Child pornography, and thoughts on behavior

I read the other day about an interesting (?) legal 'trend', if you will...

Kids taking sexually explicit photos of themselves.

This is not an unusual practice, believe me. The current social lives of teenagers in the US are permeated in sexual discussion, imagery, and acts. It really has to be witnessed to be believed. Seriously. I hear open and explicit discussions of sex, mostly by the girls, constantly. By 'explicit', I mean explicit. It's, like, uh... remember Penthouse Forum? Like that. But with underage people. It's very disturbing.

I mention this to adults from time to time, and preface the subject with the observation, "Remember when porn was hard to get? When you had to really work at finding it, and hide it from your parents and adults, whatever? When porn was, like, secret?" Well, not no more, folks. It's all over the place. Kids have this stuff on cel phones, cameras, ipods, etc. It's everywhere.

Anyway, in the vein of that kind of thing, which is something I try to ignore as best I can, as I find it really, really, really scary, there are currently legal precedents for kids being prosecuted for disseminating 'pornography' featuring themselves. Some 13-year-old takes a crotch shot and sends it to her 'hook-up', and suddenly she's being busted for 'producing child pornography', and spends the rest of their life registering as a convicted sex offender. It's happened.

Yeouch.

I have to say, as well, that I doubt this is really the right message to be sending. So to speak. You know, there have already been several episodes in schools in the region of super-on-track A-student cheer-squad types finding nude photos of themselves broadcast all over their schools and community. Some guy they're dating asks for a nudie shot, they do it, and suddenly they're porn stars. Perhaps we need some public service spots aimed at kids telling them:

DON'T TAKE NAKED PICTURES OF YOURSELF UNLESS YOU WANT THEM SPREAD ALL OVER THE INTERNET.

Like all 'teen sex' scares, I find it interesting to see not only the aspects of frightening sexual behavior on the part of underage kids, but the flip side of that: the crushing embarrassment of many kids at their exposure to things that they wish they didn't have to experience. This is the positive part, and makes me think that, like all discussions of 'teen sex', that a lot of kids don't go in for the sex-saturated society they live in, and are honestly embarrassed by it. For every Bad Girl's Club wannabe I see a quiet, together teen in the other corner of the room, thinking to themselves, "I'm not like that, and I find this kind of thing humiliating and embarrassing, and these people and the culture of pornography freaks me out".

Anyway, I was thinking about that this morning after hearing a creepy-crawly conversation involving 6th graders yesterday, and in hearing it, recognizing the genuine desire for some direction and information and guidance those particular kids really wanted. I hear that all the time: "Stop us! Give us limits! Don't just let us run riot like this!" And, believe it or not, in exactly those words. I have kids tell me to my face, "Why don't you stop me from acting like this?"

Sometimes I work at it, sometimes it's not worth the brawl, but I can at least recognize the desire for order and control and discipline a lot of these kids have... but I sure wish they'd stop snapping naked pictures of themselves. It's just not a good idea.

Anyway. Time for breakfast.