Sexting Practices Among Urban Minority Youth

news headlines

email to a friend

printer friendly

Sexting Practices Among Urban Minority Youth

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 04 Mar 2013

Sexting, the use of technology to send or receive sexually explicit messages, photos, or videos, is a relatively new trend and, in many cases, has legal implications. As many as 25-50% of young people may participate in sexting. A close-up look at the sexting practices of a group of urban ethnic minority youths is presented in an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available online on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.*

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% 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% 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.

Original article posted on Medical News Today.
Articles not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Medical News Today publishes the latest health news and health videos for consumers and health professionals. It has a searchable archive of over 100,000 health news articles.

< back to medical news

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Send your press releases to