A combination of first and last names on a web page added up to "Richard Erlich," so a very energetic but not too bright algorithm (?) sent me a Google Alert for a Truthdig.com item, "Buzzkill: Study Exposes Teen Sexting Myth" (5 Dec. 2011).

                  The "Buzzkill" story was based on a NPR blog "Teens Aren't the Rampant Sexting Maniacs We Thought," which itself was based on a scientific survey and hard-data study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the U of New Hampshire (Durham). The upshot is that "concerns about teen sexting" — i.e. "appearing in, creating, or receiving sexual images or videos via cell phone or the Internet" — "may be overblown."

                  A lot overblown.

                  The NPR blog notes that "the vast majority of teenagers aren't sexting at all," and contrasts that with the reports on line of "22% of teen girls and 20% of teen boys" sending "nude or semi-nude photos of themselves over the Internet or their phones."

                  Part of what's going on here is the standard low standards for definition when various media report, well, sexy stories. Another part of the problem is when legislative entities such as state legislatures or the Congress of the United States start stipulating definitions so, say, alcohol and tobacco for a long time weren't recreational drugs, but in some places in recent times your parents' photos of you bare on a bear-skin rug just might have been child pornography.

                  A big part, though, as Nancy Shute on the NPR blog put it, is that "Sexting sounded so plausible, it just had to be true."

                  And why, I will ask, did it sound plausible? And that issue is important for US politics.

                  "Teens" are not "The Rampant Sexting Maniacs We Thought," but we thought that in part because of the stereotype that teens text a lot — and a number of them do — but also because of the stereotype of American teenagers poisoned into stupidity and (self-)destructiveness by raging hormones.

                  Tell me: In all those references to "raging hormones" have you ever seen any numbers? Has anyone who uses the phrase — anyone ever — accompanied it with comparisons between hormone levels over various age groups and populations?

                  Looking back on my own experience, I'd say I probably had major hormone fluctuations for a few months going through puberty but after that a level of horniness depending on whether or not I was getting laid. If American teenagers seem obsessed with sex it might be for the same kind of reason chronically undernourished people seem obsessed with food.

                  Perhaps we've set up a social system where young people are sexually mature for years before they can get regular, socially-approved sex and blaming for a lot of sex-thought is kind of blaming the victims.

                  Perhaps. Or not.

                  More generally and more importantly, "Sexting Maniacs" was plausible because it fit larger patterns of teen bashing that have been around all of my life but which have gotten much worse since the 1970s.

                  In a number of works, Mike Males has documented the proclivity of US adults for "Framing Youth" and creating a "Scapegoat Generation" out of the one or two generations after glorious us.

                  I'll superficially sum up Males's work with: A lot of US teens are douche-bags, but ditto for US adults. In terms of various social pathologies — from satyriasis to suicide — older US teens are a normal US adult population, and frequently doing better than their elders.

                  The political importance of teen bashing has to do with the central issue of politics: divvying up the loot.

                  "The Greatest Generation" got its due after World War II, and they and we War Babies and the Boomers have been collecting ever since.

                  Now if US kids were good and decent, they'd be, on their own, among the deserving poor: even throwing in "trust-fund babies" and counting all their disposable income, teens don't command much wealth.

                  Ronald Reagan's attack on "Welfare Queens" was an early salvo in a much broader and deeper campaign to roll back 1960s program for The Great Society.

                  Whatever the motivations — and "Frankly, my dear[s], I don't give a damn" about most motivations — the effect of teen bashing in the 1970s on has been a social context where it will be possible to roll back programs and undermine policies going back to the G.I. Bill, the New Deal, the Progressive Era, and beyond.

                  If The Kids Are Alright (sic), then we adults should devote money to them for health-care and education, parks, and such. On the other hand, if US teens are sex-obsessed lazy slacker stupid bullying suicidal baby-making parasitic potential predators — then put the money for rich kids into prescription drugs and upscale mental wards, and for poor kids into police and prisons.

                  So, sure, we older folk believed the kids were sexting.

                  It appeals to our prurient interests to think so (and maybe fantasize about it) — and it strongly appeals to our self-interest to very quickly conclude that of course that's just the sort of thing that would be done by those damn, undeserving, little-snot kids.