Examining the “Sexting” Hysteria

Sex•ting

Slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive content between mobile devices using SMS. A genre of texting that contains text, images or video that is intended to be sexually arousing.

About the only topic that I’m wearier of hearing about these days than Carrie Prejean and her nude photographs “controversy” is the current hysteria revolving around “sexting” the fad predominantly popular among 10 – 14 year olds that involves sharing nude pictures and suggestive language through cell phone text messaging.

Candidly, I’m dumbfounded by the number of state legislators scrambling to enact new legislation or add to existing laws to combat this phenomenon that they apparently fear will end civilization as we know it. Couple that with the number of prosecutors around the country advocating the criminal prosecution of children who either send or receive “sexting” messages “to the fullest extent of the law” and I find a situation that is, well just disturbing and more than a little frightening. One Florida prosecutor, prosecuting an 18 year old for distributing nude images of his former 16 year old girlfriend, went so far as to say about sexting, “It's not ok. It's very illegal. A child under 18 years of age can not consent to taking these pictures, and that's child pornography, it's a felony. And that's mandatory jail time.”

I’m not intimately familiar with the whole sexting issue beyond being bombarded almost daily by news articles and radio talk show hosts who feel compelled to raise the issue ad nauseam but it appears this much ado about nothing is primarily over 10 – 14 year girls sending nude or partially nude images of themselves by text messaging to their boyfriends or other boys they are acquainted with. Is it a good idea for youngsters in this age group to take and distribute nude images of themselves? No of course not. As many people have observed, at that tender age children do not have the maturity to understand all the ramifications of doing this. A good illustration of this was the highly publicized suicide of a girl in Ohio last July that was alleged to have resulted from extreme emotional distress after she learned that nude pictures of her she intended for one person were distributed among neighboring schools. It would appear to be a no brainer in this age of the Internet and camera phones that taking and sending nude photographs of yourself to anyone could quite predictably end up being circulated among lots of other people you never wished or intended to see them but kids just don’t always take the time to fully think through all of the possible consequences of their actions. Yet this texting issue does have deeper ramifications I think. Does any sane person really advocate that 10 - 14 children should be convicted of a sex offense if found guilty of sexting and then listed for life on sex offender lists next to people who commit rape, molest kids and things like that?

First of all, it is nothing short of a myth that images of even a completely nude 10 -14 year old are de facto child pornography. Images transmitted by text message would have to be ruled obscene and thus pornographic in order for the act to even be considered unlawful in terms of possession or distribution of child pornography or obscenity. For a good many years now, the three part Miller test has been used to determine whether something is obscene and considered pornography:

Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

While I admit I cannot think of any wholesome or redeeming justification for an adult to possess or distribute images of nude children not members of their family, clearly images depicting nothing more than mere nudity on the part of anyone including children do not meet the Miller test and by definition are neither obscene nor pornographic. The photographic image must depict a child engaged in some sexual conduct to be considered child pornography: actual or simulated sexual intercourse, deviate sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sado-masochistic abuse, or other “lewd” exhibition of the genitals, the anus, or any portion of the female breast below the top of the areola. I have not read in any of the reams of articles on sexting that any such conduct has been alleged. The controversy seems to center on images depicting only complete nudity of exposure of the breasts and/or genitals.

Second, this whole situation is focusing on the wrong thing. The problem isn’t children taking and distributing nude images it is parents who are giving their sons and daughters cell phones when they're 10 or 11 years old, without any restrictions and who are not setting any limits. It's just, “Happy birthday, here is your cell phone.” Sexting is the result of parental irresponsibility and it is the responsibility of parents, not law enforcement, not school officials and certainly not the courts who need to address the issue.

Thirdly, the very term “sexting” is just further evidence of the absurd and unhealthy perspective that general society in this country holds with regards to nudity. Perhaps if the majority of non-nudists did not adhere to the frankly sick and perverted notion that “nudity equals sex” and didn’t condition their offspring to see nudity as a taboo and something that is wrong, then perhaps the thought would never occur to children to take and distribute nude images of themselves in the first place.

Finally, can any rational person actually blame the children when the television and movie industry as well as advertisers and main stream media insist on sexualizing the naked human body to the extreme and for the most part parents won’t or in some cases can’t do anything to shield their children from the onslaught?

I for one am really sick and tired of parents who either abdicate their parental responsibilities to the government because they can’t be bothered with supervising and raising their own children as well as those who stand idly by and do nothing but wring their hands when government decides to make unwarranted intrusions into areas that should be parental and not governmental business.