From the article: Sexting:Teens Putting Sex and Texting Together
With many communities talking about teen sexting and discussing the changes in the sex offender laws to reflect the true intent of sexting by teens and differentiate it from the intent of a child molester, I feel parents need to have their voices heard. Here is where we can do that. So I am asking, if your teenager sent a nude or semi-nude picture to a boyfriend/girlfriend and it was distributed throughout their school, what do you feel the appropriate punishment should be from the school officials and law enforcement?
Get Your Opinion Heard
Counter-Productive to Sex Offender Laws
- I do feel that kids need to be held accountable for their actions, especially malicious actions involving exchange of explicit material. However, accusing them of being sexual predators and having a legacy of being a registered sex offender seems a punishment that is at least a little off-target. In the long run, it may even be counter-productive concerning the real sex offenders, causing people to discount the "registered sex offender" tag.
- —Guest clgolden
Mature enough...
- Some teens know exactly what they are doing and both parties should be held 100% accountable.
- —Guest ginn
Kids will be kids...
- In the 50s, it was going to 'make out lane' and holding hands. Nowadays, teens will expose their bodies and send pictures to their lover. Now, I do think this is inappropriate but that should be left up to the parent to decide. Now, if pictures are obtained through a cell phone and sent around schools a school administrator should talk to the parents of the one who took the picture and who received and forwarded the picture. They should contact parents and thats as far as this should get. Teaching abstinence will just make kids touch each other more, and outlawing sexting will make kids take more inappropriate pictures and perhaps prostitute themselves by selling these forbidden images. Now, sending pictures to people over the Internet that the teen has no relation to is another story. This should be handled less gently and the one receiving the photos should be punished severely as well.
- —Guest Ella parent
No punishment.
- First of all, a chip would be near impossible or extremely expensive to make that would detect nude photos on a phone. Televisions with chips only work because the shows are tagged by the producers as indecent for children. Also, those with the photos shouldn't be punished just because someone else decided they were going to get naked and take some pictures. Nobody forced your kids to do that.
- —Guest Nick
The Person Sending Pictures
- I think the person sending the text picture should be the one who should be punished.
- —Guest Sybil
Children Do Make Mistakes
- We are the world leader at manufacturing criminals and giving people police records. Definitely nothing for the "land-of-the-free" to be proud of. Let’s not get carried away and over react by documenting the mistakes of young people.
- —Guest Heather
Getting a Chip
- Even if you are the most tech savvy parent in the world, you can discover your child has been sending the filthiest photos over the net or texting strangers. AOL a responsible carrier will close your account. Other carriers will stand on 1st amendment rights. As a parent, you are the owner of the computer and YOU can be charged for possession of child pornography. You can be the most vigilant parent and protect and educate your child. Kids today think this is no big deal. They follow a trend and the exception is rare. Legislation has to be put on the communications companies where chips are placed on phone of any person under 18 where such photos cannot be taken or sent. If we can do it for TV’s we can do it for phones. If the child uses an adult phone, then the adult can be prosecuted for allowing access to that child unless he/she can prove it was stolen or used without consent. The same with computers.
- —Guest Pauker victim
The Personal Challenges
- Remember the days when we were 16 and our conversations with the opposite sex were limited to 15 minutes on the home phone because we weren't allowed to tie up the phone line any longer than that? Basic, simpler , easier lifestyle, not too much to argue about with those resources available. Since technology hit, with picture sending phones and computers it opened up a whole new world for teens and whole new challenges that parents are just being woken up too. Didn't occur to me that this could be an issue, until my 15 year old son sent some questionable stuff to his girlfriend, and I just happened to stumble across it because I got nosey. It was my sons first girlfriend that he seemed to be very involved with on the cell phone and I was concerned about him getting too serious so young. He is a good student - honors and a musician in band. Still worried we had a sit down talk and his cell was taken away for a week. If parents allow the technology, we have to step up for the challenge.
- —Guest Debra
Scared straight programs of some sort...
- Hi. I have a 14 year old daughter who is in a world of trouble with sexting and internet access. She has given her cell phone number to men all over the country and has sent inappropriate pictures of herself to some of them. She has been under strict guidelines as to what sites she is allowed to have accounts on and is not allowed to have male phone number 's on her phone. Her privileges have recently been restricted even more due to poor grades to cell phone use to parents and siblings only and 2 hour max on the weekend days with suitable behavior. All of her other rules continue to apply. I am in the process of taking her laptop to the police with the men's phone number 's and copies of IM scripts that she had deposited in her trash bin but not deleted. I will inquire about consequences for her other than my total removal of her laptop and cell phone until she is at least 15. We will check her maturity level then. I'm hoping the local police department prosecutes the pedophiles.
- —Guest Guest
Getting Away with It
- Kids should be punished by the school and at home. The perps are aware that parents won't react in order to protect their daughters and have gotten away with it.
- —Guest selwyn
There Must be Consequences
- The standard of what is good and bad and right and wrong has changed during this generation. The only thing that seems to make something off limits is if there are bad consequences for the culprit. Consequences have to be stiff enough to have a significant impact on the lives of the responsible parties. I think a one month expulsion from school, 4 graded research papers (1 per week)2 focusing on how negative behaviors impacted someone's life and 2 on how positive behaviors impacted someone's life. If it can somehow be monitored, the individual should not be able to communicate via cell phone or internet for 6 months. It's a privilege, not a right, to use the devices.
- —Guest Dorothy
Parents Would Be Involved
- I think that if I found out one of my teens were sexting they would find out they no longer would have a cell phone. As well as the other punishments that were given.
- —Guest concerned mom
Awareness
- Students who get themselves into such acts need to do a research on not only the violations they have got themselves into but also the legal implications of it. They could be asked to present the paper to the entire scchool community thereby creating awareness to the others.
- —Aruna.
Not Sex Offender
- These children should not be seen as sex offenders. They are in need of guidance and direction. Sexting is new and part of the problems posed by technology. The law should provide community service for first timers and more severe consequences for repeat offenders. This should also apply to the person who spread the pictures around to others and on the web.
- —Guest LYNN
In School Suspension with Research Paper
- A revealing cell-phone photo of my daughter was "shared" with students in her school, but as far as I know, no administrators ever heard about it. The person taking the photo and those forwarding/sharing it should have received in-school suspension and required to research and write a paper about the harm it caused. The subject & receivers of the messages should have received counseling and also had to write a paper about the impact on their life. I did not notify school administrators because I thought it would only "fan the flames" of harm. A year later, a girl took nude cell-phone photos of herself and sent those to her boyfriend, who shared the images with various students at school. She was humiliated and didn't come to school for days. My daughter felt sorry for her, but also like the girl brought the trouble on herself. Kids don't always think about the long-term consequences of their actions.Don't make the impact worse with laws and getting the whole school community involved.
- —Guest jennybindy
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