Comments: YOUTHS exchanging nude photos of themselves over mobile phones -known as "sexting" - should not face child pornography charges, as some have in the United States, a humanities conference heard.

Peter Cumming, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, presented a paper on children's sexuality at the 78th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences defending the practice as a modern variation on "playing doctor or spin the bottle".

"Technology does change things, and there can be very serious consequences," Professor Cumming said.

"But that obscures the fact that children and young people are sexual beings who have explored their sexuality in all times, and all cultures and all places.

"A distinction has to be made between nudity and child porn," he added.

The annual conference, held this year at Ottawa's Carleton University, brings together 8000 researchers from around the world to discuss the latest social trends.

Sexting – a combination of the words "sex" and "texting" – made headlines earlier this year after students in a dozen US states were charged with child pornography for sharing nude and semi-nude photos with friends and classmates.

In March, three teenage girls sued a Pennsylvania prosecutor who accused them of peddling "child pornography," after a teacher discovered a waist-up image of two girls covered just by a bra, and another image of a girl topless.

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