15% of Teens are Sexting , 27% Receive them - Study

Dear Parents, 

Memo to moms and dads: It’s a safe bet that your teenagers are using their smartphones to send or get sexually explicit messages, pictures and/or videos.

That’s the eye-opening conclusion of a new study
on teens and sexting that found that nearly 15% of teens said that they send sexts, and 27% of them said they receive them.

Research, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is based on analyzing 39 studies conducted between 1990 and 2016 with a total of about 110,300 young men and women under age 18.

The study also revealed that 12% of teens forward sexts without consent of the original sender. Not that surprisingly, it found that sexting rates increased as the teens got older.

“Sexting is becoming a more common practice among youth,” researchers concluded.

“Therefore, age-specific information on sexting and its potential consequences should regularly be provided as a component of sex education,” the study’s authors wrote.

Lead author Sheri Madigan, an assistant professor at University of Calgary, told Time that sexting is a “double threat” for parents trying to understand the workings of the digital world and their kids.

Sexting comes with many risks, ranging from emotional distress and legal consequences, note authors of a companion report to the study.

“For some teenagers, engaging in sexting may feel like a way to explore their attraction to someone,” the authors wrote.

Instead of sitting kids down for “the talk,” experts recommend that moms and dads start the sexting conversation early and have “several small talks over time.”