Sexting research finds reasons why young people choose to send explicit pictures

Almost one in five young adults have shared a sext message with someone it wasn’t sent to, according to a Melbourne university study, with one gender more likely to think it’s ok after a breakup.

Young men send private sexual images as an ego boost while women send them because they think it’s funny, a new study has found.

A Deakin University study of more than 500 young adults reveals 85 per cent had sent an explicit sexual image and 73 per cent had received one.

Almost one in five young adults, aged 21 on average, had shared a sext message with another person it wasn’t sent to, with many believing it wasn’t a big deal.

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Sexting can turn ugly when they’re disseminated without consent.

“Sexting in and of itself is not a bad and evil thing, but when sexts are disseminated without consent, that is very problematic,” Deakin School of Psychology research fellow Elizabeth Clancy said.

Co-author Bianca Klettke said sinister motivations were not the main drivers in most cases. “Overall, the main reason identified was that it was just not considered to be a ‘big deal’,” she said.

“For males another major motivator in disseminating sexts was to improve their social status, while females viewed on-sending the images as a joke or something funny,” she said.

There are four factors that make it more likely for young adults to disseminate sext messages.

Dr Klettke said this was despite the fact most respondents agreed forwarding sexts could have serious negative consequences.

“This nonchalant attitude is in stark contrast to the potentially adverse effects to those who are depicted in the images and those who engage in this potentially illegal behaviour,” she said.

“People don’t think it’s a big deal but it is illegal in many states, including Victoria and South Australia. And we know that it can have detrimental effects on victims, ranging from lost job opportunities to being bullied online.”

Dr Klettke said the only factor that made respondents less likely to distribute sexts was having experienced negative consequences after having sent them in the past.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour, found four factors made it more likely for young adults to disseminate sext messages. They were: being sexually active, having received a disseminated sext in the past, believing it to be normal behaviour and thinking it’s funny.

“Males are more likely than females to agree that sext dissemination can enhance social status and be funny, and that it is acceptable to do after a relationship breakdown,” the article states. “This suggests that gender roles and expectations may be factors in the assessment of dissemination behaviours, whereby males perceive greater social value in dissemination, either as tokens or as ways to achieve popularity, compared to females.”

Why do young people disseminate sexual messages to people they weren’t sent to?

They do not think it was a big deal — 47.8%

As a joke, to be funny — 30.8%

To get attention/praise — 15.9%

To improve social status among peers — 15.9%

Because another person asked them to — 13.8%

Because they felt pressured to do so — 8.5%

To get the recipient in trouble — 6.3%

Source: Computers in Human Behaviour

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Originally published as Sexting research finds reasons why young people choose to send explicit pictures