Sexting gets a lot of negative press. This week, Channel 4’s documentary on Revenge Porn highlighted the rise in the malicious activity of unhappy ex’s sharing your intimate details with er, well everyone. For those who don’t know, sending a sext or sexting is defined as the sending or receiving of sexually suggestive or explicit content via text message, primarily using a mobile phone or mobile device.
But new research has proved that ‘sexting’ is far more common than first thought, according to American Psychological Association’s 123rd Annual Convention, who conducted a study to investigate the negative or positive role sexting can play in relationships.
The study surveyed adults aged from 18-82 and found that a whooping 8 out of 10 adults (80 per cent) admitted to regularly sexting. Just over half of the participants were women.
Nearly 75 percent of those surveyed admitted to sexting while in a committed relationship and 43 percent said they sexted as part of a casual relationship. The researchers found that the greater the levels of sexting, the greater the sexual satisfaction for those in a relationship.
Interestingly, single participants had significantly lower overall scores for sexual satisfaction gained from sexting.
The survey also studied the attitudes towards sexting and revealed that people who sexted more frequently saw the behavior as simply being ‘fun and carefree’ and interestingly, many believed sexting was now the norm in relationships.
Sexting has received growing attention as a somewhat dangerous activity, we touched on revenge porn, and also frequently read about naive teenagers bowing down to ‘sexting’ peer pressure without realising the risky implications.
There’s no doubt you take a huge risk sharing explicit photos of yourself via a phone to forever live digitally. No matter how happy or secure you feel in a relationship today, things can quickly change as can attitudes to one another. We never truly know who these images might be shared with or when they might suddenly appear for the world to see (tip: maybe cover your face in such pics and make sure it’s not just one sided sexting) But this negative view sometimes fails to account for the apparent positive effects of open sexual communication with a partner.
In short, the research strongly indicates a robust relationship between sexting and sexual relationship satisfaction too, but what do you think about sexting?
Tell us @Lovestruck (oh no but don’t send us that….)
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