Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

1 in 10 Teens Have Sexted, Many See Porn by 6th Grade

[Editor note: it's been over three years since I've seen any new study data on teen sexting, and I was beginning to wonder if it was a case of culture creep, where a behavior that was once concerning and well-covered in research had lost researchers' interest as the culture no longer considers the behavior outside of the accepted norms. So, I'm glad to see the release of an updated study on sexting, finally. Spoiler alert: sexting and (no surprise) pornography are still challenging issues that today's teenagers face.]

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

A high number of preteens and teens in the United States have viewed pornography and many have also sent or received nude or seminude photos -- sexting -- over their smartphones, a new study reveals.

"The prevalence rates we found in this study suggest that school counselors must be prepared to talk about sexting and pornography use with students, and to change the narrative about these behaviors," said Amanda Giordano, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Georgia Early College of Education, in Athens.

"It's important that students know that sending a sext is not a new requirement for romantic relationships and that pornography does not reflect expectations for sexual activity," Giordano added in a university news release.

For the study, the researchers questioned 350 students, aged 12 to 17 years. The investigators found that 15% had sent a sext to someone. About 25% had ever received a sext. About 25% had ever been asked to send a sext. About 12% said they had felt pressure by someone to send a sext in the past year.

This pressure was concerning because of the unintended consequences of sexting, such as having the picture forwarded to others, put online or used as a form of blackmail to get the person to meet other demands, the researchers said.

About 50% of adolescents said they had been exposed to pornography. On average, kids were exposed to pornography for the first time at age 11.5 — typically the age of American 6th graders and younger than previous studies have suggested.

Increased smartphone access among teens and the ease of finding free internet pornography likely drove that age drop, Giordano said.

More than one in three of the participants said they had viewed pornography at least once in the previous year. And 8% of the students said they watched pornography about every day.

Pornography use was significantly more common among males, the study found.

The study was published online recently in Professional School Counseling.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/sexting-2658832421.html

Sharing Nudes Doubled Among Pre-Teens in 2020

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted by PRNewswire.

New research from Thorn, a technology non-profit dedicated to defending children from online sexual exploitation, found that twice as many children between the ages of 9 and 12 reported sending nudes or other Self-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material (SG-CSAM) in 2020 than in 2019. The research, "Self-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material: Youth Attitudes and Experiences in 2020," is one of the few studies of its kind monitoring changes in minors' behaviors and attitudes related to SG-CSAM.

Among the findings from the study:

• More kids reported sharing nudes, and LGBTQ+ youth were nearly 3 times as likely to share their own SG-CSAM versus their non LGBTQ+ peers.
• There is an increasing perception of normalcy around sharing nudes among pre-teen boys in particular, with 1 in 4 boys saying the behavior is "normal."
• The use of secondary accounts (such as but not limited to "finstas") made to keep content private, was up among 9-12-year-olds.
• Among respondents between the ages of 9 and 17 who reported sharing nudes, 50% reported sending nudes to someone they had never met in real life, and 41% believed they were sending the images to an adult.

"The pandemic has had a profound effect on the lives of children, who are now spending even more time online, and often with less supervision," said Julie Cordua, CEO of Thorn. "Our tracking of kids' changing attitudes and behaviors towards sharing sexually explicit material shows how greater access to technology comes with greater risks, and why parents and caregivers need to be prepared to equip young people with the tools and knowledge to be safe and healthy on the Internet. It has never been more urgent that we talk with our kids about online safety."

Thorn's full report "Self-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material: Youth Attitudes and Experiences in 2020" can be viewed online here.

Source: PRNewswire
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/report-sharing-nudes-doubled-among-pre-teens-in-2020-301423437.html

Nationwide Study on Teen 'Sexting' Has Good News, Bad News

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on MedicalXpress.

The good news is that adolescent "sexting" is not at epidemic levels as reported in some media headlines. The bad news is that it also has not decreased despite preventive efforts by educators and others. Most commonly, the term sexting has been used to describe incidents where teenagers take nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves and exchange that content via text or private social media messages. While intended to be shared with trusted romantic partners, these images also can find their way into the hands of others.

While national studies have contributed to the understanding of sexting behavior among minors, the prevalence estimates are dated (prior to January 2011), and therefore, little is known about its frequency and scope on a national level in recent years.

