Sexting: Teens vs. prosecutors

Overzealous prosecutors "be afraid," said Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon, "be very afraid." Three Pennsylvania girls caught in the nationwide "sexting" crackdown filed a lawsuit, with the help of their moms, against a district attorney threatening to file felony charges unless they complete a 10-hour course on pornography and sexual abuse. Let's hope this suit scares some sense into prosecutors trying to label teens as sexual predators for engaging in ill-advised sexual experimentation."

This is something that just cannot be dismissed as kids 'doing stupid things,'" said Brent Bozell in Townhall.com. Among teens, "sexting"—using cell phones to send nude or semi-nude pictures of oneself—is quickly spreading out of control, and has even led to suicide. It's clearly a dangerous problem that parents can't eliminate without help from the law.

"You don't have to be a member of the Taliban's Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue," said Tony Norman in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "to agree that kids exchanging photos of their naked bodies by cell phone is truly a stupid form of adolescent behavior." But indicting, and permanently scarring, "the very children you're ostensibly trying to protect" makes no sense at all.

Jesse Logan: The consequences of 'sexting'

The "sexting" trend is landing teenagers in trouble across the country, said Mike Celiznic in MSNBC, but it cost Jessica Logan, 18, her life. The teenager did what many teens are doing—she sent nude photos of herself via cell-phone text message to her boyfriend. But when they broke up, he allegedly shared the images with other girls, and after enduring months of shame and embarrassment, Logan's mother told Today's Matt Lauer, the teenager hanged herself in her bedroom.

This fad "needs to be stopped," said the Wheeling, W.Va., Intelligencer in an editorial. "'Sexting' can do terrible emotional damage to its victims—even if they also happen to be perpetrators." But police, educators, and parents need to handle each case carefully, because treating "foolish teenagers" like grown-up sex offenders can heighten the shame and do them more harm than good.

Police don't know how to handle these cases, said Chris Dannen in Fast Company, because child pornography laws seem out of place when the kids themselves are the pornographers. But the grown-ups should take a deep breath and calm down. This isn't a social revolution that will turn all our kids into amateur porn stars—it's a fad that's happening because kids suddenly have a new technology to play with. Scary, yes, but it won't last.