Sending sexually explicit texts is normal for teens: study
Posted October 7, 2014 4:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Sending sexual text messages is normal for teenagers according to a study published by the online journal Pediatrics.
Jesse Miller with Mediated Reality says it’s to be expected of kids who have lived their entire lives around cell phones.
“They looked at a period of two or three years of survey data trying to see if sexting led to riskier behaviours or if the risky behaviours were beforehand. What they primarily established was that the kids were participating but sexting preceded the sexual behaviour in the majority of their case, which is something that we see traditionally with youth in schools who are participating in sexualized conversations via text messages.”
“This idea of sexting, hyper-sexualized conversation via text messages is a sexual behaviour and, like real life, we have people who venture into sexual behaviours or intimate behaviours very, very gingerly,” Miller explains.
“They are comfortable with hand-holding, not comfortable with kissing. What we see with youth is kids find their comfort zone in certain situations and they feel pressurized in certain situations. The digitized version of this is no different. It could be seen as the first base, but the reality is that we see kids who are comfortable texting. This is the world they live in [and] it would make sense that a conversation around kissing or any type of physical intimacy would become a conversation piece.”
He adds the bigger concern for parents is what the next step is and if it’s photographs and videos.
Miller says it’s important to discuss digital safety with your kids.