A new study by researchers at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire is providing a much-needed update to what is currently known about the nature and extent of sexting among youth today.

The study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, examined prevalence rates for sending and receiving sexually explicit images or video among a nationally-representative sample of 5,593 American middle and high school students (ages 12 to 17). Researchers focused only on explicit images and videos (as some previous studies have conflated the picture by also including explicit texts) in order to isolate those experiences that have the greatest potential for problematic outcomes.

Results show that across all sociodemographic variables explored, the vast majority of students were not participating in sexting. Approximately 14 percent of middle and high school students had received a sexually explicit image from a boyfriend or girlfriend, while 13.6 percent said they received such an image from someone who was not a current romantic partner. About 11 percent of students reported sending a sext to a boyfriend or girlfriend.

"Findings from our study provide a very important message for youth who may believe media headlines that suggest sexting is more widespread than it actually is," said Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice within FAU's College for Design and Social Inquiry and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, who co-authored the study with Justin Patchin, Ph.D., a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. "Showing adolescents clear evidence that a relatively small proportion of teens engage in sexting could actually result in decreased overall participation since it underscores that it is not as normal, commonplace, or widespread as they might believe."

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-07-nationwide-teen-sexting-good-news.html

Teen Sexting Can Be Warning Sign of Other Risky Behaviors

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on HealthDay.

Parents who find a sex-based text on their teenager's phone should be on the lookout for other problems in their child's life, a new evidence review suggests.

Teens who share sexually explicit images are much more likely to be involved in other troubling activities, including unsafe sex, alcohol and drugs.

"The kids who are sexting are engaging in a lot of other risky behaviors," said senior researcher Sheri Madigan, a child development expert from the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

"We found that youths who were sexting were approximately four times more likely to be also engaging in sexual intercourse, five times more likely to have multiple sexual partners, and half as likely to be using contraception," she continued.

Also, sexting teens were:

• Twice as likely to have symptoms of depression and anxiety.
• Two and a half times more likely to be smoking or engaging in delinquent behaviors like stealing or vandalism.
• More than three times as likely to be using alcohol or drugs.

But the findings are particularly troubling in light of a 2018 study led by Madigan that found 1 out of 4 teens is receiving sexts, and 1 out of 7 is sending them.

Results from the new review line up with what is already known about teens and sexting, said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center at Florida Atlantic University.

"Many risky behaviors among youth tend to occur in a constellation," he said. "If a teen experiments with one risky behavior, that teen typically has experience with other risky behaviors."

For this study, Madigan and her colleagues collected and combined data from 23 previous studies on sexting, involving nearly 42,000 teenagers.

They found significant links between sexting and sexual activity, risky sexual behavior, symptoms of mood disorders, drug and alcohol use, smoking and delinquency.

Further, they found that associations between sexting and either sexual behavior or mood disorders were stronger in younger adolescents, compared to those in their later teens.

It's not clear whether sexting leads to these behaviors, or whether kids inclined to take risks are also more likely to sext, the researchers added. They noted the findings could not prove causation; it only showed an association.

It's very possible that sexting is a gateway that could lead to more experimentation with sex, Madigan said.

"I think sometimes sexting is an initiation into greater sexual behavior," she said. "Sometimes kids use sexting as a starting point. People have called it the modern-day version of flirting."

The study was published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/adolescents-and-teen-health-news-719/teen-sexting-can-be-warning-sign-of-other-risky-behaviors-747502.html

Many Teens Are 'Sextortion' Targets

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on HealthDay.

Parents of teens can add "sextortion" to the list of things to worry about, because a new study shows that 5 percent of teenagers are targets of this cybercrime.

Another 3 percent of teens have likely done it to others, the study authors added.

Sextortion is threatening to share sexually explicit photos without consent if a person doesn't agree to certain demands, such as sexual favors or money.

Probably the most well-known case of sextortion was Canadian teenager Amanda Todd. She was only 12 years old when someone she met online talked her into lifting up her shirt in front of a web cam.

It turned out that that person wasn't another teen. He was a grown man, and he threatened to share the images of her breasts at her school if she didn't put on another sexual show for him. She refused and he followed through on his threat.

