are sending nude selfies when they are in the dating market. You can't hope to rope off teenagers from the society we are creating, expecting them to be stronger than adults. They aren't being encouraged to be virtuous, at least many of them aren't being encouraged to be virtuous. Add in the split families, where the mom and dad are too busy dating or too busy with the new wives or husbands and the little half brothers and sisters, and you've got a lot of teenagers looking for attention and finding it easy to get.
OH, yeah. nn says it better and more briefly
Al Smith said he never heard of a girl whose life was ruined by reading a book. Can anyone point out a sexter whose life became a downward spiral of depravity after sexting some photos. It seems to me that registry as a sex offender or even just the prosecutorial zeal with which the authorities are approaching this can cause far more harm than the actual sexting,.......When I was a teenager (Catholic schools), we kept most of our clothes on, but handjobs happened--although not that often.
. It seems to me that registry as a sex offender or even just the prosecutorial zeal with which the authorities are approaching this can cause far more harm than the actual sexting,
yes, that is true of most of these recent child porn, sexting, and even statutory rape charges when the teens are peers.
We've gotten simultaneously more permissive and more life-ruin-y. It bothers me
n.n said...
Self-moderation and personal responsibility are frowned upon in a progressive liberal
Blaming liberals for teenage sexuality is perhaps not the strongest line of argument. It is unlikely that the parents of the football players trended liberal.
MayBee:
I think that your observation of a confused culture is a critical aspect underlying development of dysfunction orientations and behaviors. The effort to replace a religious or principled society with a "secular" and pro-choice cult has been a miserable but profitable failure.
Not giving a smart phone is a paretal duh the way not giving a spors car is a parental duh. You can teach self-discipline without acces to every luxury. Give a flip phone and let that prefrontal develop a bit more.
The other big thing about not giving a smart phone is allowing different adult habits and interests to develop first, instead of squeezing much of that development out.
AReasonableMan:
I don't blame liberals. Americans are classical liberals. My focus is on progressive or generational liberalism as an unprincipled, selective philosophy.
What qualifies as a sports car?
A kid who has friends who have smart phones, or a kid who has access to a computer, can get in just as much trouble as a kid with a smart phone.
But a smart phone provides access to Uber, to Google Maps, to school and team emails, to Kindle if they are reading, to their bank account, to communication to their employer if they have a job (lots of jobs have online schedules and even time cards). All things that help them make good choices.
Obviously, every parent makes their own choice. But it isn't a "duh".
The other big thing about not giving a smart phone is allowing different adult habits and interests to develop first, instead of squeezing much of that development out.
I'm not sure what you are saying here.
I did some time as a male model in college
Who in the hell would buy pictures of naked men??......oh, right. Sorry.
Freeman Hunt:
Smart phones, cameras, paint sets, etc. are all dual-use items. With respect to personal development, the issue is normalizing or promoting self-moderating, responsible behaviors. The popular "secular" substitutes for religious/moral philosophy is teaching in the best case, and exploitation in the worst case, of exceptions rather than principles.
Also, mechanical and electronic enhancements function the same way as delegating learning and work to undermine personal (i.e. individual) development. Their use should be strictly moderated (not excluded), especially in early stages of life. People need to learn and develop the unique characteristics of their individual minds, which is retarded and less likely to happen (e.g. spoiled child syndrome) with reduced inertia or feedback.
People need to learn and develop the unique characteristics of their individual minds, which is retarded and less likely to happen (e.g. spoiled child syndrome) with reduced inertia or feedback.
Yes.
The kids in my dorm in college who went the most wild were the kids who had been too protected in high school. Your brain develops much like your body's immune system. You need consistent mild exposure so you can eventually fight off the big outbreak.
allowing different adult habits and interests to develop first, instead of squeezing much of that development out
While there should be self-evident constraints or limits on this outlook, development of the mind is analogous to development of the body.
