No one knows what to do about sexting! It is a bigger threat to America than the economy. Is there any way to stop these terrible youths from getting naked on the telephone?
Maybe. Perhaps parents could not give their young children personal cell phones with cameras to use at their leisure, but that would be very 2003 (LAME) of them. Or the government could turn off the entire Internet, where these naked photos get distributed to old perverts, but that would be Socialism.
Or if you really want to go radical, you could charge these sexters, as minors, with the very well known crimes of producing and distributing child pornography, which is what they've done. You know, a crime, like stealing! All the kids know that "stealing" is a crime, so most of them don't do it, because they don't want to get in trouble with the law. Sometimes these "laws" can work as "deterrents to criminal activity" like that -- not simply as PUNISHMENT.
But who wants to charge rich kids in Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland -- where every child is sexting at all times -- with sex crimes?? They might not get into college! Best to just host a bunch of PTA awareness meetings instead.
According to Montgomery Co. state's attorney John McCarthy, "cell phone messages with naked pictures of teenagers" has become such a tricky enforcement problem in recent years, because who knew that rapid advances in information technology thrust into the hands of classically immature and hormonal teenagers could prove ... calamitous?
The problem, he said, is that child porn laws never contemplated "children sharing images of themselves," and youthful sexters have little concept of their actions as a crime.
Hey kids: distributing naked pictures of minors is illegal, the end.
Jim Newell writes for Wonkette and IvyGate.
