[DoreenMichele]

Some thoughts I've had for years:

A. My understanding is an underage teen who takes a nude selfie and sends it can be charged with distributing "child porn." This is a serious problem and should not be true. If other people forward it, they should be charged, but a teenager should not get in legal trouble for making a nude selfie and sending it privately.

B. We need to culturally get over a lot of our hangups about certain things. His girlfriend was attending church. The church should be telling kids "This is not worth killing yourself over."

C. We somehow need to come up with reasonable accommodation for the reality that teens have phones and budding sexualities and these two things are colliding horrifically in a legal and cultural system strongly rooted in assuming "child porn" is made solely by abusive adults and not willingly by underage teens who don't think it's a big deal at the time the photo is snapped.

Taking a nude selfie should be safer than baring your body in person. No risk of STDs or pregnancy are involved. And yet we've turned it into this hugely dangerous thing for anyone who hasn't spent years thinking about sexual morality who isn't prepared to say to law enforcement and the world "Nudes of me? Big fucking deal."

No idea how to further any of those things, but this is hardly the first article I've read about teen selfies being involved in extreme levels of harsh consequences that I just think morally should not happen and I think have roots in cultural and legal stuff going bad places in part because we aren't keeping up with the times.

[orthoxerox]

> C. We somehow need to come up with reasonable accommodation for the reality that teens have phones and budding sexualities and these two things are colliding horrifically in a legal and cultural system strongly rooted in assuming "child porn" is made solely by abusive adults and not willingly by underage teens who don't think it's a big deal at the time the photo is snapped.

It's not just the CSAM aspect, it's the whole idea that sex ed is grooming. It's like the difference between saying "you shouldn't have sex until you are a responsible adult" vs "I honestly don't recommend that you have sex at this age, but if you do, here's how to do it safely and responsibly".

Teaching kids "don't send naked pictures of yourself to other people" is one thing, but if they look around and see their peers sext with each other with no real repercussions, this warning will fall on deaf ears. They will file it next to "don't drink until you're 21".

On the other hand, if you start tailoring this message into something like, "sexting is a bad idea, don't do it, especially if you don't know the other person or don't trust them 100%; if you do sext, here's how to minimize the impact of cyberbullying or blackmail: ...", then people will loudly complain that schools are teaching their children how to sext.

[DoreenMichele]

I was thinking more about our legal system and general culture needing to keep up with the times.

I homeschooled my kids, so school-based sex education doesn't really make my radar.

[touisteur]

I think the people calling sex education "grooming" are the same preventing the legal system to evolve in the way you described. You're very lucky that you could home-school your kids and teach them all this.

It's all very alien to me how teaching safe practice of something that has a huge probability of happening can still be seen as encouraging it, "grooming". Education should be a bare minimum here: here's how your body works, here's your risk of becoming/making your partner pregnant (and what that entails for you), of catching a life-long disease, cancer, or a nasty painful thing, here's what medical science and the FDA says you can both use as contraceptive and their failure rate and side effects, no means fricking no, and all of this compounds if you drink or do drugs...

Not teaching this amounts to not preparing your kid for the actual world and reduces body autonomy and responsible behaviour... They will experiment, and they will do stupid things.

It's as if teaching civics was a gateway to anarchist bombing or teaching chemistry a gateway to Breaking Bad... American puritanism and the whole "teaching is grooming" is such a weird thing.

[bloomingeek]

<"teaching is grooming" is such a weird thing. > Since grooming has become politicized, the hypocrisy is monumental and finally exposed. So called puritanism is the wrong direction, because as you pointed out, teens will do stupid things.

What about the toxic masculinity culture taught by the right and the church? The right says, "keep these women under control." The church says,"women MUST obey their husbands no matter what." If that's not grooming, I don't know what is.

We home schooled our children. We made sure our kids knew what could happen in life because we are all flawed and sometimes make decisions that could be life altering in unintended ways. We knew that we couldn't educate them enough about the variables of life, but we tried.

[graemep]

I home educated too, and one of the big advantages is that it creates more opportunities to talk to them about things like this.

> The church says,"women MUST obey their husbands no matter what."

Which church exactly says that? Only a fringe group of American evangelicals. I have never come across even them saying "no matter what" although there are probably a few real lunatics who do.

Here is the view of the the largest Christian church, that submission in marriage is mutual: https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhor... (page 115)

[bloomingeek]

Sorry, I should have mentioned I was referring to the protestant side of evangelicals. The unwritten rule on marriage there is the man always overrules.

Many evangelical fundamentalist churches, for example, use the material from The Institute in Basic Life Principles. On marriage it says,"A husband's authority over his wife is God-given, as is his wife's non-negotiable duty to submit to him; she must respect his position regardless of his "deficiencies".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_in_Basic_Life_Princi...

[anal_reactor]

Unfortunately, I've noticed that the so-called "public opinion" is only getting more prude, and the denial about teenagers having sex drive is only getting worse. Basically nobody wants to be labelled a pedophile, so nobody wants to touch that problem with a three-meter stick.

