Photos on the internet tend to have a long life. I think it is the permanence of these photos and videos that make it worse. In the old days you could just go to college and leave your high school life behind. Now Google is forever.
This is the problem I think; you simply don't want your new employer to find pics of you passed out naked or worse. One of my friends from highschool was very promiscuis then; she slept with just about everyone and was always drunk / naked at parties. She had sex in public places. She would've been on the internet these days in pics/vids. Now she is a very highly paid manager and has a family; I don't think that would work that way if her boss found pics and videos of her smeared all over the web, not to mention her boy friend whom she met years after this when she cleaned up her act. Sure everyone knew who she was and what she did, but taking picture? You needed some kind of big machine for that and, worse, you needed to find some photographer outlet to develop it who did NOT know her, her parents, you, your parents. That was not that simple in my town. And polaroid? We never heard of that until much later; I never saw one unless it was in US tv shows.
"if there are any photos on the internet that will go away it's these, if for no other reason, because they're illegal."
I doubt it; the existence of an FBI database of known child abuse photos suggests that long after these images are identified, they continue to be shared online. Given how many amateur porn websites there are, and how older teenagers can easily pass for adults (thus reducing the likelihood that whatever moderators such websites have will reject the photos), it is almost certain that such photos will continue to be available online long after the girls/boys are adults and have forgotten the whole episode.
I think this argument is a red herring, though. The problem as I see it is not what happens when the photos are out there, the problem is that our notion of sex ed still comes out of the 1950s. We teach children about sex when they are old enough that there is a non-trivial probability they already started having sex. We limit sex ed to information about STIs and a reminder to use a condom (but in New York City, we were not actually shown how to apply one).
We need to update our approach to sex ed to reflect the realities of this century. First of all, children should start receiving some amount of sex ed long before they start having sex; clearly it will need to be explained in a way that is age-appropriate, but we cannot continue to put it off. Second, we must include a discussion about modern technology as it relates to sex -- that includes cameras, computers, and the Internet; if we know that teenagers are doing this, we need to explain to them how to be responsible (in the same way that we say, "use a condom because some STIs last forever," we should be saying, "don't let photos or videos be taken, because they last on the Internet forever"). We need to be frank with kids about these issues, or else they are just going to run wild and "learn" from their friends (who will almost always give them bad advice, betray them, or otherwise "do it wrong").
Yes, technology changes things. That is not a surprise. That is not shocking. If we fail to adapt to those changes, we'll just wind up in the same position as the RIAA and MPAA: crying, whining, and pushing for destructive laws.
True, they may not disappear completely, but they definitely get filtered out over time. And imagine you're 25 years old and someone wants to bring up old, explicit photos of you at age 15...they would immediately open themselves up to some very serious criminal charges. So I would agree that these are likely to more or less fade away into the recesses of the internet.
