The post you're responding to was splitting the spectrum into at least three parts, children | teenagers | adults, while you're arguing for children | adults - or at least that's how it looks. But I think you're on the wrong track there. Something that is closer to modelling a spectrum is better than a binary distinction, and is less likely to give rise to asinine laws / enforcement, like prosecuting teenagers for self-production of child porn.

Thus: You can drive when you're X, even if some people are perfectly capable of driving earlier and others need a few years to mature.

I'm more complaining about people - allegedly human - making black and white distinctions. Actually, what I'm more upset about is people working from this self-serving system of "logic":

  [general problem] -> [label]+ -> [general action]

It bottle-necks the ambiguity of the real world through a single specific label - ideally one stuck at one end of the spectrum - and thereafter applying a consequence from that label. It's a corrupt mode of thought to my mind.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst...

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.

I'm not sure it ever really "worked", and seems to be an idea that is less than 100 years old. If it's failing already, I'm not sure we can count the couple generations it happened to it "working".

I agree with your point about a shifting culture requiring adjustment. But you should recognise that rudeness is just a cultural norm that shifts with geography and time - what you consider rude (phone at the table) is perfectly acceptable in my family. In fact we almost never ate at the table, and rarely all together, but we're a very closely bonded family. To assert your version of politeness as a requirement is arrogance.

I think teenagers still make mistakes and I do not support photos of them being in general circulation in any form. I am upset at a boyfriend getting charged with CP possession when his girlfriends parents find out that they are sexting.

I also am against photos of teenagers getting distributed, but some teenagers look for teenage porn, and it shouldn't be as big of an offence as actual CP.

1) Not a teenager-specific problem. I'll quickly and unobtrusively answer texts only if they're related to plans for later in the evening. If my mom gets a call from her mother or sister, she'll take it at the dinner table and talk for over an hour while expecting the rest of the family to immediately cease our conversations so she can hear clearly. But it's me who shouldn't be allowed to have a phone?

2) That's pretty easily addressed by parents setting expectations for dinner as a sacred time. Don't want to put your phone down, don't eat. This is not a reason for regulation, changes on the part of manufacturers, or for teenagers not to have phones at all.

Everybody should be protected by law from predators. Including you. The claim was that what isn't needed is "protection" by law from recording activities that people willfully perform anyway.

This has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with parenting they use their phone at the diner table because their allowed it's up to their parents to teach their children manners , respect, values and everything they think would help them in adult life.

This is the result of parents ignoring their children period.

The internet is not a play ground but the same way we don't build a fenced walk way from our house to the school our children attend we shouldn't be fencing off the internet.

It's not going to protect them, anybody can jump over a fence to abduct a child and the same way anybody can bypass a porn filter.

They need to grow up and this is part of it.

Right, and whose responsibility is it to make sure that children grow up knowing using their mobile phone at the dining table is wrong?

I appreciate your point about the social effects of ubiquitous handheld computing but frankly I grew up constantly being told to go outside or talk to people when I preferred to read. Being present in body only is not a new thing.

Your children will be different, your grandchildren moreso, their children will be as different from you as you are from the median Saudi. We're living in the future and assuming trends continue our descendants will be libertine aliens.

It is a fine line though and it sounds like a lot of states are trying to solve this.