The rule of thumb is: what doesn't break us potentially makes us stronger and smarter. A corollary is: what doesn't break us potentially identifies weakness or inadequacy. Struggle or inertia is a critical component of human development.
It is unlikely that the parents of the football players trended liberal
If the mother and father were present and active parents. The first, natural level of community is the family. The political drive to assimilate women into taxable activities and exploit them for democratic leverage from ever earlier ages established a foundation for dysfunctional families and communities. The construction of female-male congruences has not only sabotaged families, but also relationships, and, of course, gave rise to the abortion industry.
I notice Self proclaimed reasonable man makes foolish assumptions about football players. I suggest a new screen name.
It is unlikely that the parents of the football players trended liberal
Why?
Althouse,
You understand why. You just don't want to see that feminism has created a situation in which boys are treated as predators. And girls are treated as victims, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
This is what feminism has wrought.
Equality under the law is possible. But not under feminism.
Apparently Citizen Journalism wasn't such a bust after all
consistent mild exposure so you can eventually fight off the big outbreak
In adaptive and learning systems "consistent mild exposure" is referred to as perturbations. With improved knowledge of the system and environment, the perturbations can be set larger. However, with incomplete or insufficient knowledge, the perturbation is initially set at a smaller step size in order to reduce the likelihood of preemptively breaking the system under observation. Parenting is also a learning system.
When I taught high school physics in Munich, my club of young teenagers regularly invited me to go skinny-dipping with them. Amerikans need to grow up. See:
http://articles.philly.com/2006-09-04/news/25413703_1_bravo-young-people-column
I had to turn off my stupid-ass "family filter" to search on "teenage nudity in germany" and access the results that didn't even have images. The USSA is such a backward country!
There's got to be some way that we can prevent post-pubertal young adults from being curious about themselves, their bodies, how babies are made, how the sexes pleasurably interact with each other physically.
Maybe some type of unenforceable law will do.
Failing that, we should rally society's innate desire to make sexuality and nudity out to be a generally evil thing.
Because for platinum-coifed, post-middle aged, Germanic legal aficionados, it surely is.
But it is a problem.
I mean, even that girl who posed to the side of Bill Clinton with the outline of her breasts visible didn't realize how evil her act was until the internet called her out for it.
We need to put this sexuality and openness thing back in the bottle and not re-emerge as a species until we are born with clothing sewn onto our skins and have invented a way to reproduce asexually.
I'm as ready as anyone to suspect anti-male or anti-jock prejudice, but it's certainly possible that "members of the high school football team . . . were at the center of the sexting ring". They could have started the practice, they could have encouraged others to participate, they could have collected and distributed photos, etc.
My main concern, however, as several other commenters have said, is that this matter be handled in a way that doesn't cause lasting damage to these children's lives. We want to discourage sexting because photos do last forever and can ruin your life in the (it seems) distant future. Ruining a kid's life to discourage his/her ruining it herself/himself does not seem wise.
Projection. Oh, crap, there we go.
The kids in my dorm in college who went the most wild were the kids who had been too protected in high school.
I don't doubt that. The kids who became the most enthusiastic 2 AM weekend street drunks were probably the ones whose parents did the most to "protect" them from anything involving alcohol at the dinner table.
Of course the football players were at the center of the ring. The local girls put them there as they offered nude pictures of themselves. The guys were the victims :)
Of course, the Cheerleaders were also near the center, but because they were girls, they are absolved of guilt for texting their nudes..
"It is unlikely that the parents of the football players trended liberal"
Why?
Good liberals would never let their son play football.
How about no one was a victim and kids of whatever gender are just generally not as uninterested in sexuality (including their own) as embarrassed adults wish they would be?
But alas. That would be too rational a solution. Instead, let's just perpetuate a gender war and argue over whether the girls or the boys were more "at fault". For what, again? Well, nothing wrong. Just pursuing a healthier sexuality than their parents can.
Instead of giving old men Viagra and old women anti-dryness/low interest pills, just give kids chemical castrating agents designed for both genders. It will make their parents a whole lot less nervous. And that's the most important thing.
