Cell Phone Porn

MSNBC carried this story about teenagers sending naked pictures of themselves to boyfriends and girlfriends, only to find them on the internet, complicating authorities' efforts to find truly exploited children.

The story is interesting from that standpoint, that it makes the identification of those who are truly spreading child pornography around by exploiting kids. But this segment of the story worried me:

Many of these pictures are falling into the wrong hands — or worse, everyone's hands, via the Internet — and leading to criminal charges.

Some parents are aghast.

I just don't understand why kids would do a stupid thing like that," said Rochelle Hoins of Castle Rock, Colo., where 18 students in her twin sons' middle school sent around nude pictures of themselves last year. "We did dumb things when we were kids, but not like that," said Hoins, whose sons were not involved.

Similar cases have been reported in New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and Connecticut.

"It used to be that kids would make mistakes, and it was local and singular and everyone knew it was part of growing up," said Catherine Davis, a PTA co-president in Westport, Conn., who had a frank talk with her two sons after several students' nude self-portraits recently spread through the wealthy New York City bedroom community. "Now a stupid adolescent mistake can take on major implications and go on their record for the rest of their lives."

At the outset, I am sure that when self-developing Polaroid cameras first came out, teenagers were taking nude photos of themselves and sending them to boyfriends/girlfriends. Today's teenager is not the first to come up with the idea of sending risque photos of themselves to others, so let's stop with the faux shock of the matter.

Admittedly, what is actually an adolescent mistake should not result in criminal charges, necessarily. The prosecutor who is pursuing charges against some 17 year old boy who, in a fit of anger, posts naked photos of his ex-girlfriend needs to be handled very differently than a boy who takes photos of multiple girls and then attempts to sell them. Should both be punished? Most definitely, but parents and adults in the criminal justice system need to think about proportionality.

Finally, we need to be asking ourselves, what is feeding this trend? Some social conservatives will say that it is the degradation of morals in society, the promiscuity and the prevelance of sex in our "entertainment." Well that could be part of it and it is not without its appeal. But that is looking at the problem for a particular bias.

The "problem's" source is much simpler and very easy to correct.

Stop giving teenagers camera phones.

If you want to stop teenagers from sending nude pictures of themselves around using their cell phones don't give them camera phones. It really is that simple.

While I am not convinced that every teenager needs a cell phone of their own, I am willing to concede that they may need a phone and certainly will want a phone. However, that phone does not need all the fancy gadgets like a camera attached to it. A simple cell phone, with a limited calling plan and no photo/video/MP3 player combination is needed. The increase in these types of pictures being distributed is a direct consequence of camera phones. Generally, most teenagers will not have someone else take pictures of them, to the photos are self-shot and easily distributed and redistributed. Take away the capability and you take away this aspect of the problem.

This is not to say that digital cameras and email won't be used, but that is another matter.