TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. â The conversation always goes the same way.
At least once a semester â often more â School Resource Officer Joe Soffredine takes a seat across from a nervous, fidgeting, eye-contact-avoiding high schooler in an office at Traverse City Central High School in Traverse City, Mich.
She doesnât know why sheâs there.
But the reality sets in quickly as Soffredine clears his throat and prepares the well-rehearsed speech â explaining that Snapchatting those nude photos to her high school boyfriend constitutes a felony.
âMost kids donât realize,â said Soffredine, who works primarily with students at Traverse City Central and occasionally fields similar calls from parents in the summer. âThey donât really realize what could happen, what kind of trouble they could be facing.â
Teenagers face a wealth of confusing, conflicting new emotions, compounded by evolving sexuality, school-day drama and the task of navigating love and relationships for the first time.
And it comes with growing pains â like the steep consequences of âsextingâ and sharing racy pictures via Snapchat, text message, Instagram and other apps.
In Michigan, any minor snapping a lewd selfie could be prosecuted for creating child pornography, a felony with a maximum punishment of 20 years in prison and potentially similar stint on the sex offender registry.
Just saving a flirty pic from a boyfriend or girlfriend younger than 18, regardless of the recipientâs age, can mean a four-year prison sentence. Sending a shot â or as the state calls it, distributing child sexually abusive material â could net seven years behind bars.
Each charge is a felony under Michiganâs 1931 Child Sexually Abusive Material Law, and each comes with mandatory registration as a sex offender.
And nothing in that law specifies the difference between a sexual predator and a 16-year-old taking a braless selfie for her boyfriend. Even young couples older than 16, the stateâs age of consent, arenât safe â they can have sex, but not snap a photo of it.
It leaves police and prosecutors with weighty questions â like how to treat teens who consensually share nudes pictures?
âThe law is there to protect children, and these are basically children,â said Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg. âItâs not something we really want to criminalize.
âThe kids weâve talked to have no idea itâs a crime.â
Moeggenbergâs northern Michigan colleagues share her apprehension.
â(The way) I look at it, did the legislators intend it to apply in this sort of situation?â said Kalkaska County Prosecutor Mike Perreault.
âKids are kids â I donât know if theyâve changed much since you or I were young,â added Keith Smith, Kingsley Area Schools superintendent. âThe ramifications arenât immediate, so they donât realize what theyâre doing. Like other at-risk behaviors of kids â drinking, smoking.â
Those waters arenât so clear, however, when thereâs a question of coercion or sharing without permission â the only thing those teens can be charged with in most of these cases is child pornography, Moeggenberg said.
The statute forces prosecutors to take an all-or-nothing approach.
âWhen you charge someone with a felony, youâve done a lot to mess up their lives,â said Leelanau County Prosecutor Joe Hubbell. âJust because you could, doesnât mean you should.â
Numbers prove hard to quantify â each prosecutor said they see a handful of cases each school year, give or take. But they suspect plenty more slip by.
Itâs a new problem.
Moeggenberg and Perreault didnât see anything of the sort until about 10 years ago, and law enforcement back them up. All point to the advent of smartphones fueling the trend.
âItâs kind of the flavor of the times â thatâs what weâre dealing with,â Hubbell said. âEverybody now has a smartphone.â
About 30 percent of high-schoolers admitted to sending nudes in a 2014 study printed in the International Journal of Cyber Criminology. Another 27 percent at least considered the act, and 56 percent received nudes.
Another 2014 study, this one conducted by Drexel University, backs that 30 percent finding through a survey of college students about their past sexting behavior.
The Cyber Criminology piece names 17- and 18-year-olds as the most likely sexters, and claims the vast majority of flirty pics are traded between teens in romantic relationships.
And it claims those numbers have only risen with trends of cellphone ownership and technological advances.
