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Drinking Age? We Need a Texting Age
Teenage America’s obsession with sexting may have driven one Ohio girl to suicide. Ashleigh Banfield says the only way to stop the underage porn phenomenon is to prosecute offenders with zeal.
Let me get this straight: Today’s teenagers, who are products of the electronic age, still don’t understand the permanence of a digital record?
I’ve been reading with prescient horror about “sexting,” the 21st-century equivalent of getting to third base. Sexting may not be new, but its potentially deadly consequences are in the news. A little background:
Sexting is act of sending, by text or by email, boudoir pictures of yourself to a girlfriend or boyfriend, the one who is, like, for sure marrying you after high-school graduation. For my generation, it might seem as naughty as flashing your boyfriend during a Flock of Seagulls concert. The only harm back then: his teammates would find out, and you’d avoid the cafeteria for a week.
The act of emailing nude pictures of your underage friend can bring charges of child pornography. And that little felony can ruin your life.
What’s happening now is much more dangerous, and... wait for it... possibly felonious.
When dream boy cuts a girl loose (or vice versa), he still has her sexy pictures in his phone, and within seconds of the lover's spat, he can instantly soothe his bitter soul by digitally spraying his friends’ cellphones with her racy shots.
Even if he sobers up the next day and says he’s sorry, each of his teammates has feasted on her personal porn. Eventually, they tell two friends… and so on... and so on.
It goes without saying this is more of a problem for girls than boys, as sexual “reputations” are mostly damaging to one teenage gender.
While the rumor mill can eventually die away, sexting leaves permanent evidence, and it can be devastating. In fact, girls caught up in its blowback have reportedly been ostracized, taunted, and even physically assaulted.
In one girl’s case, her mother said it led to suicide.
We are only just on the edge of this dangerous digital precipice. Despite the fact that kids should know how permanent their digital actions are, they don’t. Many can’t be trusted to consider future consequences past a few days. We’ve already decided they can’t be trusted to drink in moderation, drive before age 16, or make many legal decisions before age 18. For heaven’s sake, we can barely trust they’ll dress for the cold, despite the best parenting!
Perhaps the only solution now is to take drastic legal action against those who hit send. The act of emailing nude pictures of your underage friend can bring charges of child pornography. And that little felony can ruin your life. Sentences often include being labeled a “sex offender.”
Unless girls and boys live in fear of this prosecution, there is little left to help them digitally police themselves, preserve their integrity, and maybe even save their lives.
Once word gets out that sexting can get you five to ten, they may be less inclined to “strike a pose.”
Ashleigh Banfield is co-anchor of Courtside on IN SESSION, and hosts Disorder in the Court with Ashleigh Banfield. She previously served as a correspondent and anchor for NBC News and MSNBC.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Legislating moral behavior never works. The US tries that over and over, and never succeeds at it. Drinking age limits and abortion laws don't actually stop teenagers from getting drunk and having sex. I find Ms. Banfield's approach ("There oughta be a law ag'inst it....") rather old foagy in nature...
I can see the various scenarios now... A Congressman from San Bernadino will try and pass some legislation, but it will fail. Next an outraged parent will sue a wireless service provider, probably including "child pornography distribution" in the wording of the suit to ensure it elicits the proper outrage... the recipient turned 18 before sending out the poor girl's images...
Head shaking, tut-tutting, hand-wringing... Specials on the News networks and long-form shows...
Congratulations, Ms. Banfield, you may have found a sticky subject.
I agree with LettersfromBerlin.
It is easy and trendy to say that "sexting" killed Cynthia Logan. However, why not a single mention of parental responsibility? What about the inept decisions made by school officials?
Can we not trust our children in sexual matters, or are we just too afraid to talk to them about sex?
An example of bad parenting, and an out of touch school administration, is not sufficient grounds to suddenly make society pay for all these witch hunts you propose.
It was a nice article, but when you are trying to invent AND solve a social problem, try and use at least 500 words.
Ashleigh - the moral compass of America no longer points in one direction, rather, it points in all directions, AT ONCE!
Stability, cohesion, integrity and diplomacy seems to have become as obsolete as last years Operating System - and in an era caught up with narcissism, fame, bling bling and values as corrupt as to be "for sale on eBAY", one can only feel the total frustration when looking at the future of a younger generation - looking towards a claim to fame, their 15 minutes - where we as wiser and older KNOW, that these grandiose ideas will fail most, and set up a future of hating, depressed adults who will live life resentful and bitter.
