Almost half of secondary school students 'frequently' asked to send sexually explicit images

Most secondary school students have been asked to send sexually explicity pictures of themselves through text, email or applications such as Snapchat, and almost one-third have received sexually explicit images when they didn’t want to.The findings come from new research involving a survey of more than 800 teenagers here, with the authors warning that ‘sexting’ can have “devastating effects”, especially for those receiving unsolicited images.The study, entitled ‘It’s not just sexy pics: An investigation into sexting behaviour and behavioural problems in adolescents’, was carried out by researchers at the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre in Dublin City University and used data gathered from a sample of 848 students aged 15–18 from schools around the country.To the question ‘Have you been asked to send naked pictures of yourself (a sext) through text, email or applications like Snapchat?’ 44.4% of all the teenagers surveyed said they have “frequently” been asked, versus 43.5% overall who have never been asked and the balance of 12.1% who have been asked once.Those “frequently” asked for such images included 29.3% of all females sampled and 15.2% of males surveyed.The students surveyed were less likely to send images — 76.2% said they had never sent such an…
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