> What are teenagers supposed to do during a pandemic?

They are bored so go ahead and send pictures to a pedophile? What?

I do fundamentally agree with the logic -- we should be looking at harm. If I had send nude picks as a kid, and nothing came of it, it's probably not an issue. However:

- With growing compromises, anything sent on the internet today is likely to be found and linked back someday.

- We have no idea what risks will happen in 20 years.

- Even today, it can lead to stalky / groomy / etc. things

Those sorts of rare events won't be captured well in metrics. Usually, it's not that 100% of people are harmed, but that 1% suffers extreme harm.

So as much as I agree with the logic, I disagree with the conclusion.

(you're the other way around: your conclusion is right, but your logic is missing, and replaced by outrage)

while I understand your point, I have to believe that anyone hosting and showing naked underage pictures is very quickly going to decide not to so that particular threat really holds little water.

I meant it as an honest, open-ended question.

Would you prefer them to just not explore their sexuality?

Or explore it online with people they know, like their classmates?

There’s ways to explore sexuality besides sending nudes to strangers and being tricked into transactional relationships that exploit their sexuality.

Everyone matures at different rates, but I think it’s pretty universal that no 13 year old is mature enough to consent to nude photos sent to strangers who are likely adults. Not to mention it’s criminal.

What an absolutely awful take.

I mean I absolutely agree with the first point. The reaction of the adults in these circumstances almost certainly is worse than the damage caused in the first place.

What this means in the grand scheme of things though I'm not sure.

What is the alternative though? Trying to shelter kids from the internet with filters which are guaranteed to be either overbearing or easily bypassed? Deny them a phone which many of their peers will have (in all likelyhood the photos will just get taken on someone else's phone)? Try to treat them as intelligent young people and explain the realities.

Treating them as intelligent young people seems like the obvious answer, although those conversations are hard, especially at the young ages that kids can access adult content nowadays.

The "best" solution in my mind, is probably filtering internet access until they hit puberty, then have the talk. What goes in the talk, idk (probably what catfishing is, promoting neck-down nudes only, sex-positivity, and maybe one or two other things).

The sex-positivity feels like the most important part though, and what I was getting at originally. So many parents (including my own) only focus on what not to do, that kids don't know what to do. So many keep doing the same things in secret and just feel guilty about it.

Is there a future where it's the norm to promote safe sex amongst teens? Or are we too much of prudes to ever touch the topic?

The paradox is that kids are sexually active from around 13, yet it's almost illegal for them to be so