There's a legitimate debate to be had about the media's coverage of the alleged epidemic of "sexting" -- teenagers sending pornographic or suggestive photos of themselves nude or semi-nude via cell phone.*
After all, the media are well-known to glom onto a few anecdotes and drum up a "growing trend" without the benefit of empirical data to back up the alarming claim. That being said, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford is not the petulant adolescent man to make that point.
Indeed, Morford actually aims at excusing sexting altogether, all while distorting and mocking average Americans' sexual mores in his May 15 column, "You Dirty Kids!":
Story Continues Below Ad ↓We ask again: Where are your boundaries? It's simply not fair, you being all young and smooth and fearless, just discovering the joys of your bodies and of modern technology and flirting and flaunting it all like you don't have a care in the world.
[...]...We must teach you a lesson. We have to show you these things cannot, will not be tolerated. Remember this: Photos are for picnics and drab family outings and standing next to a tacky tourist spot and smiling meekly. Cell phones are for calling your therapist and crying. Got that?
This is why we are cracking down. You must understand the rules of the culture. You must understand that your happy teenage hormones must be held in check, beaten down, thwarted, stomped on and made deeply shameful until you become older and fearful and pathetic and sad. You know, just like us.
In other words, parents, school administrators, and prosecutors are not acting out of concern for children's safety, but out of envy of the adolescent sexual freedom.
You might expect an argument like that from a horny high school teenage boy insistent on excusing "sexting" as harmless fun, but it's hardly an intelligent argument coming from a professional newspaper columnist.
*In my original post I wrote "cell phone text message" which, as blogger Catkeepr pointed out in his recent post, is technically inaccurate. A multimedia messaging service (MMS) would be needed to send and receive photos on a cell phone.
—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters
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Comments Policy
Wow, someone from San
May 15, 2009 - 11:58 ET by mattmWow, someone from San Flaming-cisco defending sexual text messaging? Stunning.
Sexting okay?
May 15, 2009 - 12:08 ET by merlin61Knocks Chrisianity, knocks Republicans, etc.etc.
morals in general. Just plain ignorant. We worry
about our children and grandchildren and warn
them about pedophiles, and that is bad?
Is it just me, or were those
May 15, 2009 - 12:09 ET by Tom PaineIs it just me, or were those some very creepy comments for an adult man to be addressing to teenagers?
he certainly sounded junior
May 15, 2009 - 19:27 ET by TruthMongerhe certainly sounded junior high to me - i suspect this is a primary liberal trait - stunted emotional and intellectual maturity
Palin/Prejean 2012
san francisco just needs to
May 15, 2009 - 12:11 ET by Texasteachersan francisco just needs to have a good earthquake and fall into the ocean. When princess nan is there. And has harry reid and bawney fwank over for drinks.
You know, for all their talk of wanting to prevent STD's and unwed mothers and such, the liberals seem to really not care about teenagers screwing each other silly. Step one to solving a problem: don't encourage the problem.
obama's notion of bi-partisanship is telling conservatives to shut up and do what he wants.
tired of liberal
May 15, 2009 - 12:12 ET by stunnedtired of liberal lies
Responsible adults set limits on behavior of kids to protect them from harm and educating them on the dangers of sexting is one more to add to the list. When young relationships end many of the private sexted images sent to boyfriends or girlfriends end up being passed around to others. A number of kids have been vitimized this way and became ostrasized by their peers and a few have commited suicide as a result of being unable to deal with the humiliation. Other young people caught possesing these images or sending them out over the internet have been prosecuted under child pornography statutes and ended up with criminal records. Only an idiot lib from San Fran could think exhibitionism by kids is no big deal and most likely spends hours each day seeking out such images on the net.
one 18 yo girl - Jessica
May 15, 2009 - 12:33 ET by TruthMongerone 18 yo girl - Jessica Logan - recently committed suicide due to un-intended pic proliferation - classmates taunted her for months with "slut" and "whore"
oh well no big deal i guess
Palin/Prejean 2012
Big Deal.
May 15, 2009 - 14:05 ET by someloudthunderNot really. If the girl killed herself over name calling she probably had bigger issues than what was suggested at face value.
tired of liberal
May 16, 2009 - 01:08 ET by stunnedtired of liberal lies
Don't underestimate the power peer groups have on a girl's self image, self esteem and how being tormented daily can lead to serious depression at that age, many of us remember those days vividly for the good and the bad. The highest rate of suicide is among the elderly but it often is accompanied by illness and lonliness caused by the passing of spouses and/or close friends. The second highest rate is among teenagers. The cause is not completely understood. Hormones are a suspected contributing factor as is the pressures of approaching adulthood. When kids experience strong emotions for the first time without any reference points in their memory to help them cope, the effects can be overwelming ie:first love or self-consciousness. No experience repeated will ever have that same power over you as you have learned coping methods. It is true that anything that doesn't kill you will make you stronger, but unfortunantly some will not survive to learn that lesson. This is why I found this article so offensive, parents must educate kids on many different levels so they can make responsible decisions and not end up being exploited betrayed or God forbid Dead.
why aren't they syndicating this guy?
May 15, 2009 - 12:21 ET by JeffC...I'm sure they'd love him in the midwest and Bible Belt.
/sarc
I really have to wonder if Pez Hilton
May 15, 2009 - 12:29 ET by Paul Atreidesbrought up the marriage issue because he and Markita Morford are engaged.
I'm sure that both are for sexting and will be having their cell number sky-written over every middle and high school they can find.
Don't Care.
