Sexting

Open Access: No.

Abstract

What proportion of minors who engage in sexting find themselves involved in an episode of image abuse? The data come from a US nationally representative sample of 2639 respondents aged 18–28 reporting about experiences before the age of 18, of whom 23% had engaged in sexting as minors. Among those who sexted the rate of image abuse was 37%, a risk ratio of 13.2 compared to those who did not engage in sexting. For females who sexted the victimization rate was particularly high, but sexting increased risk for females and males. Among the minors who only sexted occasionally (vs those who sexted frequently) the rate of abuse was still high (35%) and the reduction in risk modest. When we controlled for other background and demographic risk factors like adversities and prior sexual abuse, it did not substantially reduce the large risk entailed with sexting. Various harm reduction strategies may be needed to supplement messages about dangers and risks.

Relevance

Almost one-quarter of the sample (23.3%) had engaged in sexting before the age of 18. The rate of image victimization for the sexters was 37.2%; for non-sexters it was 2.8%. Females were four times more likely to be victimized (13.65 vs. 4.03%).

“The findings from this study suggest that sexting – the sharing of self-made sexual images – was very risky. Over one third of those youth who shared such self-images reported an abusive image episode… . Females had substantially higher image abuse risk than males.”

Citation

Finkelhor, D., Sutton, S., Turner, H., & Colburn, D. (2024). How Risky is Online Sexting by Minors? Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 33(2), 169–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2024.2324838