Blaming liberals for teenage sexuality is perhaps not the strongest line of argument. It is unlikely that the parents of the football players trended liberal.
Liberals didn't father the football players. Liberals fathered the culture that made teenagers think sexting was acceptable.
Liberals didn't father the football players. Liberals fathered the culture that made teenagers think sexting was acceptable.
And American conservatives "fathered" the notion that puberty begins at a younger age than it should, that people didn't used to marry at 14 (to one to whom they were betrothed probably a decade earlier) and die around age 30, or that all this evolutionary history is the fault of "liberals" who apparently didn't believe faithfully enough in a Christianity so arrogant and obsessed with sex that it actually thought it could change the natural consequences of all these things.
From American conservatives, I've learned the following, very important lessons:
1. There's no problem related to natural biological phenomena that enough repression can't solve.
2. That we can define improper behavior in children by what embarrasses us as adults. Because as adults, there is nothing so personally embarrassing to us that we can't overcome our shame and learn to address rationally.
MacDonalds let out early today.
Old lady at doctor's office: I need some birth control.
Doctor: But you're seventy!
Old lady: It helps me sleep at night.
Doctor: There's no sedative effect. Why would it help you sleep at night?
Old lady: I put it in my granddaughter's orange juice.
Kids will be kids. The best we can hope for is to contain the damage until they've (hopefully) lived long enough to learn some of life's less pleasant lessons. You can't give 12 year-olds condoms because they're going to have sex anyway yet be surprised when they use the latest technology to show each other their wee-wees. It's like thinking that women are so delicate that they need to file rape charges if a drunken idiot touches their bottom at a frat party yet need to be strong and self-confident when men who think they're women join them in the locker room. Oh wait.
If you're one of those preppers who's stocking food, supplies and ammo to be prepared for when our civilization collapses, you're late. It's already collapsed. Best move to the woods and start rebuilding Western Civilization now while its artifacts are still salvageable.
The Tourette patients were let out from the mental institution early today.
A kid who has friends who have smart phones, or a kid who has access to a computer, can get in just as much trouble as a kid with a smart phone.
Not quite. That personal, private, constant access to the Internet can get kids in a whole lot more trouble than a computer in a public space in the house and certainly more than occasional access to the phone of another.
But a smart phone provides access to Uber, to Google Maps, to school and team emails, to Kindle if they are reading, to their bank account, to communication to their employer if they have a job (lots of jobs have online schedules and even time cards).
All things, except perhaps Uber (I don't know.), that can be done on a computer or, in the case of the Kindle book, a Kindle.
Obviously, every parent makes their own choice. But it isn't a "duh".
We disagree. I think it's as much of a duh as not putting a television in a kid's room. It's a very common thing to do, but it's clearly a bad idea.
The other big thing about not giving a smart phone is allowing different adult habits and interests to develop first, instead of squeezing much of that development out.
Adding a phone into a teen's life adds in a whole lot of junk browsing and worthless (or worse) social media while stealing huge amounts of time from developing other interests, productive boredom, and real life interaction.
I was born too soon. As a horny HS football player I would've LOVED to have cute girls "Sex-text" me.
I'm not really too sure why girls would want naked pictures of guys, but if that's what it takes...
As a parent, I'd be less concerned about "sex-texting" and much more concerned about y'know actual Sex. Which occurred a lot when I was in HS.
A computer but not a smart phone isn't going to protect your kids, Freeman.
And having a smart phone with you when you are lost is much easier than having a computer with you. I don't know, maybe your kids will always know where they are going and how to get home. Maybe theyll be happy to lug a kindle and a laptop so they can read and check their homework portal between their last period and their sports practice. I believe in your ability to motivate your kids to make good choices even if they have a phone.
"If you take a picture of yourself naked, have you manufactured pornography?"
Very good point.
Might matter on whether one used a fish-eyed lens.
Or not.