[BlueTemplar]

I don't understand this, aren't pedophiles specifically interested by (non-sexually mature) children, rather than (sexually mature-ish) teenagers ?

There seems to be a lot of (new?) confusion between pedophiles and adults being interested in sexually mature teenagers, which, sure, can cause it's own issues, but is neither a sickness nor a one-way street, and that's what the different majorities of consent and authority and being able to interact with adult industries are for.

And the cutoff for turning fully major and being able to still interact with your slightly younger peers has to be dealt with anyway, ideally in a progressive way.

[graemep]

Yes, that is the correct definition.

There are multiple ways of dealing with it. Romeo and Juliet style age of consent laws for example. Not treating teenagers who do something stupid the same way as adults who distribute child porn.

[didntcheck]

I've also noticed this. On more than one occasion I've been left completely bemused by someone insisting that a teenager couldn't possibly have been seeking out sexual content themselves, and must have been groomed into it by an adult. Sorry, have they met a teenager?

[chr1]

AI generating realistic nude images from normal images will further these things. Because then there will be nudes for everyone, it will be impossible to prove what is real and what is fake, and therefore pointlessness of chasing of 'illegal" numbers will become obvious to more people.

[marcus_holmes]

This is going to make this kind of racket more common, and also provide some kind of defence if it goes wrong: "they're fakes" will be more believable.

But it takes some serious mental resilience to contemplate that as a teenager when someone is threatening to send your nudes to the people you love. Not many kids are going to have that kind of intestinal fortitude.

The tendency of porn to give men severe anxiety about their genitals is playing into this; kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge.

We need to get really cool about a whole bunch of stuff really quickly if we're going to make this (and other problems) go away. I don't think AI is going to be part of that.

[ta1243]

> kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge.

And this is the problem. In years past kids would be naked with other kids, when changing after gym for example. Nowadays the only penis a boy sees is his own and that of porn people, because we've made normal nude situations extremely rare, especially outside of the context of sex.

[marcus_holmes]

This. The whole "you westerners are weird about your bodies because you didn't get to see your grandma's tits when you were kids" thing. We need to normalise nudity as non-sexual, especially within families.

[rightbyte]

Don't childen shower together anymore after gym classes?

[dmd]

We certainly didn’t in my public school in the 1980s; they’d stopped doing that by the late 70s. (NYC suburbs)

[delfinom]

Nope, the only kids that used the showers in my high school were the ones after their sports training after school.

[HaZeust]

Nope; but to be fair, I also think it's better without it - especially in a post-smartphone era where everyone has a camera in their pocket. The repercussions are just not worth it.

[DoreenMichele]

My knee-jerk reaction is that probably some people know what you look like naked. So one means to check: If it's recent, compare it to your actual body.

On the other hand, bodies change over time, so it gets easier to say "That 10 year old pic? No, not real."

(Unless it's extremely attractive. Then enthuse about how gorgeous you once were, I guess, and see if people buy that.)

[graemep]

> His girlfriend was attending church. The church should be telling kids "This is not worth killing yourself over."

I think the problem is knowing what to do preemptively (which affects everyone who might help, not just the church). I am sure that if they asked a priest/paster/whatever they would be told that.

What can you do if they do not ask for. Preach a sermon on this specific problem? There are many variants and you need to get the message across. Maybe a general sermon on the risk of blackmail in general, and talking about where victims can get help, explaining the blackmailer is doing something wrong.

I think parents have a critical role to play. Talk about things like staying safe online, not trusting people, the fact that people assume false identities.

I know my teenage daughter does not disclose her real identity online. I have spoken to her about the dangers of doing so. I will give this as an example, not because I am worried that exactly the same thing would happen, but as an example of the general sort of things that happen. It might be something you say rather than a selfie, for example.

> Taking a nude selfie should be safer than baring your body in person. No risk of STDs or pregnancy are involved. And yet we've turned it into this hugely dangerous thing for anyone who hasn't spent years thinking about sexual morality who isn't prepared to say to law enforcement and the world "Nudes of me? Big fucking deal."

I agree. The law and culture is badly out of date.

[master-lincoln]

For me the craziness already starts with equating nudity and pornography...

[pflenker]

> If other people forward it, they should be charged

It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn.

[DoreenMichele]

I'm actually ok with that. I see no reason why the teacher can't simply advise the parent this is happening without forwarding nudes of their teen to the parent.

I don't actually want to see my sons naked, thanks. They hit puberty, suddenly discovered the concept of privacy and I have no idea what their private parts look like.

[jpsouth]

Strong agree on the advising of such matters, as for forwarding, how the hell would a teacher have access to the image to forward to the parents?

That’s an insane overreach which could easily lead to abuse, they shouldn’t be accessing children’s phones, especially under the premise of ‘I need that image for safeguarding purposes’ - absolutely fucking not.

