A survey claims one in five teenagers has sent nude photographs of themselves to an online recipient. Around 15 percent of these say they’ve sent them to people they don’t know in real life, while 52 percent of teen girls sent them as a present to a boyfriend.

The survey was carried out by Cosmogirl.com and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The latter is claiming there’s a strong link between such online behavior and an increase in casual sex among teens, though most media reports appear to not find this credible enough to mention.

Indeed, the survey shows the majority of teenagers don’t think technology makes them more sexually aggressive, don’t think exchanging nude photographs makes them more likely to sleep with the recipient, and don’t agree that sending such pics means they are ‘expected’ to hook up. That said, 75 percent of teens agreed sending sexually suggestive content could have unwanted negative effects.

People aged 20 to 26 were also questioned for the survey, with a full one-third saying they’d sent nude photographs or videos. As was probably predictable, young men were most likely to have seen a nude picture intended for someone else – 40  percent having done so compared with a third of teenage boys and a quarter of both women and girls.

While for adults these picture postings are simply ill-advised at worst, the survey did produce the more worrying statistic that 11 percent of girls aged 13-16 had sent or posted nude pictures. (The survey didn’t break down responses similarly for boys.)

The research also looked at sexually suggestive messages such as e-mails, text messages and instant messaging. With less potential for embarrassment, the figures were naturally higher with 39 percent of teens and 59 percent of young adults sending such messages.

Oddly in both cases the percentage saying they’d received such messages was notably higher, which either means many of the messages are coming from older senders, or that you can’t trust what people will and won’t admit to in a survey.

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Entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 4:06 pm under Adult content, Internet.

Read more entries by John Lister.
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