Sexting, the sending of nude or sexually explicit photos via cell phone picture mail, is becoming a growing phenomenon in American culture. Awareness is just starting to build about this issue, unfortunately in the wrong way.
In recent months, dozens of children ⎯ children, people under the age of 18 ⎯ have been prosecuted for the possession and/or distribution of child pornography. In specific, for sending explicit photos of themselves to, or possessing photos of, their boyfriends or girlfriends who, in most cases, are also underage. These are serious charges, felony charges, applicable to as simple a thing as an underage person having an unshared, private nude photo of themselves with no distribution whatsoever.
This is rank absurdity. I understand, and acknowledge the need to protect children from the predations of pedophiles and pederasts, but what I am talking about generally involves no adults. This is a blatant example of our laws and opinions not keeping up with the level of technology in our society. I, and I expect most reasonable persons, cannot accept that it is right or ethical to charge a 16-year-old with a felony for sending a snapshot of her breasts to her 16-year-old boyfriend. Distasteful, perhaps. Exhibiting incredibly poor judgment, absolutely. Distributing child pornography? Get real.
This is for the most part the information age equivalent of playing doctor or, “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.” It is a natural, logical leap in a teen’s expression of developing newfound sexuality. To think that this wouldn’t eventually happen is just silly and shortsighted on the part of legislators. The laws need to be fixed, as none of these people even remotely fall under the spirit of the laws created against child porn.
However, that is not to say that I explicitly condone this practice. It is stupid and reckless. Parents are doing a very poor job in educating their children about the workings of the internet, and data itself. Possibly because those parents have done a poor job of educating themselves on that same subject, but that is no valid excuse.
Kids take a very real risk when transmitting these images to other people, and one that too many simply aren’t aware of. Bits are, for all intensive purposes, eternal. Once something is shoved through cyberspace, someone has a copy of it. And someone will almost certainly always have a copy of it, and that someone may not just be the person it was sent to. But that’s big-picture hazard, and a little less immediate than what is more likely to happen.
These kids are sending sensitive information, easily as potentially life altering or career impeding as an identity theft, to someone they are 99.9 percent likely to break up with. And when that inevitably happens, those sensitive pictures often end up on MySpace, other social networking or personal websites. Sure, there are plenty of stand-up people that will respect their former SO’s wishes to delete said picture, but most are arrogant or aggrieved jackasses that will take any opportunity to exact what petty revenge they may. And once a photo is presented in that manner, it truly is out there forever. Someone downloaded it. Some sicko, or even a normal teenager, is probably rubbing one out to just this sort of pic as I am posting this right now. This is the real risk, and ought to be the only concern of teens, and their parents.
I would like to go on a tirade about how our society’s irresponsible teaching of such silliness as abstinence-only sex education, and our pro-violence anti-sex culture only serves to push kids to explore things like this with no guidance whatsoever. But, I will leave that for another day.
First, kids need to be made explicitly aware of the risks and dangers of this practice. (which, right now includes a potential felony charge) But, more importantly, parents need to work on cultivating the kind of relationships with their kids that allows them to talk about subjects like this in absence of judgment or bias, to provide kids with truthful information about this and sex in general. I would recommend to any parent of a child that is potentially sexually active, or is of the age where they likely will be sexually active in the foreseeable future, to purchase a copy of the Guide to Getting it On. It can be found on Amazon for under $20. This is a sex-positive book, meaning that it covers virtually all manner and orientations regarding sexuality, that has info on about any question a kid could possibly ask about sex. It is all based on scientific data and study, and is presented in a very matter-of-fact way. It is a great resource, and I would also suggest that if your child is going off to college, please give them a copy of this book, if only to help raise their awareness of all of the risks, and amelioration of such, that are involved with sex.
I am loath to advocate this next point, and it should be a last resort. But, if you suspect your child is involved in sexting, and you are unable to talk to your child about it, maybe you should check their phone. If you are paying for their phone, you certainly have the right to access it, but you should exercise whatever best judgment you can when considering this “nuclear option.” DO NOT do this if your kid pays for his/her own phone. If they pay for it, they own it and you have absolutely no right to invade it. To do so would simply undermine further what little authority you may have left with them, and essentially tell them that it okay to do the same to others.
Parents need to know about this, because kids need to be taught the truth about what consequences surround this sexting activity.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Ruminations on a last lecture
As I type this an add encouraging people to shop locally is interrupting my Mythbusters holiday marathon. The economy is circling the drain, and even this little cesspool that I live in recognizes it.
Some are claiming that this is the next Great Depression, maybe worse. I'm not personally convinced that it will be quite that bad, but things are bad and they will get worse. My problem with this analogy is that I doubt most people that say such things have any real concept of what that era was like. Most of the people who lived through it have gone off to their respective hereafters (or lack thereof), and anyone who has scrutinized the public school system in the last 20 years or so knows that history isn't exactly a high priority. This thought, in a roundabout way, brings me to the last lecture of a philosophy class this semester.
Dr. M is smart and eccentric. He is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic teacher of philosophy. Dr. M is also losing his job because the philosophy department at my university is dying for reasons that may bear the fruit of a future entry. His last lecture of the semester was on our economic situation and possible projected scenarios thereof. The gist was that things will be bad, and we will probably recover, but we will emerge a changed society. However, the most interesting and frightening element of the lecture was about the possibility that things do devolve to a Great Depression-level event.