Pretty strong stuff - but everywhere you look, the media and the corporate advertising machine LIES to them from birth as to what is right, what is happiness, and what is worthwhile - and yes, the best upbringing can only garner a hope that these kids will learn - and discern for themselves.
We already live in an over regulated, over legislated society - and it doesn't foster respect for basic values moral or otherwise. Under these conditions, only loving caring people of a generation or two removed - can help them - and only when they realize the lie they have been sold. Unfortunately, the future doesn't look good - it has gotten progressively worse since 1969 - all the way around. I appreciate your viewpoint, though I think it'll take an army of like minded people to coalesce together in unity - to make a difference.
Don't want this to happen to your kid? Don't let them have a cell phone. I did just fine in school without one and my kids now won't have them either.
Sure, kids do stupid things and will continue doing stupid things because that is what kids do. However, we have to educate and do our best are parents to place protective boundries around our children and hope that our lessons on "consequences" sunk in enough to lead that child to making smart decisions.
Allowing cell phones in schools in the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. And let me say this, 99.999 percent of cell phones are toys only. They are not a necessity. In Iowa we are having a controversy about cell phone activity in the classroom.
How crazy is it to let a kid have a cell phone anyway. You are setting your child up to be robbed. How dumb is that?
Check out the case from Orlando. Guy arrested yesterday. Has an incest charge from LY that was dropped. Gave a phone to an 11 yo "family friend". SOME FRIEND RIGHT.
www.wftv.com/news/18968879/detail.html#-
When it comes to technology, it's not just the kids who use poor judgment. Here are some other high-profile misfires: Alec Baldwin (voice mail), Harry Stonecipher (email), George Allen (video), and Michael Phelps (digital camera).
In my technology safety presentations, I recommend TBS - Think Before Sending. Once again, Think Before Sending.
Tightening the reigns only makes teens want it more.
Banning it is not the answer, only education and open dialogue.
There needs to be "text education" as part of Sex Education.
Just as decreased funding for sex ed and contraception during the Bush years increased teen pregancy, INCREASED education all all digital media is necessary today. That goes for those idiotic pics on everyone's Facebook and Myspace pages as well.
Kids need to hear other kids tell their stories before they understand that it could happen to them.
Bring back the After School Special!
Len, Leebow. Nice advertisement! I just flagged it.
Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
Where lies the responsibility of the person
who CHOOSES to pose naked in the first place?
We now live in a culture that wants to blame
others instead of owning up to a poor personal
choice or decision.
When an obese person refuses to drive past
the fast food restaurant, that is their fault.
Nobody forces them to continue to eat there.
When someone CHOOSES to pose naked,
and then sends the photo out via "sexting" who's
fault is that?
*sigh* why is it always the job of the state when parents aren't proving themselves up to the task? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, and even *I* don't think its the job of government to control what kids do every second of their waking lives. It takes both schools AND parents to provide them with education, with information, and with the skills to make good decisions.
If you give your kid a cell phone because they want one, or because you're a paranoid helicopter parent who thinks it will somehow make your child "safe," but never set any limits or rules on its use, and never discuss things like this... well, that's YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT if they do something stupid with it. Schools should set limits on cell phone use, and educate kids on information-age consequences, but the parents have a job too!
I'm a lot more concerned about the kids these days who are getting HIV and other STDs because "abstinence only" education has cut them off from vitally important knowledge and decision-making skills. Again, it takes not just parents, but also the school environment where they spend time with their peers to really shape good decision-making. It cuts both ways.
Well said sophia!
Naturally said boy shouldn't have forwarded pix but said girl should know better than to pose nude. Of course if all the Disney stars are doing it (Vanessa Hudgens) without consequence then what's the harm, right?
It is today's equivalent of my mother telling me "never put in writing anything you don't want someone else to read."
So your solution to teenage girls suffering the negative effects of sending revealing pictures of themselves largely amounts to criminalizing the people who receive the pictures, or who choose to pass them on?
Or are you suggesting that the girls also be branded as "Sex offenders" for their behavior...they're the ones creating the underage porn after all, right?
Not that branding the girls would matter too much, though...because just as "sexual 'reputations' are mostly damaging to one teenage gender," sex offense reputations only really damage males, because only females can ever be taken advantage of (witness the 2 cases in Sheboygan, Wis. right now). Still, seems like a cool idea...let's tar a teenage boy's stupid mistake with the same brush as a child molester or rapist, regardless of the fact that he couldn't have made the mistake without the teenage girl's one first.
