Question for those of you with teenage kids

[beergut]

How many of you have had a conversation with your kids about sexting? Specifically that if they sext with their peers while they're underage, it is child pornography? 

There is a situation at the University of Nebraska where a player, Maurice Washington, is facing child porn and revenge porn charges. He dated a girl when he was a freshman in HS, then they broke up. The next year, when she was 15, she had sex with two 17 year old students. One of the students filmed the encounter without her knowledge, and then distributed it to everyone at school. She has said it was non-consensual. The school said it was a he said-she said situation, and expelled all three students. 

The student who filmed the encounter was charged with felony possession of child porn and distribution, and plead it down to a misdemeanor. 

This happened in 2016. 

2018, Washington has moved to Texas, is playing football for a small private high school here, and is being recruited. The ex-girlfriend sees his mentioned in the news, and sends him a message on instagram, congratulating him on the opportunity to play DI-A football. They talk, and he talks about them getting back together. She doesn't want a relationship, and tells him as much. 

He texts her back, sending a copy of the video, and says "Remember this hoe(sic)"

Her mother is screening her texts, sees this, and loses it. 

Since she was 15 at the time, this qualifies as child porn. Because he sent it with the intent to inflict emotional harm on her, it falls under California's 'revenge porn' law, which says any portrayal of a sexual act send to inflict emotional harm qualifies as revenge porn. 

When this whole ordeal was posted on another forum, a poster argued that it isn't revenge porn if the person depicted is the recipient of the text, and that it shouldn't be considered child porn because both parties in this text, the sender and recipient, were the same age at the time it was sent. I argued that in 2018, the time this took place, teenagers today should be aware that sexting pictures of themselves if they're underage is distribution of child porn. 

For those of you who are parents of teenagers, have you had this conversation with your children? 

[Knee Deep in Water Chloe]

Yes, lots of conversations about why this is bad, why there are parts of it that are illegal, how they are responsible for what they put out there and how they lose control of it as soon as they press send.
We had a few specific issues with one of our four children. 


School-wise, we bring in Homeland Security officials every other year to address cyber-presence. 

[giramomma]

Yes.

DS got his first cell phone in either 5th or 6th grade. We talked about sexting,  and how one's life is altered once they are a sex offender. I didn't call it child porn, at that point because I thought that was a lot to lay on tween, especially since he was too young to understand the appeal of seeing sexual body parts.

DD will be nearly 12 when she gets a cell phone. We'll have the same discussion.

But, I opt for early, lots of repetition. That leaves time for digesting and question asking.

IMVHO, waiting until a kid is in the thick of it is too late.

ETA: I live in a state that does NOT have Romeo and Juliet laws. DS will be 18 for some (very small) portion of high school. Once he gets more on the dating scene, there will be rules about how young he can go because of statutory rape. I wonder how parents who red-shirt their kids will handle this. It's one thing to be 18 for one month of HS, quite another to be 18 for your entire senior year.

And also, it is really surprising how much parents don't monitor their kids' online activities. One of DS's friends snapchat handle had the word bitch in it. I requested he change her name on his end. I told him that was not appropriate. If one of my girls had a snapchat handle that had bitch in it, they'd be losing their phone for a long, long time.

[imawino]

I have 2 teenage stepsons (although one will soon be 20 - eeeps)!  Their father and I, separately and apart, told them over and over that any sending, receiving, posting, sharing or in any other way disseminating of sexual images of themselves, girls they were dating, people they knew, friends of friends or even strangers could have disastrous life consequences like not getting in to college or winding up on a sex offender registry. We did use the worlds child porn, but they were older than Gira's kids when we had these discussions. We added special emphasis to snapchat just in case they forgot that even though those images may "disappear" after a few seconds, NOTHING you put on internet or send out over your phone is gone forever. Everything has the potential to come back to haunt you.  And also, in general terms, I told them just don't be a dick.  If some girl sent a sexy photo of herself to you, it's for you - not you and 20 of your best friends.  And delete the f'ing thing anyway, until you're both 18!!   


In practice I don't monitor their phones and neither does their dad.  We trust them as much as you can teenage boys - and I also know that if they wanted to hide something they had done on their phone they would be able to out-tech me pretty easily. 

[sheilaincali]

My son is 20, he'll be 21 in April. We have a very open line of communication with him. When he lived at home (before he left for college) we had a family meeting every night. Some nights it was 10 minutes of "how was your day?" and some nights it was hours of discussing politics and current events. Any time something like this (sexting, revenge porn, etc.) would come up in the news we would discuss it with him.

It's important for parents to have more than one conversation about this sort of thing with their kids.

When the Catilyn Jenner was in the news years ago I had a friend call her Bruce and when I scolded her for dead naming her she said she was setting a bad example for her teenage daughters She said "we don't talk about things like that at our house". I told her just because you want to stick your head in the sand doesn't mean your kids don't know trans kids at school.  Same thing here- ignoring it or not talking about it doesn't mean they aren't aware of it.

We parent with two basic rules: honestly at all times and mutual respect. When the Boy would ask us about underage drinking we'd admit to it, tell him stories about bad decisions we made. Same with drugs, skipping school, dating, etc. We vowed to always be honest and transparent with him and expected the same out of him. He tells us pretty much everything that goes on in his life. Crushes (he's bi so we hear about girls and guys), drinking, trying pot, classes, work, etc. He's 12 hours away at school- but we text every day and he calls us several times a week to chat.

But yes- to answer your original question- we have had numerous conversations about sexting.  

[GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl]

Many, many, many conversations about sexting, consent, sex-offender registry lists, etc. — mostly because fossil that I am was trying to wrap MY own head around all this. As a parent, it felt like the very real trouble your kid could get into increased exponentially overnight. Add the opioid epidemic to the sex crime stuff and I had to work overtime just to balance informing and warning my kids just enough so that they wouldn’t tune me out. I definitely feel like I was ripped off when it comes to relaxed, fun, time during their high school years because of how quickly technology surpassed its very real benefits. 😣

Oh, and since ODS started school on the later side and repeated Kindergarden, he was almost 19.5 when he graduated from high school. Fortunately, he was far more interested in being recruited to play college lax than in dating. Dodged that minefield. 😅

[abovewater]

When my step daughter was 12 or 13 there was a time one of her friends was getting bugged by a lot of 'older' guys (college age) following her Instagram account and sending her messages.  We knew the friend, and my wife asked to see her profile...she had posted a summer's worth of filtered & edited bikini pictures of herself at the beach.  It was fairly obvious these college guys thought they were talking to someone closer to their own age (or maybe they really were predatory creeps).  The friend hadn't done anything wrong, but this led to us having conversations with my step daughter about being very careful what she posts on social media, and what not to send in texts or Snapchat. We turned that into a conversation of "Oh by the way, since we're talking about it..."  We told her it's illegal to send naked/sexual pictures, and even if you send them to someone you trust, there's no guarantee the pictures won't *somehow* find their way onto someone else's phone.

[beergut]

Thanks for the responses. This just reaffirms my belief that kids today can't claim ignorance when they send pics, not that ignorance had ever worked as a defense.

[Deleted]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to all you responsible parents who go the extra mile to educate kids about the risks of social media including sexting.  Not all your "friends" are friends nor will today's BFF's be tomorrow's.  And today's lover is tomorrow's revenge porn sicko.  

[zibazinski]

Hopefully no one over 18 is sexting anyone under 18. Especially adults to teenagers.