We got freaked out by kids sexting.
We were shocked when some high school football players ordered prostitutes with their smartphones.
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And now, some ambitious members of Generation Text have taken the sex/technology nexus to a new low by producing and distributing teen porn in Northern Virginia.
Police locked up three boys — two 16-year-olds and a 15-year-old — from West Springfield High School last month for their alleged attempts at becoming the Mitchell Brothers 2.0 — porn kings of the burbs.
The boys made the sex videos with at least six teenage girls from their own school and two neighboring high schools. The boys, all sophomores, have been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography.
This is a story about teen sex and underage drinking. As every parent knows, these have long been part of the perils of adolescence. But the twist here is the camera lens. Or, more likely, the cellphone lens.
It’s a whole new level of degradation and compromised values when videotaping and distribution via send button are factored in.
This is the generation that has been born, fed, diapered and directed on camera. While my generation’s childhood memories come down to a shelf of photo albums or a cardboard box of faded Polaroids, Generation Y has been documented since birth with thousands upon thousands of digital images. They are the real, live “Truman Show.”
And growing up in front of a camera has planted the seeds of some seriously scary consequences.
What do you think kids want most in life today? Money? Marriage? Adventure? A cool job? Spiritual fulfillment? Nope.
“Quantitative analysis revealed that fame was the number one value, selected as the most important value for participants’ future goals,” according to a study done by psychology professors at the University of California at Los Angeles.
In other words, what kids want most is to be as famous as Beyonce or Justin Bieber, even if they can’t sing.
According to a similar UCLA study, the top five values emphasized in television shows popular with children in 2007 were fame, achievement, popularity, image and financial success.
In 1997, the top five were community feeling, benevolence (being kind and helping others), image, tradition and self-acceptance. In 2007, benevolence dropped to the 12th spot and community feeling fell to 11th.
This is echoed in studies done by psychologists and pollsters across the country.
It can be summed up in that Mercedes-Benz Super Bowl commercial, where geeky boy makes the cover of Vanity Fair, gets a date with Kate Upton, is mobbed by screaming fans and pursued by paparazzi, all because he drove that car. Fame — that’s all anyone wants, right?
And what better way for boys to get famous on campus than by making sex tapes?
This is, after all, the Look At Me Generation. They grew up on Facebook and Twitter, far more hip to the potential of social networks and ablaze on them long before their parents could even figure out how to rotate their profile pictures so they weren’t perpetually headstanding.
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