Urban Youth Involved in Sexting

Around 30 percent of youth today may be involved in sexting, suggests a study. In fact, sexting is relatively common among ethnic minority youth, according to Melissa Fleschler Peskin, PhD and coauthors, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health.

They calculated the prevalence of sexting based on data collected from more than 1,000 tenth graders from a large urban school district. They reported that 20 percent of students reported sending a nude or semi-nude picture or video or a sexual text message-any one of these considered a "sext"-and more than 30 percent reported receiving a sext.

Additional, sexts were often shared with unintended recipients, and one-third of the youths reported sharing or receiving sexts that were meant to be private.

"In the relatively new discipline of cyberpsychology, we seek to explore the many challenges of current behavior that social networking potentiates. Certainly, such research enables us to better prepare for the behavioral changes that advances in Internet technology will continue to bring," says Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCIA, Editor-in-Chief of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, from the Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, CA.

The study has been published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Source-ANI