Sexting is one of those words you might not have heard of if you are over a certain age. That age being 18 I would imagine. Sexting can best be defined as sending naked photos of yourself using your mobile phone to another phone or a social networking site.
As I have reported before, the plain fact of the matter is that teens just love posting naked pictures of themselves online. Indeed, surveys suggest that 36 percent of teen girls have posted online, or electronically sent, nude or semi-nude images of themselves as have 31 percent of teenage boys.
The reasons are quite clear, with 38 percent of teens thinking it makes dating more likely, and 52 percent of teenage girls saying it makes a sexy present for a boyfriend.
Now, according to reports, it seems that those youngsters involved in sexting would be getting more than they bargained for. Forget the danger of the images getting posted around the Internet, swapped between other kids and so on, how about getting a criminal record? Yep, high school kids in a dozen US States have already been charged with possession of child porn and disseminating child porn as a result of receiving and sending naked images this way. If they were to be convicted of the charges, which I suspect is unlikely, they could be placed on the sex offender register as a direct result.
I'm not sure that charging these teens on a child porn rap is a brilliant idea, and if anything makes child pornography legislation look weaker rather than stronger. All they are doing is using the available technology to do what teens have done throughout the ages, ask your parents if you don't believe me, which is let their raging hormone fuelled desires get the better of them.
As the father of two teenage daughters myself I do appreciate the child protection issues at play, but do not think we should confuse your typical sexting teen with the pushers of child porn.
