Original article
Sexting, Substance Use, and Sexual Risk Behavior in Young Adults

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.06.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

Cell phone use has become more widespread over the past decade. Young adults are frequently early adopters of new technologies, including cell phones. Most previous research examining sexting, the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive images via text message, has focused on the legal or social consequences of this behavior. The current study focused on the public health implications of sexting by examining associations between sexting, substance use, and sexual risk behavior in youth.

Methods

Young adults (N = 763) completed online questionnaires assessing demographics, cell phone use (e.g., texting, sexting), substance use, and sexual risk behaviors.

Results

Sexting was reported by a substantial minority of participants (44%). Compared with their nonsexting counterparts, participants who engaged in sexting were more likely to report recent substance use and high-risk sexual behaviors, including unprotected sex and sex with multiple partners. Of those who engaged in sexting, a considerable percentage (31.8%) reported having sex with a new partner for the first time after sexting with that person. In multivariate analyses, sexting was associated with high-risk sexual behavior, after accounting for demographic factors, total texting behaviors, and substance use.

Conclusions

Results suggest that sexting is robustly associated with high-risk sexual behavior. Many individuals exchange explicit or provocative photos with long-term sexual partners, but at least some participants in this study were incurring new sexual risks after sexting. Additional research is needed to understand the contexts in which sexting occurs, motivations for sexting, and relationship of sexting to risk behavior.

Section snippets

Methods

A brief survey was administered to students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes at a large public university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. All surveys were completed anonymously online via a password-protected secure survey system. Participants received course credit for participation. The system was set up to award credit automatically while masking participant identities from the researchers. A total of 800 participants completed the survey. Data were collected

Results

Sample demographic information is listed in Table 1. The sample largely consisted of female and white participants. Although each college class was represented, most participants were in their freshmen or sophomore year. The overrepresentation of students in their first 2 years of college is likely because the majority of participants were recruited from Introductory Psychology, a course typically taken early in the college career.

Discussion

Much of the literature on sexting has focused on the legal and social ramifications of this behavior [9], [11], [12]. In contrast to sexting among minors, sexting in young adults does not carry the same legal risks of possessing explicit or provocative photographs of underage individuals (i.e., potentially child pornography), but our results suggest it is associated with health-jeopardizing behaviors, including substance use, sex with multiple partners, unprotected sex, and STIs. In this study,

Acknowledgments

This project was supported, in part, by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant R34 MH073409 (Eric G. Benotsch, principal investigator). NIMH provided funding for research that led to the current project but did not influence the information in this manuscript. All four authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript. No one was paid specifically to write it.

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