Got kids? Think they’re too sensible to send nude or seminude pictures of themselves to their buddies?
Think again.
In the section “Sexting 101 – Guide for Parents,” on the SafetyWeb site, sexting is defined as “the act of sending a sexually suggestive or explicit text message (AKA texting, SMS, MMS) to someone else. In most instances, the intended recipient is a current or prospective boyfriend or girlfriend. These messages may vary from simple text, to photos, or even short videos sent from a mobile phone to either another phone and/or email account.”
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy sponsored a survey in 2008 in which a nonrandom but representative sample of “…1,280 respondents – 653 teens (ages 13-19) and 627 young adults (ages
20-26)….” responded to questions about sexting. The terms in the questions were defined for every respondent as follows quoted exactly from page 5 of the report – page 6 in the PDF:
• Sexually suggestive pictures/video: semi-nude or nude personal pictures/video taken of oneself and not found on the Internet, or received from a stranger (like spam), etc.
• Sexually suggestive messages: sexually suggestive written personal texts, emails IMs, etc. — and not those you might receive from a stranger (like spam), etc.
• Messages only refers to those written electronically (in emails, texts, IMs, etc.) — and pictures/video only refers to those captured electronically (on a cellphone or digital camera/camcorder), etc.
Respondents were told, “This survey will include questions about ‘sexy messages and pictures’ (like suggestive pictures sent to a boyfriend/girlfriend, for example) – and will require you to answer them in order to finish. If you are not comfortable sharing your opinions about that, then we encourage you to stop the survey now.” They were asked, “Would you like to continue?”
The key results for the entire sample including 95% confidence limits relating to sending sexually suggestive messages and photos electronically were as follows (based on detailed tables on report page 11):
• 48% (45-51%) had “Sent a sexually suggestive message to someone (email, IM, text, etc.)”
• 40% (37-43%) had “Had a sexually suggestive message (originally meant to be private) shared with [them]”
• 26% (24-28%) had “Sent a nude or semi-nude picture/video (of [themselves]) to someone (via email, cellphone, etc.)”
• 30% (27-33%) “Had a nude or semi-nude picture/video (originally meant to be private) shared with [them]”
I added the 95% confidence intervals because I can’t stand publishing isolated percentages. These limits indicate ranges for which we can assert that there is a 95% probability that the range includes the true (parametric) proportion in the population. The calculation is loose, being based on what the confidence intervals would be if the percentages arose from a random sample of size 1,280. We can use them as a rough guide of the reliability of the sample proportions.
In the next part of this pair of columns, I’ll look at the consequences of sexting and some of the possible explanations of why youngsters may get involved in it.
