Being pressured isn't always the problem. Seduction is a bigger issue. My ex-girlfriend had an affair with a teacher when she was 15, he 23. (You cited 16, but

Being pressured isn't always the problem. Seduction is a bigger issue. My ex-girlfriend had an affair with a teacher when she was 15, he 23. (You cited 16, but 15 is fairly close to that boundary.) It was entirely voluntary, and when I talked to her about it she got very indignant: in her mind, her consent was all that was necessary, and if it was voluntary then it was all right. The problem, as my parents explained to me when I was younger, isn't that you're not physically ready, because after adolescence starts you're physically primed for sex. The problem is that before you've matured to a certain degree, you're not mentally ready to handle hormones, and while I think that's completely fine between, say, two high school kids who lust after one another, once you're in your 20s and you realize that these younger children are easily taken advantage of, then your using that is despicable. While I think better sex ed would help a lot, I agree with the current age of consent in the U.S. Eighteen means you're old enough not to be taken in by somebody as easily. The rules about child porn need to be changed, because becoming a sex offender over "sexting" is stupid, but the rules about having sex make logical sense to me.