I am Laslo.
Banning smartphones is no answer.
Because besides smartphones, there are personal computers with webcams. That's how selfies and videos of oneself originated.
Are you going to ban those too? Webcams are cheap enough that a kid can buy one with his own allowance.
And if you ban computers, the kid is going to be disadvantaged in school these days. Reports and term papers are supposed to be done on word processors and so forth.
If a sixteen-year-old girl is able to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge she damned well should be able to sext a few naked photos without her parents' knowledge.
This is a serious argument.
I am Laslo.
Laws written to ensnare adult bad actors are being used against children. And what are parents to do? Once they know a boob pic is on their son's phone, are the parents now in possession of child porn right along with him? If they delete it, did they destroy evidence? Are the girl's parents guilty of aiding or abetting their daughter's production or transmission of child pornography? It's beyond ridiculous. And it's not just state laws ...
https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/internet-report-2.pdf
Worst of all, if a kid has any kind of sexting infraction, it's a death knell. Forget college. Because if anything happens with those "sexting" students in college, the DOE comes down like a sledge hammer on schools that were on notice those students had prior "sex" issues. The DOE uses Title IX funds as the stick. So the sexting kids' applications usually go in the auto-reject pile. One admissions counselor told me "on background" that parents are calling colleges and ratting out other "sexting" applicants to give their own special snowflake an edge in getting an accepted.
Beam me up, Scottie.
Rhythm and Balls said: "There's got to be some way that we can prevent post-pubertal young adults from being curious about themselves, their bodies"
Actually, all that starts years before puberty.
Parents often catch kids "playing doctor" at age 5 or 6.
If you take a picture of yourself naked, have you manufactured pornography? If you are fourteen years old and take a picture of yourself naked and then transmit that picture, you are doing what 35 year-old men are sent to prison four. In the case of the 35-year-old man, a picture of a nude minor is pornography. Why would it be anything else if you are someone other than a 35 year-old man?
I really think the "live and let live" folks are really missing the point. This practice is not only flooding the market with new child porn it is flooding the market with more desirable child porn, because it is "natural" and "girl next door" and, you know, "willing."
Tons and tons of new material that isn't some Russian mob guy exploiting crying or blank eyed sex slaves in low resolution in 1998 but hi-res, modern, stylish girls and boys just like the ones who live in your neighborhood and go to your church.
The only thing that this can do is lead to further normalization of child molestation and child sexual objectification. People who would have been horrified and repulsed by a grainy film of some guy in Uzbekistan raping an 11 year old in a dingy communist era flat may look at this new stuff and say, wow, these kids are bright, and clean, and smiling, and doing this voluntarily, and enjoying themselves, this must not be so bad at all!
If you're ok with that, then great, stand up and say you're ok with that. But others might not be ok with it, and it is a conversation worth hashing out. When you say, child porn is bad and will send one to the federal pen for decades, but this self-created kind is ok and not punishable at all, then the incentives you are creating will go out of control very, very fast. So at least be aware of what you're in favor of.
The "selfie" generation.
Whoever came up with the "selfie" shorthand for self-portrait either predicted or determined the self-indulgent outcome. It's like some big social experiment where people are poked, prodded, and fondled to encourage (or perhaps discourage) escape from a politically oriented maze with there dignity, relationships, and even life intact.
The answer is just to castrate and remove the gonads of these teens, allowing them to petition for re-attachment and implantation at age 18. Or maybe not until age 24. Obviously nature is much stupider than these very wise, benevolent and omniscient parents.
I don't know what we should do about the problem of kids texting naked pictures of themselves, but it's such a widespread practice at this point that I'd lean toward educating students about why it's not a good idea.
Yes. Visual abstinence education.
It will probably work about as well as abstinence education does generally.
Laslo Spatula said...
"If you take a picture of yourself naked, have you manufactured pornography?"
Very good point.
Might matter on whether one used a fish-eyed lens.
The difference between Art and porn is the lighting.