May 15, 2009 - 14:03 ET by someloudthunderLaws against this new craze is ridiculous and almost nanny state. Is it dumb? Yes. I have no idea what would make a teenager think that a naked photo of themselves would be a bright idea. All I can say is teenagers are a frisky bunch. I know I was. If you pass laws against "sexting" then they'll just invent some new - even stupider way to unknowingly shame themselves. Parents, talk to your teens and tell them that sexting is ridiculous and the consequences that result. We don't need another law on top of an already growing lawpie.
tired of liberal lies I
May 16, 2009 - 01:15 ET by stunnedtired of liberal lies
I agree this is an issue that has resolved by communicating the risks to kids by families and friends not by passing new laws. By letting them know the dangers it can help them resist peer pressure and pressure from partners to engage is risky behavior including unsafe sex and sexting. The arguement against new laws shouldn't be made at the expense of trivilizing the problem as this author has done. Yes some kids will drive drunk but joking about it doesn't encourage other kids not to.
I do not approve of sexting
May 15, 2009 - 14:09 ET by shawn228However, I am also against prosecuting a teenage girl that sends naked pictures of herself with child porn laws. The punishment is too severe at the present moment.
He had my vote
anti family
May 15, 2009 - 14:44 ET by ScadsobeesHow absolutely pathetic, non-disciplined and non-caring!!
This man would rather have the teens in the park at night senselessly abusing thier bodies with people who don't care about anything but their genitals
than have them spend time in the park with members of their family who actually love them and care about them deeply.
After all, wild careless free bachanalian friday nights in the woods at the park with strange men is much better than drab family outings at the park, right? What about the drugs? Those get the hormones to a new level, and who would want to pass that up???
Yes, it is hard to keep teenage hormones in check. But if they don't learn that and a little other self control, their lives as adults will be hellish.
This man embodies the problems our nation faces...complete and utter lack of any self-control and morals. Don't teach kids self control, let 'em learn to do whatever hell they want to. That way they will be as screwed as adults as he is.
BTW, that girl obviously killed herself becauseof the intolerant, insensitive, overly moralistic taunts of the other kids, not because she had no self control or self worth and completely degraded herself publicly.
Funny Uncle
May 15, 2009 - 15:41 ET by Anneke9All you have to do is read a few of his columns to know that you would not want Uncle Mark to babysit your kids. Nor would you want him to father your children.
____________________________________
Camouflage conservative in Baghdad-by-the-Bay
My Comment to Mr. Morford's Column:
May 15, 2009 - 17:22 ET by ktwardI am an active UU with trained background in comprehensive sex-ed (http://www.uua.org/r...)
I find your snarky rhetoric where this issue is concerned to be
ill-advised and trivializing of an otherwise very impacting process in
healthy sexual development.
Perhaps you're not a parent.
The universal term 'teenager', in the context of your blog column, is misleading.
What might be agreed upon as appropriately exploratory behavior for a
16-19 yo is HUGELY different than that for a 12-15 yo. There's of
course gray area in individual experience/circumstance, but it seems to
me you grossly mischaracterize this issue as merely reflecting the
'natural' sexual curiosities of 'teenagers'.
Responsible parents go to great ends to educate their children on sexuality at
age-appropriate levels, and to ensure that healthy development is not
compromised.
Tech advancements, for good or for ill, allow our kids to more easily
engage in otherwise ill-advised behavior and/or activities that might,
in earlier days, not be so easily accessed. Case in point, my daughter
did not have a camera phone until she turned 16. Today, every phone is
a camera phone, at minimum.
Scientifically, we know that the brain's judgment center is not fully developed until, depending on the
study, very late teens/early twenties; at the very least, google!, if
you care to engage in the requisite research of responsible journalism.
Fostering healthy teen sexuality is a complex and involved process that includes both parents and schools.
Your column does complete injustice to that process.
You are SO young.
Why Isn't There A Middle Ground In This?
May 15, 2009 - 22:24 ET by The7SticksAs far as I'm concerned, I think the best way to handle the teen-sexting issue is by punishing them the same way any teenager or student would be punished if they committed crimes like vandalism, graffiti, theft of school or private property. Parents would have to pay a fine, teens would have to commit to the appropriate hours of community service required (usually, it's around 100 when I read some of my high school guidelines.), they'd have to go to court, the usual stuff I read about in high school. What I see going on, though, is this active attempt towards harsh prosecutions of teens in the same way a pedophile, child pornographer or sex-slave trafficker would be punished. How is marking them as a sex-offender for the rest of their lives going to deter them from doing it again?
As far as I can tell, the so-called "sex-offender" epidemic is phony enough as it is because of the publicity generated by MSM programs like Dateline NBC's To Catch A Predator. I don't believe it is as high as it's cracked up to be because this is being done more as a cash-cow to scam us out of our tax dollars to fund these Mickey Mouse propositions like Jessica's Law or Megan's Law. Call me crazy, but I believe that's the reason we in California have such a budget short fall. And it'll get worse if we start spending our tax money on ankle bracelets to put on these teen sexters. This is the biggest fraud in American goverment history, and we've got to put a stop to this before we become broke and have teens locked up in San Quentin. That's not exactly a crazy thing to say the way I see things heading right now.
By the way, if you don't like San Francisco so much, go see the new Star Trek movie. Essentially, the Romulans use a space drill to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge. I bet that will cheer you all up.
Perhaps they're concerned
May 15, 2009 - 22:36 ET by balboaPerhaps they're concerned about this becoming some kind of loophole for child pornography? Just a guess.
Why not just take
May 15, 2009 - 22:39 ET by general companyTheir phone? Thats what I will do, and then some!
My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful
"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg
Life must be so easy when
May 16, 2009 - 15:26 ET by CamelopardalisLife must be so easy when you are devoid of morals.