Are you a Sext Offender?

When I was 16—which was not that long ago, but long enough that nobody had a camera phone yet—I let my art student boyfriend do a portrait of me. It was pen-and-ink on white paper, poster sized, with a sort of impressionist flair...

...oh, and did I mention I was naked?

Why, yes! In what may be the world’s most low-tech precursor to the teen “sexting” epidemic, I went topless (and bottomless) for love. It seemed like a great idea: intimate, interesting, and kinda sexy. Then, a few weeks later, I came home and found my mother, standing in the foyer, brandishing The Naked Portrait.

“I found this under your bed,” she said.

“What?” I shrieked. “You were snooping in my room!”

“I was cleaning!” she said.

“In between the pages of my sketchbook?”

“That is not important,” said Mom. “The point is, you and your boyfriend are clearly very, uh, comfortable with each other, and I am going to have a conversation with you both.”

(She was totally snooping.)

This incident led not only to the most awkward conversation of my entire life, but also to the learning of a very important lesson:

Naked pictures, even the non-digital kind, can easily fall into the wrong hands.

Today’s high school students know this only too well, with countless kids getting suspended, kicked off sports teams, or even prosecuted over nude photos—usually after the offending pics are found on someone’s confiscated cell phone.

But are these punishments appropriate?

Here at SparkNotes, we’re concerned about kids doing things that they might later regret, and that includes naked picture-taking. But we’re also concerned about how the sexting problem is being handled by principals and police. Many girls are being dealt harsh punishments for taking nude pics, while the guys who forwarded the photos to the entire school get off scot-free. Teens are being brought up on child pornography charges that could haunt them for life. And while the person who takes naked photos with a cellphone might be unwise, we’re not sure that labeling him or her a sex offender is the best way to solve the problem.

What do you think?

• Should there be a legal difference between a teenager’s self-taken nudie pics and child pornography?
• Should the taker of the picture be punished more harshly than the person who sends it around?
• Should the decision about how to deal with teen sexting be left to these kids and their parents, without involvement from schools or the law?