In the interest of preventing STDs and teen pregnancy, perhaps we should be encouraging sexting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey
Keven if you think a 17 year old taking a picture of themselves without a shirt on is "child porn" and deserving of decades in prison for anyone who comes into contact with the Satanic Image you are not committing a logical fallacy.
Otherwise, you need to contemplate why using the term "child porn" to refer to a selfie by a 17 year old if they aren't fully clothed isn't what the intention of child porn laws that send people to prison for decades addressed.
To the extent the law is a ass Dr. Johnson and I agree.
I agree with Freeman. Really, a smartphone is not vital to a teenager (Uber, for a teen, really?). You can also place a filter on the phone, just as the home computer or laptop should have a filter on it. Yes, you trust your kid to make good choices, but you actually help them until they develop enough impulse control to do it completely aid-free. Does that mean you're monitoring their every text like the NSA? No, but you let your kids know you've got access if you need it.
You guys know that most kids have seen hardcore porn by age 11, right?
Gahrie said...
Liberals didn't father the football players. Liberals fathered the culture that made teenagers think sexting was acceptable.
I find this an odd argument. It is essentially saying that the family doesn't matter since it has no impact on the child's behavior. Leave aside the fact that society is roughly 50% Republican/conservative.
Some of you think the no smart phone thing is all about sex. No. It's about learning to be a person.
(Same as not giving little kids tablets in restaurants.)
Be the guy who can talk to the girl in the flesh and isn't available 24/7. Don’t be the guy mincing around on a phone to ask for naked pictures.
I agree with Freeman. Really, a smartphone is not vital to a teenager (Uber, for a teen, really?).
It may not be vital. But withholding one isn't an automatically good decision.
And yes, Uber for a teen. You don't want them to drive if they've been drinking. You don't want them to ride in a car if a friend has been drinking. You don't want them to stay somewhere they are uncomfortable if their ride isn't ready to bring them home. You don't want them stuck somewhere if your own car breaks down when you were going to pick them up.
Why is that a weird idea?
Some of you think the no smart phone thing is all about sex. No. It's about learning to be a person.
Wrong.
Learning how to have a smart phone and be responsible is about learning how to be a person. Smart phones exist. Are you going to let your kids hang around other kids with smart phones? How much can you wall them off?
Don’t be the guy mincing around on a phone to ask for naked pictures.
Aren't you saying here having a smart phone is all about sex?
Seriously, a teenager that wants sex and wants to be available 24/7 and wants naked pictures can do that, smart phone or not. A smart phone is just a tool. You teach kids to be good decision makers in the environment they are in, so that whatever tool tempts them, they aren't interested. Or at least have the integrity not to bite.
Birches said...
You guys know that most kids have seen hardcore porn by age 11, right?
When people lived as hunter/gatherers their children would have seen live sex scenes from the age of 0, so I doubt that our brains are wired to fail from simply viewing people engaged in sexual activities.
Freeman, your kids are going to be great. You are involved with your kids, your husband is involved with your kids, and you provide a great home for them. That's the only "no duh" there is when it comes to raising kids.
The other stuff- no iPad, no tv, no smart phone- are just tools. They aren't simple answers. The only simple answer is to be involved with your kids and be interested in their lives, and give them a firm base on which on to grow.
Yeah ARM, because the hardcore porn available over the internet is totally like hunter gatherer sex...
I find this an odd argument. It is essentially saying that the family doesn't matter since it has no impact on the child's behavior. Leave aside the fact that society is roughly 50% Republican/conservative
Families are fighting a losing battle against popular culture, popular media and the internet. The Left controls all of those, plus the schools.
Birches said...
Yeah ARM, because the hardcore porn available over the internet is totally like hunter gatherer sex...
I am sure the lighting is much better these days.
As a parent I actually worry about these things, but I also have to place some trust in the resilience and commonsense of my child. The nanny state cannot protect her from every bad thing in the world. Of all the bad shit that can happen to her, on a scale of 1 to 10, I doubt that viewing porn ranks more than a 3.
