SEXting

(via Syd O) Dahlia Lithiwick writes in Slate about the dangerous teenage "sexting" epidemic and how the justice system is too blunt an instrument to deal with the societal intricacies.

Sexting is the clever new name for the act of sending, receiving, or forwarding naked photos via your cell phone. I wasn't fully persuaded that America was facing a sexting epidemic, as opposed to a journalists-writing-about-sexting epidemic, until I saw a new survey done by the National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The survey has one teen in five reporting he or she has sent or posted naked photos of himself or herself. Whether all this reflects a new child porn epidemic or just a new iteration of the old shortsighted teen narcissism epidemic remains unclear...
...The argument for hammering every such case seems to be that allowing nude images of yourself to go public may have serious consequences, so let's nip it in the bud by charging kids with felonies, which will assuredly have serious consequences.