Living next door to a registered sex offender doesn’t sound like the safest place to live. It’s probably one of the top concerns among parents who are house shopping and trying to look out for the safety of their kids.
But what if it was their child who was the registered sex offender?
A new word has made its way into the hype and controversy of the media: “sexting,” a term used to describe the act of sending sexually explicit pictures via text message.
For doing this very act, minors could risk the possibility of becoming a registered sex offender as a violation of child pornography laws, according to a CNN article.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy and Cosmogirl.com partnered together and surveyed roughly 1,300 teens about sex and technology.
Their results revealed that one in every five teens say they’ve sexted.
While the act of sexting among minors is violating a law intended for their protection, having twenty percent of American teens registered as sex offenders for the rest of their life seems a bit too harsh of a punishment.
Phillip Alpert, an 18-year-old from Orlando, Fla. was arrested and charged for child pornography after getting in a fight with his 16-year-old girlfriend and sending a naked photo of her to dozen of his friends and family, according to CNN.
Alpert admitted that it was a stupid, immature thing he did while he was upset and running on little sleep, but he was sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender.
“You will find me on the registered sex offender list next to people who have raped children, molested kids, things like that, because I sent child pornography. You think child pornography, you think 6-year-old, 3-year-old little kids who can’t think for themselves, who are taken advantage of. That really wasn’t the case,” Alpert said to CNN reporters.
Those teenage years are a live-and-learn experience. Teens are overrun with emotions that often lead them to make bad decisions. But that’s where parents step in.
Dr. Phil McGraw’s show featured a story, “Risky Teen Behavior,” that discussed the issue of sexting and (the lack of) parental involvement.
Parents on the show complained of their teenage daughters circulating nude photos of themeselves to teenage boys, but as it turns out, none of the parents on the show discussed the issue with their teens.
If parents took the time to sit down with their children and explain why photographing themeselves in explicit ways is a bad idea, or talked to them about self respect, that twenty percent of teenage sexters might trickle down a little.
After all, do parents really want nude pictures of their teens being blasted around for all to see? Or have their child be haunted by the turmoils of being a registered sex offender for the rest of their life?
Reach Monique at monique.zatcoff@asu.edu
