It began with a crush. Thirteen-year-old Hope Witsell of Florida wanted to get
the attention of a boy she liked. So she snapped a topless photo of herself in
June and sent it via cell phone to the boy — a practice known as "sexting."

Unfortunately for Hope, the photo wound up circulating throughout her middle
school and a nearby high school. Hope became the target of brutal bullying
online and in person. She was forced to walk her school's hallways shielded by
a gaggle of girlfriends as other teens pummeled her with obscenities. The
once-chipper girl with a sweet smile and dreams of a landscaping career began
cutting herself and journaling about the "TONS of people [who] hate me." By
September, shame had overwhelmed Hope, and her mother found her hanging from
the canopy of her bed.

Hope's was not the first "sexting suicide." Last year, a Cincinnati high school
senior hanged herself after her ex-boyfriend forwarded a nude photo she had
sent him to a group of girls who circulated it to hundreds of her classmates.
Eighteen-year-old Jessica Logan was harassed at school, thrown out of parties
and targeted with explicit texts from strangers. Shortly before her death, she
gave an anonymous television interview to warn other teens about the dangers of
sexting.

The number of young people exposed to such dangers is rising. A study released
last week by the Associated Press and MTV found that nearly a third of 14- to
24-year-olds have sent or received nude photos on their cell phones or online
and 61 percent of those who have sent naked photos or video of themselves have
been pressured to do so. Girls tend to be the targets of this pressure: The
study found that girls are more likely to send nude photos of themselves while
boys are more likely to forward photos they receive to others.

As common as sexting is in our porn-saturated society, public nudity still
retains some of its stigma for girls. So teens like Jessica and Hope find
themselves confounded by a culture that teaches them to equate exhibitionism
with empowerment, then vilifies them for the same reckless behavior it
implicitly encourages.

Parents, school officials and public safety experts clearly have a preventative
role to play here. But so far, public efforts to discourage teen sexting have
focused mostly on its potential to spawn legal troubles, jinx job searches or
torpedo college applications. Campaigns like MTV's "A Thin Line" admirably
highlight the connection between sexting and higher rates of sexual activity
and suicidal feelings among teens. But they make no mention of sexting's moral
implications, assuring teens, as MTV spokesman Jason Rzepka does on the
campaign's website, that "we're not making any kind of a value judgment about
sexting here."

Why not? Has our culture become so inured to the pornographic mindset that we
cannot condemn the creation and dissemination of sex tapes and obscene photos
by 13-year-old girls for the benefit of 13-year-old boys — not simply because
homemade pornography clouds a student's college prospects but because it
destroys her innocence? Are we so accustomed to the morally bankrupt language
of "safe sex" that we cannot rouse ourselves to argue in moral terms against
even this blatantly destructive trend?

The answer, sadly, may be yes. If we were to unequivocally condemn practices
like sexting among teens, we also would need to examine our complicity in
supporting a celebrity culture that glamorizes exhibitionism — a culture fueled
by such networks as MTV — and a $13-billion-a-year pornography industry that
somebody's parents must be patronizing. We would be forced to reconsider our
own fashion and entertainment choices in light of that most old-fashioned
virtue, modesty. We may even need to publicly defend sexual self-restraint in a
society that considers chastity a pathological condition.

It's easier to simply tell teens to sext with caution. But a little more
courage on the part of adults could save teens a world of grief. It may even
save a few lives.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.