Peer pressure driving young people to 'sexting': Study

MELBOURNE: It’s peer pressure that’s forcing today’s young people to engage in sexting — the practice of sending and receiving sexual images on a mobile phone, says a new study.
Researchers at the University of Melbourne have found that both young men and women are experiencing peer pressure to share sexual images via the new phenomenon of “sexting”.
Lead researcher Shelley Walker said the study not only highlighted the pressure young people experienced to engage in sexting, it also revealed the importance of their voice in understanding and developing responses to prevent and deal with the problem. “The phenomenon has become a focus of much media reporting; however research regarding the issue is in its infancy, and the voice of young people is missing from this discussion and debate,” she said. The qualitative study involved individual interviews with 33 young people (15 male and 18 female) aged 15 to 20 years.
Preliminary findings revealed young people believed a highly sexualized media culture bombarded young people with sexualized images and created pressure to engage in sexting.
Young people discussed the pressure boys place on each other to have girls’ photos on their phones and computers. They said if boys refrained from engaging in the activity they were labelled “gay” or could be ostracised from the peer group.