Sexting

Sexting is the process of sending nude or semi nude pictures of yourself or others to other people to another person via a text message on a cell phone. This is considered pornography if sent by someone who is underage it can be considered child pornography. Child pornography is considered by law to be a sex offense, committing a sex offense can cause you or the person who sent the message to have to register as a registered sex offender. The reason I have chosen this topic is because I have seen it happen and I know it happens. I have seen the images or videos that have been made by people I can only remember one in particular and this one happened at a party my junior year of high school. A friend of mine had had just a little to much to drink that night and decided it would be fun to go streaking. As he was streaking a few another person had decided to video tape him in his escapade. A few days later when I saw him at school I saw the video as well and he told me that he had decided to never drink again. In this case the ending turned out to be good my friend stopped drinking, and the video was deleted from the phone of the person who took it and it didn't spread very far. There are other cases In which this wasn't the ending of it. It ended in many other people other than 1 person having the picture or video because someone broke up with the other or someone made them mad, just general teenage high school drama and may have been sent to more then a couple hundred people.

There was a article in the new york times called “Sexting May Place Teens at Legal Risk” and it says that “One in five teens may be a child pornographer risking life in prison — for the crime of taking and distributing naked pictures of themselves.”. It seems like a ridiculous statement and in my opinion it is but the thing is is that it is true. In a separate article “'Sexting' investigated at N. Hartford school" there is a report of "In Pennsylvania, six teens ages 14 to 17 face child pornography charges for sexting each other ". According to sentencing.us the sentencing for child pornography is between 188 and 235 months (16-20 yrs.) or 20,000 to 200,000 $ fine at the least. Child pornography is classified as obtaining taking or distributing nude or semi nude pictures of a minor (under age of 18) this can be classified into 2 different scenarios. One being that the picture is of a pre-pubescent minor, that is a child who is before puberty usually the age of 13 or lower and post-pubescent or after puberty. The charges are generally very severe if the charge comes in the classification of pre-pubescent generally max prison sentence. On the other hand post-pubescent charges are much less severely punished generally the minimum sentence depending on the case. There are many other cases that also have a factor in how severe the punishment is on the copine scale you can find the scale here.

Sexting seems to be the current sexual endeavor that most teens tend to enjoy. Sexting may seem harmless and most teens rarely think of the consequences, but the consequences are much more severe then most people think. While it seems as though “everyone is doing it” it still is not a very smart idea especially for anyone under the age of 18 and is no longer considered a minor (its still stupid even though you are 18 in my opinion). Also never accept a picture of someone or send a picture to someone if they decide to text it to you or you them (even if you do believe that they are trustworthy). Even though you may think that you can trust them with a picture of yourself or they think they can trust you don't send the picture, they could get mad at you or you at them and things could get out of hand very quickly and easily. Just think about how many people you know and how many phone numbers are in your cell phone just from your school then think that they have just as many and so does everyone in that persons phone book. The picture that you send or they send could easily be sent to 500 people within a matter of seconds so the bottom line is think before you act.

--Keith Westphal