all they've seen of adolescence torn

so in my forensics class, we talk about child pornography a lot... because it's like the number one crime computer forensics deal with. that and terrorism. so of course we've discussed the new wave of "sexting."

for those of you that dont know what sexting is, it's when underaged individuals send inappropriate picture messages to each other's phones. it's counted as child pornography and if convicted, the people who would be facing charges are: the kids sending the pictures, the kids recieving the picture, and the parents of all the kids involved.

sexting is becoming really popular, if you havent heard. at the middle school my professor works at (she would never tell us which one, i have no idea why) they had two sexting cases just last week.

people have brought up the point that, if the kid is the one taking and sending the picture to another kid (usually their boyfriend or girlfriend) then it shouldnt be charged as child pornography. but the fact of the matter is, they are still kids. psycho kids, but kids all the same. when i was in middle school, sending pornographic pictures of myself to others was definitely not on my list of things to do. it was down there with get eaten by a lion, jump off the empire state building, and start counting calories. but apparently kids these days dont think the same.

of course you can blame the media for objectifying women, making things like this seem normal, and basically destroying "childhoods" by having kids grow up too fast. you can blame society for getting so far out of hand that so many people don't see a problem with this. you can blame the parents for doing a sucky job at instilling values in their children and basically just raising them badly in general. and you can blame the kids for being impressionable and stupid.

but should they be charged with child pornography?? it's a really serious charge if you didnt know. should all the people involved be marked as sex offenders for the rest of their lives??

the argument to let kids do what they want brings to mind an article i read a few months back. it basically said that kids should have the right to choose who they want to have sex with and when they want to. some group of pedophiles or other was complaining that by making age restrictions, they were infringing on these children's basic rights.

is stopping sexting infringing on the rights of children?? or should they be registered in the system as sex offenders?? both ways sound a little extreme to me. what do you think??

*Magnolia - The Hush Sound