What I, and probably a lot of others in the class, found the most interesting was the hour or so we spent talking about sexting. Pam showed us a compelling MTV news documentary that showed the downsides of being irresponsible with texts- picture texts to be more specific.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1631891/20100212/story.jhtml
Put lightly, I was in awe of the personal stories revealed on the documentary. There was a pretty disheartening account of a young guy who made a poor decision one night during a fight with his girlfriend, and ended up with a charge of distribution of child pornography that will last him decades. That was tough to hear about. I think due to the video, I developed my own opinion on the current laws and punishments used for social media crimes. They are not perfect. They need to be changed to fit the crimes better, but that's for a different day and a different time.
What really got me about the documentary was the level of sympathy shown for the main female "victim" of sexting gone wrong. I wondered if I was supposed to be feeling sorry for her.
So she and her friends took an inappropriate picture of her, sent it to her ex-boyfriend and were surprised to find out within the next few days that the picture had been sent to half the school. (What a good example of how quickly news travels via new media- even among high schoolers.)
First of all, duh.
I understand she was in high school at the time, and that high school is a time for bad judgement calls. But honestly, I don't think that's a remotely good excuse. Just because brains are "molding" and "developing" during that stage in life doesn't mean there's an excuse for such behavior, let alone such behavior without consequence. Even as a sixth grader I could have informed this girl of the negative consequences that would follow her decision to create a distasteful and exposing image of herself in a medium without limits.
Yup, I said it. Texting is a medium without limits.
As shown in this prime example, once one person has a text that contains any personal information/imagery of you, you better hope that person is your true friend because it is not hard to choose the "add recipients" option on the cellphone screen.
If a high school girl (I believe a junior?) doesn't know that a naked picture of herself will make it into the wrong hands (possibly dozens of them) then she clearly had some learning to do. She ran into plenty of trouble afterwards, no doubt. Trouble with the law, trouble with school officials, trouble at home with her parents, and last but definitely not least trouble with current/future romantic relationships.
The excuses of this girl and all the other girls and boys who are "victims" of sexting gone wrong are useless. It doesn't matter if you were vulnerable, angry, confused or unaware. There is no excuse for putting oneself in that situation and not expecting the consequences.
I may sound a little harsh. As a New Media major, I may have a little advantage as far as knowing what is possible with any type of social media technology. But sometimes, these things are just common sense. We can try to blame it on the education system, we can try to blame it on poor parenting (which in many cases may very well be the root of the problem) but in the end, the education system and parents are not the ones going to jail.
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