Thursday, June 2, 2011

Sexting


Teens sext. They just do. Just like they have sex and experiment with drinking and drugs.
But instead of leaving the punishment up to the parents, the California State Legislature is stepping in to regulate what children can and can’t do with their cell phones while in school.
Senators unanimously passed a bill that would make sexting an infraction for which school officials could expel students. Senator Ted Lieu, the Torrance Democrat who introduced the bill, tells the Associated Press that sexting is a growing problem in California schools. He says a recent study shows 20 percent of teens reported sending or posting nude or semi-nude pictures and videos of themselves.
Well, DUH. 20 percent of teens are probably groping in backseats too, would that surprise the senator as well?
Lieu’s bill defines sexting as “the sending or receiving of sexually explicit pictures or video images by means of an electronic act.” If passed it would become an amendment to the Interagency School Safety Demonstration Act of 1985.
Look, I’m not all pro sexting here – although I have been known to send my husband “sexually explicit pictures or video images by means of an electronic act” – I’m just saying, why allow texting and not sexting? That seems a little big brother to me. If texting in class is allowed, sexting should be too because it’s none of the senate’s damn business what my teen is texting – it’s mine.
But sexting, to me, is this generation’s equivalent of my generation’s groping in back seats. Hell, it’s probably this generations version of flirting.
God, I’m old.
Don’t kid yourself, it will happen, yes, even to your teen, and if it is your kid that is taking nudie pics of themselves and sending them out, that sucks, yes, but you need to raise your kids better – it isn’t the government’s job. And just how are they going to enforce? Teachers roaming around grabbing cell phone’s from student’s hands and scrolling through texts? That’s totally bogus!
I vote to make sexting while legislature is in session illegal. I’ll enforce! It’s probably a bigger problem than teen sexting anyway, am I right?
What do you think? Should the senate be all up in the student’s texts? Or should they be solving big problems, like how broke California schools are?

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