In fact, he followed her online and shared the images again when she changed schools. He tortured her so relentlessly, and recruited others to do so as well, that she ended up taking her own life just before her 16th birthday.

"Some kids make mistakes, and today the consequences can be pretty major and can follow them and affect them deeply psychologically and socially," said study author Sameer Hinduja.

"Teens in first love believe they'll be together forever, and don't want to do anything to ruin the relationship," he explained.

Hinduja is a professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter.

Hinduja said he hasn't seen a specific sextortion law, but that charges for these behaviors can be filed under existing laws, such as laws on blackmail and extortion.

Dr. Richard Catanzaro, chairman of psychiatry at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y., said, "Sextortion is just the latest form of online predation. All predators work by preying on people who feel isolated and, because they think there is no recourse, are forced to submit."

The study included a nationally representative sample of more than 5,500 middle and high school students aged 12 to 17.

Males were much more likely to have participated in sextortion than females -- either as a victim or the perpetrator.

Teens who identified as non-heterosexual were more than twice as likely to be the victim of sextortion. This finding is similar to other research that shows gay and transgender children are more likely to be involved in online abuse.

Fifteen appears to be the most common age to be involved in sextortion, the new study found.

One finding parents may find particularly alarming is that teens being victimized by sextortion attempts usually know the person trying to take advantage of them. They may have been a romantic partner or a friend. It's unusual for someone to be targeted by a stranger, the researchers said.

The findings were published online recently in the journal Sexual Abuse.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/children-and-teen-sex-news-605/many-teens-are-sextortion-targets-738698.html

Teen Sexting Update: 27 Percent Have Received, 15 Percent Have Sent

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on HealthDay.

About 15 percent of teenagers say they've shared a sexually explicit image or video of themselves over the internet or via phone messaging, researchers say.

And nearly twice as many -- about 27 percent -- said they've received a "sext," either from the original sender or from someone passing it along, according to a review of 39 prior studies.

Sexting between teenagers is increasing with the widespread use of camera-equipped smartphones and computers, said Sheri Madigan, lead researcher of the new report.

Madigan said she doesn't find the study results surprising, given that 2 out of every 5 high school students engage in sexual intercourse and half of adults report that they've sexted.

"I think 15 percent of youths reporting that they're sexting isn't as surprising when you think about those other statistics," said Madigan, an assistant professor of psychology with the University of Calgary in Canada.

What's more surprising and concerning, she said, is that nearly as many teens say they've shared a sext that wasn't theirs.

"About 12 to 13 percent of kids are reporting they have forwarded on a sext to another person without consent of the sender," Madigan said. "They're forwarding on other people's sexually explicit images or videos without consent."

Teenagers don't appear to grasp the consequences of sexting, psychology experts said.

For example, they don't realize that the photos they share could wind up in others' hands, where they might be used to threaten or blackmail, Madigan said.

The 39 sexting studies that Madigan's team analyzed were conducted between 2009 and 2016. Twenty-two were done in the the United States, 12 in Europe, 2 in Australia, and 1 each in Canada, South Africa and South Korea.

"Sexting has increased over that time span, from 2009 to 2016, so it's on the rise," Madigan said.

Teens are more likely to sext as they age, the researchers found, and are more likely to use a mobile device than a computer to share their explicit self-images.

Boys and girls were equally likely to sext, Madigan said.

The new study appears Feb. 26 in JAMA Pediatrics.

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/pregnancy-information-29/love-sex-and-relationship-health-news-452/15-percent-of-teens-say-they-ve-sexted-731441.html

Snapchat: 150 Million Images Sent Each Day

Apparently, people love Snapchat, the messaging service with pics that disappear moments after you’ve receive them. According to co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, people are sending about 150 million photos a day.

Instagram, perhaps Snapchat’s closest competitor, is officially way, way behind, with an estimated 40 million new pics uploaded each day. While it’s true that Instagram’s shots are designed to stay on the site (at least until they’re manually taken down), they’re down to a little more than a fifth of Snapchat’s activity, when last quarter they were about dead even.

The idea of Snapchat is, true to its logo, downright spooky, an app that tells your kids they can do whatever they want because a smartphone – a tool which has proven to do plenty of suspect things with your data – promises not to save that picture.” But sending a picture that self destructs doesn’t save you from the Internet’s virality. Even with the app’s tracker-blocking design, people are taking screenshots of the pictures before they self-destruct.

