[ad_1]
A new study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics shows that teenagers are sending and receiving more sexually explicit text messages than previously thought.
The study, “Prevalence of Multiple Forms of Sexting Behavior Among Youth,” examined the “sexting” habits of teens and found there has been an increase in the trend since the first study was conducted in 2009 by the Pew Research Center.
Sexting is defined as “the sharing of sexually explicit images and videos of oneself through the internet or electronic devices, such as smartphones,” Sheri Madigan, one of the study’s co-authors, told the Chicago Tribune. It does not include sending someone an explicit image obtained from an adult website.
The study, a meta-analysis of 39 previous studies, included 110,380 participants ages 12 to 18. It found almost 15 percent of teens had sent a sext and about 27 percent had received one. It also found 12 percent of teens had forwarded a sext without permission from the original sender and about 8 percent had received a sext without consent.
Researchers looked at sexting via mobile devices and computers and found there is a higher prevalence on mobile devices, which they said is not surprising considering “phones are a portable, convenient technology that allows for immediate, rapid, and seemingly private communication.”
The study found no gender differences — boys and girls sext at about the same rate. However, sexting is more common among older teens.
“It has been suggested that female youth and young adults may be more likely to sext due to perceived pressure by male peers to send nude images. Indeed, media portrayals of sexting often implicate adolescent girls as the senders of naked photographs and adolescent boys as the requesters,” the study said. “However, this popular belief and empirical proposition were not supported by the present meta-analysis, which found no significant sex differences in the rate of sending or receiving sexts.”
With the rise of sexting and possible legal implications of non consensual sexting, researchers believe a crucial “area of future inquiry will be the identification of variables associated with non consensual sexting, as well as the evaluation of the effectiveness of educational campaigns and legal policies striving to mitigate non consensual sexting in youth.”
Madigan and her co-author, Jeff Temple, a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch suggest parents be proactive and have open and frequent discussions with their children about sexuality, online behavior and peer pressure.
“It’s a double threat for parents because they have to talk about sex and the digital world, and those can be very intimidating topics,” Madigan told the Tribune.
If a parent does find their child sexting, it’s important that the parents gain context. Find out who they’re sexting and what they’re relationship is, researchers advise, and try to stay calm.
“If you find out your child is sexting, understand it’s a fairly normative behavior; it doesn’t mean your kid is deviant or in a life of crime,” Temple told the Tribune. “It means they’re interested in their sexuality and sex.”
[ad_2]
Source link
