Sexting - sending naked photos of oneself to acquaintances through cell phones and computers - is a phenomenon that comes at the intersection of technology, modern culture and bad judgment.


In the old days, you couldn't take a picture of the kids playing in the tub without worrying about what the man down at the drugstore would think when he developed them. Now you can drop your drawers, take a picture of yourself with your cell phone and have it go viral before the buzz wears off.

Just ask Brett Favre, who got caught sending nude pictures of himself to a Jets employee. Or ask the married congressman from New York who sent a shirtless photo of himself to a woman he found on Craigslist. She sent it to a blogger and the congressman's career was over.

Like it or not, we live in a culture steeped in sex, where pornography has gone mainstream. It's a society where respect for privacy - our own, as well as other people's - is disappearing, a world where celebrities and ordinary folk routinely report to their hundreds of Internet "friends" on what they had for dinner and the stomach ache that followed. Exhibitionism has gone mainstream, too, with obscene or just suggestive photos shared online like an earlier generation traded recipes.

Nowhere do the forces of new technology, sex culture and bad judgment collide with greater ferocity than high school.

Like it or not, our children are sexting. In an anonymous survey of more than 23,000 ninth- through 12th-graders at schools near Boston, done by the MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation, 25 percent reported having received a "sext," with 10 percent saying they sent, forwarded or posted a "sext," and 5 percent considered themselves victims of a "sext."

The kids may consider it harmless, sexy fun. Tell that to the parents of the teenager who finds the sexy greeting she sent to her boyfriend splashed across the World Wide Web. Sexting has been implicated in cyberbullying, in teen suicides and in countless broken hearts.

It's also against the law. Think about it. Most of those teens swapping naked pictures of themselves are under 18. In the eyes of the law, what they are storing and sending through cell phones and computers is child pornography.

A 15-year-old boy was arrested in Portage, Ind., this month when police found photos of two naked girls on his phone. According to the Associated Press, one of the girls said the boy threatened to post her picture on his MySpace page unless she lent him her saxophone.

Then there's Josh Pizette, 22, who is now in federal custody because of the sexy photos on his phone.

According to an indictment issued by a federal grand jury, Pizette possessed and "transported" child pornography, specifically 14 computer files. On several occasions more than a year ago, he allegedly threatened to post one of the photos on the Internet - and send a copy to her boyfriend - unless she sent him 10 more.

If these charges are true - Pizette has pleaded not guilty, but his lawyer didn't return my calls - the kid sounds like an immature jerk, and maybe much worse. But he doesn't sound like a child porn kingpin. He's not charged with actually distributing any pornography, let alone profiting from it. He had sexy pictures on his phone and he threatened to use one of them to embarrass a girl.

The case against Pizette was brought by the "major crimes unit" of the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston, which has a prosecutor assigned full-time to such cases, a spokeswoman told me. It makes one wonder what the minor crimes unit of the Justice Department is up to, chasing parking scofflaws?

What's the appropriate penalty for this young man? The law carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised probation, a $250,000 fine, and lifetime identification as a sex offender.

He might not draw the max, of course, but the charge of transporting child pornography carries a mandatory minimum sentence. If convicted, young Pizette will spend at least five years in a federal penitentiary.

Parents whose dreams for their children are geared toward four years in college rather than five years in the pen might want to have a talk with their children about deleting questionable files on their cellphones.

This is what happens when politicians write laws that cannot distinguish between middle-age predators and teenagers in love.

Already, politicians in some states are realizing their error, and actually softening child pornography statutes. The Texas Senate has approved a bill reducing the charge for sexting to a misdemeanor for those under 18, with an exemption from prosecution for couples who were dating at the time. Florida is considering decriminalizing first offense sexting.

As for the Pizette case, I don't know the individuals and I haven't seen the evidence, so I can't say where Josh Pizette falls on the spectrum between hormone-addled youth and predatory adult. Even if we had all the evidence, we might disagree about what constitutes and appropriate punishment for this kid.

He was 21 when this alleged incident happened, so some will say he deserves whatever the law prescribes. But as a parent, I know that maturity doesn't magically arrive on one's 21st birthday. Researchers say the brain doesn't fully develop until age 24, with things like impulse control and the ability to grasp potential consequences of risky behavior the last to develop.

Whatever technology you give them, immature people will use it to do foolish things. How old was Brett Favre when he decided to text-message his private parts? How do you decide the best punishment for behavior that can range from a relatively innocent mistake to a dangerous, destructive obsession?

Here's how: You hold a trial and call witnesses. You put the evidence, the facts and the extenuating circumstances on the table and you let lawyers argue their interpretations of the events and the character of the accused. Then you let an independent, learned, respected human being decide which sentence from a range of options best approximates justice for all concerned.

That person is called a judge, and it's time we stopped tying their hands with mandatory minimums created by politicians for political agendas.
