What are you sexting? Parental practices, sexting attitudes and behaviors among Italian adolescents

E Confalonieri,G Cuccì,M G Olivari,M Parise,E Borroni,D Villani

doi:10.1186/s40359-020-00425-1

E Confalonieri, G Cuccì + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00425-1

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Journal: BMC psychology	Publication Date: Jun 15, 2020
Citations: 11	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Abstract

BackgroundSexting has recently emerged as a public health and social issue. The present study had two aims: a) to preliminarily test adolescent gender differences on parental practices regarding adolescent online life, parental monitoring, adolescent attitude towards sexting and sexting behaviors; b) to separately test for male and female adolescents a conceptual model in which sexting behaviors are explained by the parental practices and monitoring, with the mediation of adolescent negative attitude towards sexting.MethodsDirect and indirect links between the variables in the model were investigated. The study was carried out with 541 participants. Participants were Italian adolescents (60% males; 40% females) aged 14 to 19 years (Mage = 16,19 years, SDage = 1,31).ResultsResults suggested that females sent more multimedia sexts, had a higher perception of risk associated with sexting and reported higher scores for both parental practices regarding adolescent online life and parental monitoring. Rules on Contents, Parental Knowledge, Adolescent Disclosure, and Parental Control resulted to be linked to both sexting attitudes and behaviors for male and female adolescents.ConclusionsFindings emphasize the important role that parents play in shaping attitudes and behaviors of both daughters and sons during adolescence.

Highlights

Sexting has recently emerged as a public health and social issue
Preliminary analyses on gender differences Independent sample t-tests were conducted to examine gender differences (Table 1) on adolescent negative attitude towards sexting, sexting behaviors, parental practices regarding adolescent online life and parental monitoring
No gender differences emerged for sending textual sexts

Summary

Introduction

Sexting has recently emerged as a public health and social issue. The present study had two aims: a) to preliminarily test adolescent gender differences on parental practices regarding adolescent online life, parental monitoring, adolescent attitude towards sexting and sexting behaviors; b) to separately test for male and female adolescents a conceptual model in which sexting behaviors are explained by the parental practices and monitoring, with the mediation of adolescent negative attitude towards sexting. As suggested by Weber and Dixon [65], the “digital culture” is progressively becoming more pervasive: adolescents and youth are the most digitally connected [72] using new communication media such as smartphones and social networks. With the spread of new technologies, including smartphones and instant messaging and chat apps (e.g. WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram ...), the term was applied to the actions of posting on social networks and exchanging sexual (2020) 8:63 contents, like pictures, videos or images [16, 26, 41]. Sexting can be defined as the exchange (receiving, sending, forwarding and posting) of sexually explicit contents (texts and/or images/photos/videos of nude or semi-nude) on electronic media and the Internet [16, 17, 26, 33]

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Conclusion