Sexting Definition, Prevalence, & Exploitation

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And finally, you can always adjust the level of explicitness, at least to start. Dirty talk doesn’t have to be X-rated to be sexy, and sometimes playing coy is actually more fun. For example, you could say, “Wait until you see what I’ve got on underneath my work clothes,” and leave it at that. But before you figure out what to say to initiate a sexy conversation, it may be helpful to know that sexting is incredibly common.

Send Them Naughty, Teasing Texts

Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of the Terms of Use, Supplemental Terms, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and Consumer Health Data Notice. Sexts can be downloaded and copied easily by each person who sees them, Thus, a sext is nearly impossible to erase once it has been sent. A single photo can cause harm years after the fact, sabotaging careers or relationships when it resurfaces in the public eye. Senders often face copious amounts of victim-blaming, which itself can be quite traumatic. When all parties are willing participants, sexting can be a harmless way to connect with a long-distance partner or engage in foreplay. However, sexting can be stressful or even traumatic when it is coerced.

Appendix: General information on the articles included

Furthermore, this might be linked to the type of sexting behavior being analyzed. The question of is sexting a sex crime amongst adults in Arizona varies from case to case because the sexting act can be linked to other offenses, which then can make sexting a crime. Generally speaking, sexting between two consenting adults is not a crime in the State of Arizona.

• “It’s OK to tell someone to tone it down or for you to change your mind regarding how much you would like to engage in such an act,” sex therapist Patricia Lamas Alvarez, LCSW, tells mbg.
• Lastly, while out of the scope of the present study, future research should consider examining how the associations between sexting and psychosocial health may differ by gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexuality, and other demographic factors.
• Rachael Pace inspires with motivational articles on loving partnerships.
• The overall aim of our study was to advance knowledge of the emotional impact behind sexting, shedding light not only on the emotional impact of this phenomenon among young involved individuals, but also on the influence that the need for popularity has on sexting involvement.

Why Do Teens Sext?

By 2014, there was a significant increase in two-way sexting—with approximately 2 in 5 young people reporting that they had sent and received sexts. In the Australian sexting literature, this is the only known research to report on the prevalence of young people engaging in two-way sexting, so no direct comparisons can be made. When considering why so many young people are two-way sexting, research has reported that most young people share sexts within a dating relationship [17,34]. Therefore, it is possible that this finding reflects the reciprocal nature of sexting between sexual or presexual partners.

Thus, the practices could be evidence based, promoting continuous improvement and adapting the strategies to the intervened context. The gender dynamics that arise from this phenomenon are also noteworthy. Differences in the roles of sexting are observed, and the different practices do not seem to affect boys and girls in the same way. Boys are perceived as those who ask for photographs, whereas girls are seen as those responsible for setting the boundaries (Symons et al., 2018). Univariate descriptive and frequency statistics were used to describe all demographic, clinical, and internet use items.

Importantly, the results are examined using 4 sexting categories to include nonsexters, receivers of sexts, senders of sexts, and two-way sexters, which is recommended as best practice when conceptualizing sexting [17]. This study extends the Australian literature to provide sexting prevalence and correlates among young Australians using the results from the 2012 and 2014 Young and Well National Surveys, which include representative and random samples of 1400 young people aged 16 to 25 years. Lastly, sexting normalisation increases the likelihood of practicing all sexting behaviours, except sending. This study reports considerable prevalence rates across the different sexting behaviours; however, they do not allow them to be considered as normative practices (Van-Ouytsel et al., 2015). Although sexting is becoming increasingly more normalised (Stanley et al., 2018), this would support the theory that adolescents perceive certain norms of sexting but do not necessarily apply them to themselves (Symons et al., 2018). These beliefs about how normalised sexting is may influence willingness to participate (Lippman & Campbell, 2014).

The legal sanctions against sexting among consenting minors are not equitable with the act of sexting. For example, Cormega Copening faced felony charges for consensually exchanging nude photographs with his girlfriend. If the charges had not been dropped, Copening would have had to register as a sex offender.

Teenage boys and girls who engaged in sexting behaviors showed a higher risk of reporting suicidal thoughts even after controlling for cyber victimization and depression [28]. One explanation for this relationship has been suggested by Medrano et al. [28], who proposed that the relationship between sexting behaviors and depressive symptoms may be partially mediated by cyber-victimization. The exchange of intimate photos or videos increases the risk of being victimized, not only by the direct sender of the image-based sexual content but by anyone who might have access to it, as teens might find themselves involuntarily exposed to unwanted sexual content [28].

Another facilitating factor is the willingness to sext, that is the extent to which teens have a willingness, drive or impulse to engage in sexting. The willingness to engage in a behavior refers to the likelihood with which people think they would engage in a behavior when the situation lends itself to this behavior (van Oosten & Vandenbosch, 2017). Besides, the willingness to engage in this kind of behavior, regardless of the specific reasons for each, has been shown to be a good predictor of risky behavior (Gerrard et al., 2008, Gibbons and Gerrard, 1995). The literature shows there are associations between sexting, health problems and psychosocial conditions (Van Ouytsel, Walrave, Ponnet, & Heirman, 2015). Sexting has been related to other phenomena such as blackmail, bullying, cyberbullying and extortion (Kopecký, 2015, Strassberg et al., 2013).