Exploring which factors contribute to teens’ participation in sexting

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Addressing these issues relating to the operationalization and measurement of sexting warrants focus. Specifically, adolescents who identify as non-heterosexual participate more in this practice, but not in other behaviours. This coincides with previous research reporting how young people from sexual minorities are more likely to engage in sending sexual content (Gámez-Guadix et al., 2017; Ybarra & Mitchell, 2014). However, the aforementioned groups are not significantly more likely to participate in other sexting behaviours more closely related to non-consensual forms (Van-Ouytsel et al., 2019).

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Most adolescents had exchanged sexually explicit pictures on their phones, and the common behavioral narratives remained very similar (Strassberg et al., 2017). Variability in prevalence rates has been partially explained by inconsistencies in definitions and measurement of sexting behaviors [1,13,14]. Previous Australian research has measured the lifetime experience of sexting, as opposed to sexting frequency over a specific period. This measurement approach poses challenges when comparing adolescent with young adult sexting prevalence, as young adults will have had more opportunities to engage in sexting. Another common issue when considering sexting prevalence in Australia is that measures of sending and receiving sexts have frequently been presented as 1 sexting variable. This creates challenges in comparing sexting prevalence and correlates between studies, either nationally or internationally.

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• Sexting is certainly one form of communication in which parents find it hard to imagine their own child engaging.
• For example, a friend’s phone could be accessed by a sibling or someone they are dating.
• Although the definition of sexting varies, it refers to the sending, receiving, or forwarding of sexually explicit images, videos, or messages [2].

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She is Professor of Social Innovation and Chair of the Centre for Mental Health at Swinburne University and Adjunct Professor of Social Impact and Entrepreneurship at RMIT. As sexting among young people is now more widespread, countries such as the United Kingdom have highlighted that a harm minimization approach, rather than an abstinence approach, may be the most appropriate path forward [62]. There have been calls in Australia to shift the sexting conversation, from ones focused predominantly on risk and prevention to one that focuses on ethics, respect, and responsibility [63]. The importance of educating young people about what it means to be an ethical user and consumer of technology is underscored [64].

One such example is a study by Dake, Price, Maziarz & Ward [31] who conducted research based on 1289 middle school and high school students. Their results showed that being depressed, having contemplated or attempted suicide in the past year, or having been cyber or indirectly bullied were significantly correlated with sexting. Similarly, Van Ouytsel et al. [35] found a significant relation between teen sexting and depressive symptoms.

Gámez-Guadix and de Santisteban [43] argue that depressive symptoms and low self-esteem can predict sexting over time because sexting might be a way for teens to feel considered and desired. Moreover, they argued that adolescents with depressive symptoms might have fewer coping skills when pressured by peers to engage in sexting, which would explain why teenagers who sexts reported more depressive symptoms than those who do not. The practice of creating and sharing sexual images via technological devices, known as sexting, has received crescent attention in the past years, especially due to the increase of adolescent engagement in this behavior. Although consensual sexting is not prima facie a crime, as some research has shown, it has the potential to be a risky behavior, and a threshold to get exposure to dangerous kinds of victimization as sextortion, online grooming or cyberbullying. In this context, teenagers represent a vulnerable group due to their limited ability of self-regulation, their high susceptibility to peer pressure, their technophilia, and their growing sexual curiosity.

Lately, sexual language and slang has been evolving extra quickly because of the different rules social media platforms have for certain words. For example, on TikTok, posts that feature the word “sex” may get taken down. To prevent this from happening, users may use an alternate spelling like “seggs” to get past it. Eventually, once you start seeing this term enough, it becomes interchangeable with “sex.” Sexting text meanings can vary, but here’s a list of current popular ones.

• Concerns about this phenomenon have grown, and it has attracted considerable attention from researchers, families, teachers, schools, and the media (Anastassiou, 2017; Gewirtz-Meydan et al., 2018; Van Ouytsel et al., 2015).
• You can break it up into multiple messages, or you can send it as one long message, it’s up to you.
• If the juvenile is a recipient and deletes or reports the material he or she has received, they have not violated the law and will not be penalized.

Sexts count as “unsolicited” when they are sent to a person who has not asked for them and has little reason to expect them. Although sexting within a relationship is more common, unsolicited sexts are by no means rare. In a 2017 study of women ages 18-29, over half of respondents said they had been sent lewd images online. Men can also receive unsolicited sexts, but due to cultural stereotypes around male desire, they are less likely to report these sexts as harassment. Some people argue such prosecutions serve as an example of laws not keeping up with technology, as a photo shared between a consenting couple is not an exploitative act.