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Please don’t declare me a witch yet for the title of this post. Earlier today I came across an article from the New York Daily News that features a professor with a view that endorses the title of this post. Below are excerpts from the article. Feel free to dissect it, tear it apart, praise it, comment on it, or do whatever you want. It definitely makes for an “interesting” read:

Is sexting the new spin-the-bottle?

At a conference this week, an associate professor at York University in Toronto defended sexting (where teens exchange nude and seminude photos of themselves over their cell phones) as a modern day “playing doctor or spin the bottle,” according to an AFP article.

The professor,Peter Cumming, presented a paper on children’s sexuality at the 78th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, reported the AFP. At the conference, held at Ottawa’s Carleton University for about 8,000 researchers from around the globe, attendees heard that youths who sexted should not face child pornography charges, according to the AFP.

In the United States, some teens have faced such charges. In one case, according to the AFP article, a Floridaboy was charged after he sent a photo…to a female classmate. Another teen, after e-mailing nude photos of his 16-year-old girlfriend to her family, was listed as a sex offender.

Whether or not sexting should warrant criminal charges will remain a hot button issue, says author and Hollywood media expert Michael Levine.

“We are in unprecedented water,” he says. “We don’t know what the consequences of this will be in 10 years, but we do now that it is much more widespread than people think.”

Levine says that sexting is “extremely widespread and common. If you ask a kid what percentage of her top ten friends sex-texts, they’ll say 100 percent,” he says.
 
Teens are using technology like cell phones to push the boundaries of flirtation, says Dr. Kathleen Bogle, sociology professor and author of “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus” (New York UniversityPress).

“To teens, sexting is not some sort of pornographic exchange, but a way to communicate sexual and/or romantic interest in one of their peers,” Bogle says. “Much like spin the bottle games utilized by a previous generation, sexting is something that teens do away from the supervision of adults. However, they believe it is a normal right of passage.”

Some 20 percent of American teenagers said they had participated in sexting, according to a survey by a US family planning organization reported by the AFP.

Bogle says that sexting does not necessarily make kids more promiscuous.

“One mistake adults make is that they assume one means the other,” she says. “Even though sexting is going on, it does not necessarily follow that promiscuity is on the rise.”

If you’re not familiar with “sexting,” then you probably need to be–especially if you have a teenager. Sexting refers to the sending of graphic/sexual photos through a cell phone. In the past few years, it has become increasingly popular with teenagers. If you’re still confused, let me break it down anymore: Teenagers (although not just teenagers) are taking nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves and sending them to other teenagers. In other words, underage teens are sending other underage teens nude pictures. It’s scary to think about, but about 20% of teens have admitted to taking part in this.

As you can probably guess the problem goes much deeper than a picture. Teens are able to forward the pics around friends, enemies, acquaintances, and even random strangers.

The government has started taking a stand on this issue. In some states, teens who send or even receive nude pictures of underage teens can be charged with child pornography and labeled as a “sexual predator.” 

However, some lawmakers in Vermont are out to change this. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would legalizing sexting between teens who are 13 to 18, as long as the sexting is consensual. In other words, this bill would make it legal for a 13 year old girl to send a naked picture of herself to an 18 year old guy as long as they both were okay with it. Does something seem a little wrong here?

State Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington said, “This isn’t an issue of whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing — I think it’s wrong — but the question is, do we want kids to be prosecuted, called sex offenders, etc., etc., for consensual conduct? No.”

Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan said, “They’re doing it. We don’t want to condone it. We need to educate. But there’s no public interest in labeling them as sex offenders for engaging in a perverted, albeit new, form of courtship.”

If I can find them, I will have the email addresses and phone numbers for Sears and Donovan on here tomorrow.