Gahrie said...
Families are fighting a losing battle against popular culture, popular media and the internet. The Left controls all of those,
This is a bullshit cop out argument. The media is driven by commercial interests. If 50% of society was not watching it would quickly change direction. Just as no one will listen to left wing talk radio no one will watch movies that are made in strict accordance with the Hays Code. Money talks.
"I find this an odd argument."
Yes, but not nearly as odd as the argument finds you.
I dunno. I feel sorry that I was technologically deprived back in the late 11950s and early 1960's and needed to help the girl out of her clothes if I was going to take a look at her naked body. Of course as a 16 and 17 year old boy, I realized it was a nasty job, but somebody had to do it.
Just think, if we'd had cellphones, I wouldn't have had to go to all that work.
Gahrie:
Progressive morality. Perhaps there is hope now that Hefner, or the market, has had an epiphany.
Next on the menu... I mean, agenda, planned cannibalism.
Also, class diversity, denigration of individual dignity, debasement of human life, false platitudes of empathy, politically favorable congruences, anti-native [domestic and foreign] immigration policies, etc.
More is gotten of whatever is subsidized, yes? This includes monitoring, policing and prosecuting, no?
Just pointin' out.
Freeman Hunt and Maybee:
Your conversation is interesting, and I appreciate it.
This is a bullshit cop out argument. The media is driven by commercial interests. If 50% of society was not watching it would quickly change direction.
Really?
Show me a TV show that draws 50% of the available viewers.
Show me a movie watched by 50% of movie goers.
Show me an album bought by 50% of listeners.
Nobody gets 50%.
If you can't acknowledge the leftwing bias in the culture ( I noticed you ignored education) all I can say is that fish never notice the water.
Yeah ARM, because the hardcore porn available over the internet is totally like hunter gatherer sex...
No, birches. Actually hunter gatherer sex was very romantic and innocent. There were flowers exchanged and professions of Shakespearean love. The cavemen and cavewomen dressed in their finest bleached whites (as hard as that was to do with animal skins) and all physical affection between them was censored out like on a 1950s U.S. broadcast. They showed each other the purity that Christianity demanded of them back in the year 25,000 B.C., all intercourse was missionary and only engaged in when the moon's cycles were aligned with the proper hunting season for that very special and rare occasion when procreation was made the exclusive aim of the act - probably about once every three years or so.
You fuckers are stupid beyond belief. Dumber than cavemen, if you want the truth.
Nobody gets 50%.
If you can't acknowledge the leftwing bias in the culture ( I noticed you ignored education) all I can say is that fish never notice the water.
Goddamn are you a dumb one too, Gahrie. ARM mentioned 50% to show that porn was MORE popular than any other commercial broadcast. WAY MORE POPULAR. He did not say and no one would believe that there is no threshold lower than that which will still have a prevailing, profitable commercial interest.
The culture is leftwing biased? Fucking reality is leftwing biased. It's conservatives who desperately need narrative so badly as to constantly lie to themselves. I could write a motherfucking book on all the self-told lies the crumbling, modern American "conservative" movement is based on in 2015.
Even after Christianity, in medieval Europe, sexual knowledge was more common than the Puritan Althousians know. The witnessing of other's body functions, including sex, was unavoidable in the one-room shacks that most non-royal, non-nobles lived in. Check out the artwork of the day. Mandating that farmers retain ignorance of all the things they needed to do to stay alive and create more of it wasn't possible, and wouldn't have been possible.
rcommal- xoxoxox
The official Supreme Court-endorsed rationale as to why making pornography of postpubescent minors is illegal rather than just another type of free speech is that it is to protect minors from abuse. Punishing the makers when they are the minors who are the subjects obviously makes no sense under this rationale, even if the law was technically broken.