âWe did stupid stuff as kids, but didnât have the luxury of technology making it worse,â said Justina Hlavka, a Traverse City resident and parent to a 16-year-old boy. âThe ability to do dumb things has become a lot more accessible.â
She approaches the situation by fostering open communication and setting limits on her sonâs phone usage.
âThe understanding is that thereâs no expectation of privacy. If we say âLet us see your phone,â he hands it over,â Hlavka said âI think a lot of it, too, is sitting down and talking about it as a parent.â
Local schools, prosecutors and officers employ a similar method â enlightening teens on the potential consequences of sharing such snapshots.
Soffredine usually gets a call after a parent or teacher catches a teen taking or sending pics. And he finds himself, again, seated with a terrified teen.
âYou never know where those pictures will end up,â Soffredine said. âI think itâs important for students to know, for kids to know, for parents.â
From there, he files a report and passes it along to the prosecutor for a final decision. It works the same in Kalkaska, Perreault said, and as long as officers think counseling can address the case, he passes on taking it further.
But age makes a difference â like in a recently filed Missaukee County case, an 18-year-old faces felony charges for swapping pics with his 15-year-old schoolmate.
Itâs why education is so important, Soffredine said.
âAn 18-year-old (sharing pictures with) a 15-year-old is different â you have an adult in possession of pictures of a 15-year-old,â he said. âThatâs one of the big components, teaching kids at 15 and 16 what can happen when you become an adult.â
Itâs important that teens understand the severity â just because sheâs not filing charges doesnât mean another jurisdiction wouldnât, Moeggenberg said.
Five students faced charges in Oakland County in 2014 after investigators discovered dozens of Rochester High School students shared racy images, the Detroit Free Press reported. And Michigan State Police investigators pursued a near-identical case soon after at Romeo High School, in nearby Macomb County.
And while no charges resulted from investigations into a slew of sexting incidents involving Muskegon middle- and high-schoolers in 2016, it left law enforcement and prosecutors concerned, MLive reported.
The cases spread far beyond Michiganâs borders. Several Iowa teens faced criminal charges last February for sharing nudes, the Des Moines Register reported, including a 15-year-old boy. A month before that, Minnesota prosecutors charged a 14-year-old girl with felony distribution of child pornography for a racy Snapchat she sent to a school crush, according to a release from the American Civil Liberties Union.
A judge later dismissed that case.
The cases have the potential to ruin a teenâs future, and makes Moeggenberg and other prosecutors ask whether the laws need a change.
It has been a topic of discussion among the stateâs prosecuting attorneys, she said.
Moeggenberg suggests a sexting statute or juvenile court program in which teens complete classes and probation without formal charges on their record.
Other states have already done so.
Earlier this year, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a measure preventing sexting minors from facing felonies â though they could still be charged with misdemeanors, the Associated Press reported.
Virginia lawmakers recently made similar changes, preventing teens from branding as a sex offender in consensual sexting cases, the Washington Post reported, and Colorado bumped punishments for teen sexters down to fines and mandatory education programs.
But Smith isnât so quick for a change.
âYou have to be careful when youâre allowing child porn to exist on some level â Iâd much rather see a law with a little teeth applied with common sense, like the Grand Traverse prosecutor is doing,â he said. âAny revisionâs gonna have a lot of loopholes.â
Itâs important to account for gray areas, like when locker room pictures are shared, Smith said. His students learn about the issues in health classes and counselor-led lessons.
But having the talk at home is equally important.
âI feel like too many people rely on the schools to have that conversation,â Hlavka said.
She may be right.
A 2014 Planned Parenthood poll found that most parents have âthe talk,â but they tend to falter with more uncomfortable subjects. A whopping 93 percent of parents feel theyâve done a good job educating their teen and influencing whether they have sex â but just 64 percent of teens back them up.
And it seems sexting is a major source of anxiety when it comes to sitting down for âthe birds and the bees,â according to a 2017 study printed in the Pediatric Clinics of North America journal.
âIt should be education, it should be teaching our kids to be decent human beings,â Hlavka said. âBe smart about it, use your brain.â