Teenager's Have Courting Rituals?

  While reading the blog, "Teens: Think before you push the send button on that message!" and the link listed, Sexting Bill Introduced to Texas Lawmakers, I had a feeling of, 'teenagers are young and stupid.' I remember myself as a teenager and I don't remember such a dilemma about sexting that it is now. However, I wasn't surrounded by high school as a teenager. I never encountered an issue with sexting because I wanted to focus on school. I had ambitions that didn't warrant boy/girlfriends. I chose a life of school work by homeschooling myself. So I quickly did some light skimming about sexting as well as ask a few friends. 

  At first I couldn't understand the dilemma in the blog with sexting because who does that? Why not just meet with your significant other and have fun then? I asked my best friend who is the same age as me but she went to public high school while I did homeschooling. Her opinion was that of yours, that teenagers didn't need to be sexting at such a young age. She said that it could, "encourage those actions and I think that's what's causing them to want to have sex at too young [an] age because that's them experimenting at age 10." I asked another friend who also agreed that under a certain age teenagers shouldn’t be sexting and if they did their parents should be able to consent that they are in healthy mind to do so or not.

  So I started to consider that maybe teenagers nowadays don’t have the right mental states to be deciding that ‘child pornography’ is okay with them or not. I found an article that went over and was titled, “Consequences of Sexting,” this article helped me see what I couldn’t earlier. The article explains why sexting is considered child pornography and I wouldn’t have connected it that way since I didn’t see myself as a child back then. Most teenagers, I would assume, wouldn’t see sexting as child pornography but as a personal text to a significant other. However, the article I mentioned earlier includes teenager’s of the 2012 age and their opinions.

  The percentages were that “three-quarters of teens under 18 think they are too young to be sending sexts, half think they are at least old enough to decide for themselves whether it is ok for them to do it or not... [w]hile nearly all teens think it’s dangerous to be sending sexts of themselves, just over half know there are legal consequences.” So in my thoughts this means that teenagers know there are dangerous actions that follow sexting and that they are able to recognize the possible risks and decide if it’s right to continue with their decision. Yet, the article titled, “Sexting: A Brief Guide for Educators and Parents,” tells a different story. In this article teenagers still sext and at increasing rates (see Sexting by Age graph within the Formal and Informal Responses section).

  I now see that sexting is an issue that needs to be consulted logically. There are discussions in both articles mentioned about what kind of consequences, namely the felony and permanent record of child pornography, should be enforced. My opinion is the same as an Arizona School Resource Officer, “The laws need to catch up to this technology so a girl sending a pic of herself to her boyfriend isn’t prosecuted and charged as a sex offender.” Whether we, as an older generation, like it or not “adolescent courting rituals [are in] an era where cell phones, texting, sending digital pictures, are mainstays in youth culture.” Thus, they should not be punished in such severity that a felony is marked on their permeant record.

  Yes, sexting is bad for youth in that they can’t always control the path of their intentions so precautions need to be made to prevent teen suicides in result of sexting (see High Profile Tragic Incidents). Being convicted of a felony is not the solution, “the situation must be addressed in a delicate manner since emotional and psychological harm most likely has occurred.” School’s need to educate their students in a firm way, stating that the students are encouraging child pornography, inform them of teen suicides that were the result of sexting, and finally show them the legal actions the induce with sexting.