Ok, let's get this right. 16 year old girl does something dumb and impulsive, pose for nude pictures. 16 year old boy does something dumb, impulsive, and mean, send pictures after a fight. Proposed solution: get dumb, impulsive, mean boy a jail term and a permanent record as a sex offender. Holy disproportionate response, Batman!
Look, if teenagers' fuzzy nude pictures are going around a high school, that's humiliating for the teen, but it will soon get old. And who out there hasn't survived adolescent humiliation and bullying in which your own stupid actions played a role in making you vulnerable? In virtually all cases, you get over it and are smarter for it,
If there's only one possible case where someone did not, it's hardly a crisis worth changing laws about. Sexting is absolutely not on the level of being robbed, mugged, or raped, and should not be treated as such.
I have a much better idea than prosecuting the teenage boys. As "punishment" for their poor decision to forward these pics to their friends, let's have them forward them to AIG and Merrill execs and then prosecute the execs as sex offenders, since they apparently haven't broken any other laws.
Talk about misplaced prosecutorial zeal!
Where are the parents who give these things to kids and pay the exhorbitant bills that allow them to continuously use them?
The responsibility doesn't lie with some law enforcement agency, or even with a 13 year old who is so sex obsessed that they participate because all their other little friends think it is "cool." It lies squarely with the parent.
I've been following this debate through the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee. They've been having a hell of a time trying to sort out who is responsible for what. The only concrete conclusion they've reached easily is that severe penalties are NOT the answer, these only serve to over-penalize teens rather than prevent the behavior in the first place. In most, if not all states, this crime carries with it the labeling of both the parties as sex offenders, this label comes with not only harsh penalties that extend beyond the mandatory minimum jail time and sometimes into the remainder of the offender's life, but also harsh social stigmas for both the offender and their families.
The responsibility to manage teen behavior lies with the parents, not with legislators.
Ms. Banfield's casual threat of "five to ten for sexting" is a half-baked argument and hopefully will be ignored.
The young girl in this story made a mistake when she took the pictures of herself, and she seemed to be dealing with that relatively well (going on TV to publicize the issue after being bullied by classmates, etc). But then she attended the funeral of a friend that also committed suicide, came home, and hung herself. I suspect that there was more going on here than just the photos--lots of teenage angst and depression would be my guess. It's not that the photos didn't contribute to the problem, but they were probably not the only causative factor.
As for making this behavior illegal, I worry that you'll end up with underage boys and girls that are tagged with "sex offender" labels for life. The consequences of this behaviour are very unfortunate, but it's important not to over-react.
Umm, when I was a senior, my girlfriend and I took naughty photos. Now I like to do that with all my girlfriends and they like it too. What's the big deal?
I think that these punishments on boys represents a total lack of understanding of female sexuality. These girls are not victims when they pose for or send out pictures.
Continuing its growing reputation for being the "Love Boat" of websites, The Daily Beast picks up another has-been in Ashley Banfield.
Why do I care what this former flavor of the month thinks? Her dark glasses don't make her intelligent.
Please, Daily Beast, limit columnists to those who have something to say (for example, Lucinda Franks and Christopher Buckley).
Simple solution. Don't buy your child a cell phone with a text messaging plan. If they can get a job and afford it, then more power to them. Older people often make the mistake of forgetting that they were young once also. One suicide or even a few is not indication of any one thing. Were are complex people and usually our emotional outlets are caused by more than one thing.
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Instead of talking about cell phones, the conversation should be about sending nude photos of yourself. We must teach young women and young men that self-respect and common sense are the two most important considerations of the growing up process.
These young ladies need to be aware that young men share information more than they do. I would not recommend sending nude photos to a phone even if you are married. If someone borrows the phone, then guess what.
No to the legislation and yes to common sense!
Hypocrisy watch: A parent cheating on his or her spouse does a thousand times more damage to their kids, family and society than a 13 yo kid sexting...Sending a sexting kid to court on child porn charges is just bat sh t crazy.
Call me crazy, but maybe if our society didn't view the naked human body as disgusting, ugly, shameful and sinful, maybe people wouldn't commit suicide suicide if people saw pictures of them naked?
If society didn't distort children's minds about the 'evils' of a natural thing like our bodies, it probably wouldn't be such a big deal.
Ms. Banfield needs to take a long look in the mirror and ask herself what is so shameful.
Thank you.
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