[marci]

> how the hell would a teacher have access to the image to forward to the parents?

By accident? The teacher and the and the other teen have the same first or last name, or the next one in the contact list, or the autofill rearranged just before clicking, or just one missclick... there are so many ways it could have happened.

[jpsouth]

Then report it to the police, don’t forward a naked image of someone’s child to them? Not only is it likely distribution of CP, it’s also an insane thing to do. As Doreen said, she doesn’t want to see her lads nudes. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t want to see my knob either, who in their right mind would forward that to anywhere but law enforcement?

Not to mention your absolute stretch of a scenario. Do kids typically have their teachers phone numbers in their contacts? Have them added on Facebook? Follow them on Insta? These are all genuine safeguarding issues in themselves, imo (granted I haven’t been in school for 10-15 years). I feel you’re being disingenuous here.

[marci]

The grand-parent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40061547) :

> It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn.

I was only adressing how this hypothetical teacher could have had access to it, not what they should do about it, since you were making very strong suppositions about it.

> Do kids typically have their teachers phone numbers in their contacts? Have them added on Facebook? Follow them on Insta?

Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online? And didn't the Covid situation with remote classes, Zoom, etc, made it possible for such a thing (students having some way of contacting their teachers online) to be way more common now than before?

Anyway, not sure anything I can say could change your mind.

Edit: About what should the teacher do in that case, this was my assumption, I may be wrong, but I think when @pflenker was mentionning this law, they only tried to put it in a scenario in relation with the thread were we could think that child pronography wasn't involved, similar to when @DoreenMichele was mentionning the fact that a teenager sharing (with consent) a nude with other teenagers should not be charged and labeled as CP.

[atq2119]

I don't think it's insane for a teacher to forward evidence of problematic stuff happening with a kid to the kid's parents. After all, many parents think their kids are angels who can do no wrong.

Granted, in this case I agree that it's better judgment not to forward the picture for all the reasons you've mentioned - but calling it insane is a bit much.

[pkaeding]

The teacher is absolutely going to be reporting it to the police, no matter what else they do. Teachers are mandatory repirters-- if they see anything that could indicate a child is being abused they must report it.

The police and social services, along with school district policy, will advise the next steps, including how parents are informed.

[jajko]

You write church, but it should be parents. Remember those days when parents were held responsible for their kids, how they behave, and whom they become in adult life?

They (us) don't have full control in later teens, but everything leading up to it, mostly yes. But for every parent I see raising kids the hard way (tons of time spent together consistently every day, being a positive role model, motivating and supporting them in all the right directions while explaining in detail the rest), I see the other way (obsessed by their pathetic office careers, kids with phones/screens from very early age that then go mental if they have to spend weekend without them, parents addicted to their phones/other screens too, overweight, depressed, without any real healthy passion(s) in their lives).

The results, I mean the kids, always show how parenting went (barring say some inborne mental issues and traumatic accidents, that I have no right to comment on).

I'd say this leans much more heavily on father too, like it or not. Mother is a safe haven and initial care and nurture, but father is a) hardcore role model for the boys, and b) a template what to look for in partners later for girls. Yeah, missing dad syndrome is brutal, every single effin' time, best mothers do minimize this and thats about it. I don't like it, its deeply unfair, not sure to whom to complain to.

[robocat]

> when parents were held responsible for their kids

Yet your comment reminds me of be the modern opposite take on parental responsibility: blame most everything on childhood trauma, and blame trauma on the parents.

We used to blame autism on mothers.

Seriously, we make as much sense as our ancestors blaming miasma for sickness. Remember the hellscape fad of recovering repressed memories? There are people that blame trauma on their past lives!

We all literally have no idea about any of this: our best bet is to be non-judgemental, do our best to create good communities, and to accept our own ignorance.

> The results, I mean the kids, always show how parenting went

Why is this such a common way to think?

Personally some of the worst things I have done I have learnt from my peers. My middle-class innocent parents are not to blame.

> Mother is a safe haven and initial care and nurture

I think stereotypes are dangerous. I'm middle-aged and while we can make generalisations about mothers and fathers, I've learnt that those generalisations can't be applied to individual mothers and fathers.

And conversing about this is just plain hard. I definitely don't want to attack you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35576696

Anyways: To my best knowledge I've really veered off the path - please don't delve into my comment too far. Black and white thinking can be a problem and I'm just as guilty of that as anybody: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

[brnt]

> Remember those days when parents were held responsible for their kids,

That idea is pure revisionism coming from individualist ideology.

In 'those' days, everybody raised everyone. 'It takes a village' and all that. Check any actual scientific research on the matter.

[vasco]

Without time or geo bounds both of you are wrong.

[DoreenMichele]

I was a full-time mom for a lot of years and I'm not religious, but in religious families, religion strongly shapes concepts of morality.

Currently, the Catholic church has a track record of de facto aiding and abetting child molesting priests. I think there's room for improvement.