One possible rethinking of the norms would be to worry less about teenagers, letting them sext if that's their thing, and advising them to not let societal abuse (e.g. bullying) get to them.
Scenario: a teenager sends a nude picture to a friend and the picture becomes public.
Possible solutions:
1. We keep teenagers from sexting, and people from seeing pictures that teenagers sexted.
2. We learn to not abuse teenagers who sexted and had their pictures leaked.
The latter is harder, but it's better long term. You can force people to not do what might harm them somehow, but you should look at the fundamentals: why do people suffer consequences when they sext? Is it because of the sexting itself, or the reaction people have to it?
> I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from predators. Just because they are old enough to have children of their own doesn't make them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be collecting sexual images of children and distributing them.
Age is a spectrum. A better definition of, say, a 16 year old would be "not quite an adult, not quite a child". They're closer to adulthood than to childhood, but still don't have some of the baggage of adulthood. Talk to a 16 year old and you'll find out that they don't want that lack of baggage to keep them from enjoying the benefits of being treated like adults. I doubt having a line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18 years old, and until then you're still a child will keep working in this century. It worked when social dynamics between teenagers and adults were different.