In the GD, people survived by pooling resources and coming together as small communities. Let's call these communities cells. Cells were successful when they were composed of individuals with differing but synergistic skill sets. A cell survived or flourished based upon a collective implementation of individuals' skills to create or gather food, maintain tools and machinery, create or maintain essential goods and other similar tasks essential to human welfare. An individual could survive and thrive alone only through a fairly comprehensive knowledge of most of these aspects (truly self-sufficient), or by having a rare or highly demanded skill or good to trade (still dependent on others to some degree).
Think about that for a moment. Take a look around you -- peruse your mental rolodex or even just your email contacts list. How many of those people could hunt for or cultivate food? Repair their own shelters or vehicles? How valuable would you be to a cell in a money-deemphasized society? My guess is that your honest answer is: "not very useful."
The scenario in which these skills are necessary may be extreme, even fairly unlikely, but it is a serious possibility. More importantly, many of these skills that our over-mortgaged, credit-addicted society has neglected can greatly ease the day to day financial burdens of american life. Change your own oil; $20 in your pocket every four months or so. Build your own hydroponic garden; spend virtually nothing on fresh, organic veggies. Learn to fix your own cabinets for 1/4 of the cost to pay someone else to do it for you.
The average american lives beyond their means, strictly speaking. No matter what happens, credit will not be the same animal that it has been. We are going to have to tighten our budgets, and putting some of these skills to work is a great way to do that without lowering our standard of living. Hell, just give it a try; you might just enjoy some of these things. I found that I do.
Dr. M left us with a final piece of honest advice, with the preface that he would likely be fired for saying it if he wasn't out of a job anyway. It's sad when one could be denied their livelihood for honesty, but it is a stark commentary, and the hammer that drove the entire lecture home for me. Dr. M said that if one is going into debt to pay for college, perhaps one should look at that decision again, or even reconsider.
It is sound advice, in my opinion. The real value of the dollar will be in flux until this economic situation is sorted, but that debt will remain the same. And it may turn out to be enough to capsize the leaky boat that most fresh graduates find themselves afloat in. Will that debt, and the education that comes with it, increase your odds of survival or prosperity? Probably. But, it is crucial that one evaluates the situation critically, instead of taking for granted that a college degree will lead to a profitable job or flourishing career.
Well... that was good and heavy and depressing. A perfect X-mas gift for all.
Some are claiming that this is the next Great Depression, maybe worse. I'm not personally convinced that it will be quite that bad, but things are bad and they will get worse. My problem with this analogy is that I doubt most people that say such things have any real concept of what that era was like. Most of the people who lived through it have gone off to their respective hereafters (or lack thereof), and anyone who has scrutinized the public school system in the last 20 years or so knows that history isn't exactly a high priority. This thought, in a roundabout way, brings me to the last lecture of a philosophy class this semester.
Dr. M is smart and eccentric. He is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic teacher of philosophy. Dr. M is also losing his job because the philosophy department at my university is dying for reasons that may bear the fruit of a future entry. His last lecture of the semester was on our economic situation and possible projected scenarios thereof. The gist was that things will be bad, and we will probably recover, but we will emerge a changed society. However, the most interesting and frightening element of the lecture was about the possibility that things do devolve to a Great Depression-level event.
In the GD, people survived by pooling resources and coming together as small communities. Let's call these communities cells. Cells were successful when they were composed of individuals with differing but synergistic skill sets. A cell survived or flourished based upon a collective implementation of individuals' skills to create or gather food, maintain tools and machinery, create or maintain essential goods and other similar tasks essential to human welfare. An individual could survive and thrive alone only through a fairly comprehensive knowledge of most of these aspects (truly self-sufficient), or by having a rare or highly demanded skill or good to trade (still dependent on others to some degree).
Think about that for a moment. Take a look around you -- peruse your mental rolodex or even just your email contacts list. How many of those people could hunt for or cultivate food? Repair their own shelters or vehicles? How valuable would you be to a cell in a money-deemphasized society? My guess is that your honest answer is: "not very useful."
The scenario in which these skills are necessary may be extreme, even fairly unlikely, but it is a serious possibility. More importantly, many of these skills that our over-mortgaged, credit-addicted society has neglected can greatly ease the day to day financial burdens of american life. Change your own oil; $20 in your pocket every four months or so. Build your own hydroponic garden; spend virtually nothing on fresh, organic veggies. Learn to fix your own cabinets for 1/4 of the cost to pay someone else to do it for you.
The average american lives beyond their means, strictly speaking. No matter what happens, credit will not be the same animal that it has been. We are going to have to tighten our budgets, and putting some of these skills to work is a great way to do that without lowering our standard of living. Hell, just give it a try; you might just enjoy some of these things. I found that I do.
Dr. M left us with a final piece of honest advice, with the preface that he would likely be fired for saying it if he wasn't out of a job anyway. It's sad when one could be denied their livelihood for honesty, but it is a stark commentary, and the hammer that drove the entire lecture home for me. Dr. M said that if one is going into debt to pay for college, perhaps one should look at that decision again, or even reconsider.
It is sound advice, in my opinion. The real value of the dollar will be in flux until this economic situation is sorted, but that debt will remain the same. And it may turn out to be enough to capsize the leaky boat that most fresh graduates find themselves afloat in. Will that debt, and the education that comes with it, increase your odds of survival or prosperity? Probably. But, it is crucial that one evaluates the situation critically, instead of taking for granted that a college degree will lead to a profitable job or flourishing career.
Well... that was good and heavy and depressing. A perfect X-mas gift for all.
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