Substantial numbers of American teens are sexting - sending and receiving explicit sexual images via cellphone, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Utah surveyed 1,130 undergraduate students about their experiences sexting in high school.
Nearly 20 per cent reported they had sent a nude photo of themselves to another via cellphone and 38 per cent had received such a picture. Of the number who had received a sext, nearly one in five had forwarded the picture to someone else.
"The results are nearly identical to the findings from our 2013 study of high school students," said Don Strassberg, professor of psychology at the University of Utah and lead author on both studies.
"We believe the consistency reflects a valid estimate of the prevalence of teen sexting - and the numbers are considerable," he said.
According to Strassberg, the results of the two sexting studies from his lab, as well as those from studies conducted across the US, demonstrate that sending naked selfies is going on in high schools across the country and in significant numbers.
The research, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, was conducted at the University of Utah over a three-year period.
Participants were students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes and queried about their experiences sexting during high school - after 2007, when it became more commonplace.
Equal numbers of men and women reported that they had sent a sext, but significantly more men than women said they had received a sext - 47.1 per cent of males versus 32.1 per cent of females.
That may be in large part because of the participants who had received a sext, men were significantly more likely to have forwarded the picture than were women, 24.2 per cent versus 13 per cent, researchers said.
Sexts were mostly sent to 'boyfriend/girlfriends', although women indicated that as the target 83 per cent of the time, while for men it was 55 per cent.
Men sent sexts to 'a friend (not a boyfriend/girlfriend)' 31 per cent of the time versus 15 per cent for the women in the survey.
Men said they sexted "someone I wanted to date or hook up with" (12 per cent) or "an acquaintance I just met" (2.4 per cent), while women did neither.
Strassberg concluded that these differences, which are all statistically significant, are consistent with findings that men have more positive attitudes toward casual sex than do women.