However, the official Supreme Court-endorsed rationale as to why possession and non-commercial distribution of pornography of postpubescent minors is illegal is that it normalizes and increases demand for that sort of pornography, promoting further victimization of minors. And is that not what, in fact, happened here? When we're talking "over a hundred" students in a high school with 1,056 enrolled (thanks, US News & World Report) means this wasn't some covert sharing between occasional pairs of lovers, but a ring that operated on a massive scale in this community, with widespread demand and likely involving significant pressure on a number of individuals to create new pictures to be distributed.
So, if, in fact, the official reasons why possession and non-commercial distribution of pornography of postpubescent minors are outlawed are legitimate reasons to put people in prison, then, in fact, this is exactly the sort of case where you should, in fact, prosecute all the minors involved for it, even if actual time in prison would be excessive in a majority of cases. And if prosecution of the persons involved in this massive pornography ring is not pursued, well, then, this is the case that makes it clear that putting anyone in prison for mere possession and/or non-commercial distribution of pornography of postpubescent minors is unjust.
Be the guy who can talk to the girl in the flesh and isn't available 24/7. Don’t be the guy mincing around on a phone to ask for naked pictures.
The burden falls upon guys to pry phones out of girls' hands?
Does a mincing guy notice how it entices girls' egos when they receive such picture requests?
Teenagers interested in the opposite sex!
I'm relieved.
Let me echo Freeman's comment about Productive Boredom. It's a gift to be able to learn to sit with nothing to distract you, and you're bored, and have to entertain yourself. If you have a SmartPhone -- this is just not possible because you will pull out the phone, as a crutch.
Football players are at the center of this, I guess, because they weigh the most?
I agree productive boredom is a gift. But you aren't going to start learning it as a teen. You start learning it as child. Teen hood is where you put the skills you learned as a child into action, and begin learning how to be an adult.
My guess is the football players are prominent in the group 0f sexting kids because they're the guys girls who would send naked pictures of themselves would choose as recipients. While Bill Gates might be able to get women to send him naked pictures of themselves now, I highly doubt he would have had much success at it in high school. The social dynamics of high school don't really change much over time. The girls sending the photos today are the equivalent of the girls who went skinny dipping with the guys forty years ago. The number missing in the conversation is while 100 kids were involved in the sexting "ring", 900 kids at the high school were not. It's easy to believe everyone was doing the same things we were doing, but what is more true is everyone in our circle of friends was doing what we were doing. Forty years ago not everyone was steaming up the windows in the car at a drive-in. Just as sexting is not as universal an activity for kids as the media might have us believe. Hundreds of thousands of kids will graduate from high school this year with no naked pictures of themselves floating around on the internet. Whether the kids who have put themselves out there will regret it later is anybody's guess.
Goddamn are you a dumb one too, Gahrie. ARM mentioned 50% to show that porn was MORE popular than any other commercial broadcast.
You're the fucking idiot for commenting on an argument you don't understand. The thread had nothing to do with porn. ARM was claiming that the media can't be liberally biased because 50% of the population is Conservative and that the media couldn't ignore them. I responded by pointing out that they could...and then you introduced porn into the argument from the depths of your twisted mind.
The culture is leftwing biased? Fucking reality is leftwing biased
Spoken like a leftwing tool and kool aid drinker.
Gahrie said...
ARM was claiming that the media can't be liberally biased because 50% of the population is Conservative
Rupert Murdoch and Sony Corp. could give a shit about yours or my ideology, religion or deep held beliefs. The entertainment industry is driven by free market forces. If there was a demand for something different from the crap we currently have it would quickly rise to the top.
To deny this is foolish.
If there was a demand for something different from the crap we currently have it would quickly rise to the top.
To deny this is foolish.
And yet, deny it they must. Such is the cognitive dissonance of a right wing that pretends to love capitalism -- except when it offends their views of how to dictate cultural values!
Rupert Murdoch and Sony Corp. could give a shit about yours or my ideology, religion or deep held beliefs. The entertainment industry is driven by free market forces
Yes. This explains why the movie "Truth" was made.