“Since young people are the driving force behind Snapchat… People under 18 may be swapping images that are legally classified as child pornography, and they may be doing it with less trepidation than they would if they were using SMS, since they assume the person they’re sending the photo to won’t screenshot their body,” wrote Digital Trends Kate Knibbs in December.

Snapchat lets you select how long you want your pic to appear for, but as far as screencaps [taking screenshots] are concerned, “Any time at all,” is already too long.

Source: Digital Trends
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/150-million-snaps-sent-a-day-on-snapchat/

Study: Teen Boys Forward More Sexts Than Girls

A new study, published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, finds that teen boys were almost twice as likely as teen girls to have forwarded a received sext.

Researchers surveyed 1,000 black and Latino 10th graders in a southeast Texas school district about their sexting habits. Among black teens, 27 percent of girls and 23 percent of boys said they had snapped a nude photo of themselves and passed it along. Among Latino teens, 20 percent of boys and 17 percent of girls had done the same.

Although this study focused on minority teens, researchers said their sexting numbers lined up with rates recorded among “white private high school students” as well as more diverse groups of minors.

It was in the distribution of these images that boys and girls’ behavior begins to diverge. When an explicit photograph hits their phones, the teen boys in the study were almost twice as likely as the teen girls to have forwarded it beyond its intended audience. And boys were much more likely than girls to have received one of these errant sexts from an oversharing peer.

Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/03/04/sexting_statistics_teen_boys_and_girls_sext_in_equal_numbers_but_boys_forward.html

Another Study Links 'Sexting' to Sexual Activity in Teens

A new study of Dutch teens finds that few of them frequently engage in risky online activity related to sex, such as sending naked photos to strangers and searching for sex partners, but those who do are more prone to have casual sex in real life.

"There seems to be a relationship between engagement in online and offline sexual risk behavior," said study author Susanne Baumgartner, a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam. "Adolescents who engaged in offline sexual risk behavior were also likely to engage in online sexual risk behavior."

The authors of the new study wanted to understand how "risky" sexual behavior online (talking with strangers about sex on the Internet, searching for someone to have sex with and sexting to strangers) is related to "risky" sexual behavior offline (having casual sex).

Baumgartner's team surveyed over 1,700 Dutch adolescents aged 12 to 18. Those at highest risk of risky behavior online "were less satisfied with their lives, had higher levels of sensation-seeking . . . and were lower educated," the study authors found.

The researchers suggested that kids at higher risk deserve more attention in terms of preventing risky sexual activity.

Jeff Temple, a psychologist and an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch who studies teenage sexuality, said the study provides "more evidence that the boundary that separates offline and online lives is becoming increasingly blurred." Parents should pay attention, Temple noted, because if a teen is sexting, he or she may also be engaging in risky sexual activity in the real world.

The study appeared online Nov. 5 and in the December print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Source: MedlinePlus
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_131178.html

Sexting Again Linked to Risky Sex Among Teens

One out of every seven Los Angeles high schoolers with a cell phone has sent a sexually-explicit text message or photo, according to results of a 2011 survey that also found "sexters" more likely to engage in risky sex behaviors.

In the new study, the LA teens who had sent racy texts were seven times more likely to be sexually active than those who said they'd never sexted.

The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, are based on 1,839 students in Los Angeles high schools, most of whom were Latino. Three-quarters of them owned a cell phone that they used regularly.

A study of Houston, Texas, high schoolers out earlier this summer found one in four teens had sent a naked photo of themselves through text message or email, and those kids were also much more likely to be having risky sex.

Jeff Temple, a psychologist and women's health researcher from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who worked on the Houston study, found that girls in particular who'd sent naked photos were more likely to engage in risky sex, to have had multiple recent sex partners or to use alcohol and drugs before sex. "Sexting appears to be a reflection or an indication of actual sexual behavior," Temple said. "What they're doing in their offline lives is what they're doing in their online lives."

Eric Rice, a social network researcher from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who led the new study, agreed that this was the most important finding to take away from both studies. "That may be a no-brainer to some parents, but it may be alarming to others," he said.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/17/us-sexting-again-linked-to-risky-sex-amo-idUSBRE88G0G220120917