Relax, everyone. David Axelrod seems to think unchecked global warming will solve this rampant sexting problem.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/11/07/alarmists-warn-climate-change-is-ruining-your-sex-life-n2077358/print
If there was a demand for something different from the crap we currently have it would quickly rise to the top.
Thus, of course, the swift climb of Fox News to not just the top of the cable news ratings but then achieving and maintaining a position equal to CNN and MSNBC combined.
But, much as evolution can only select among the mutations made available by other processes, the market can only choose among products that are actually produced. The idea that executives living in the coastal enclaves of New York and Los Angeles are omniscient about what would sell nationwide is ludicrous; if there were any such prodigies, you could send them to Washington to centrally plan a whole economy just fine. The virtue of the market versus central planning is that it allows an alternative for which there is demand to succeed, not that it guarantees one will be offered at all.
You know, if some of the kids are exchanging nude photos as an alternative to having sexual intercourse, they may be avoiding all kinds of problems that their older brothers and sisters are subject to: HIV, new strains of syphilis that are immune to antibiotics, teenage motherhood, paying child support to age 35 or 40, and so on.
It shouldn't be that hard to amend the child pornography laws to exclude photos that teenagers take of themselves or each other without adult supervision and exchange for free, without selling them for money.
Remember that each generation of American teenagers has to find some behaviors that their parents would never do and are shocked by, and many of the more obvious examples are already taken by preceding generations, such as taking LSD or other psychedelic drugs, PCP, sexual promiscuity, tattoos, and recklessness with guns and automobiles.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt to give the kids a break.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt to give the kids a break.
I've thought that for a couple-so decades.
Believe you me, it's been cold purchase, of which there is no footing grasped.
I remember the occasional "show me yours and I'll show you mine" when we were kids. I shudder to think what would happen to us today if we were found out. Felony charges very possibly.
Each generation needs a way to shock its parents. One generation was bellbottoms and long hair. One was piercing and ink. I was wondering what this generation would go for. Looks like its sexting and hookups. What will their kids (if they have any) do to shock them?
Our family is neck deep in practicing alcoholics on both sides to the point a couple of them used to see things crawling up the walls. Needless to say, my wife and I were a tad uneasy as what the future might bring to our nine children.
Nothing much, an occasional beer or a glass of wine.
So I asked some of the kids, why no drunks?
Because they never saw us drink.
We never banned it, had an occasional beer on a hot day at the uncle's, never talked about it and that is what we got
I have no idea if it would work for anybody else. We did live in small towns which can have an effect. Your kid does something stupid and the phone rings.
Let me echo Freeman's comment about Productive Boredom. It's a gift to be able to learn to sit with nothing to distract you, and you're bored, and have to entertain yourself.
This is how I was raised from the start.
Make no mistake, by the way: It was necessary. My parents, both, were still in school and also working when I was born almost 55 years ago. Due to the nature of their work and its requirements, as well as their lack of money, it was critical that I both step up and be quiet within that context. For that reason, by the time I was 5-7 years old, I knew how important it was to work hard to keep my younger brother amused and settled during countless rehearsals, recitals and concerts, et cetera. Within the margins of all of that, I retreated into my own mind--and also, I read a lot, all of the time.
Also, I ended up being a doodler. I was a knee-jiggler, in school, early on. My earliest teachers reprimanded me for that all of the time. One of them finally said to me: If you stop jiggling your knees, and you still get good grades, I will let you doodle in class on paper. Well. So that went.
This exchange of nude photos has been going on at CCHS for at least several years. The teachers knew about it, the students knew about it and the parents knew about it. The probably now is that it is more widespread and the photos are being shared outside of CCHS which finally started to make some students nervous. Also the fact that the older students are going to the middle school and putting pressure on the middle schoolers to join in. Some of the children involved in the photos that they found were only 12. Definitely time to do something about this before half the girls in the school end up on the internet or some pedo site.
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