A Bad Romance: Sexting Motivations and Teen Dating Violence

Abstract

Sexting has been commonly defined as the sharing of sexually suggestive content via new technologies. The relationship between sexting motivations and both online and offline aggressive behaviors (i.e., sexual harassment, dating violence, and bullying) is still understudied. This study aimed to investigate the association between three sexting motivations—sexual purposes, instrumental/aggravated reasons, and body image reinforcement—and teen dating violence. Specifically, only instrumental/aggravated motivations—such as sexting in exchange for something, under pressure, or with harmful intentions—were expected to be related to dating violence perpetration and victimization. The participants were 171 adolescents aged from 13 to 20 years. Having sent sexts during the last year and having had a dating relationship were inclusive criteria. The Sexting Motivations Questionnaire and the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationship Inventory were administered via an online survey. Two hierarchical regression analyses were run to investigate whether the three sexting motivations (i.e., sexual purposes, instrumental/aggravated reasons, and body image reinforcement) predict, respectively, victimization and perpetration of teen dating violence, controlling for sex, age, and relationship duration. Dating violence perpetration was predicted by sexting for instrumental/aggravated reasons, as well as by sex and relationship duration. Dating violence victimization was predicted by sexting for instrumental/aggravated reasons, as well as by age and relationship duration. These findings expand literature about sexting motivations and aggressive behaviors suggesting that instrumental/aggravated reasons are an index of aggressive/exploitative tendencies, which also lead to dating violence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Sexting Among Adolescents: The Emotional Impact and Influence of the Need for Popularity

“…In line with Ringrose et al (2013), these results point to a different meaning behind sexting involvement by gender, reinforcing the idea of a double sexual standard to explain different consequences for boys and girls (Symons et al, 2018). This different impact can also be linked to other variables like motivations of sexting (Bianchi et al, 2018), non-consensual participation in sexting (Dekker and Thula, 2017), or some other factors associated to sexting experience like social pressure or threat (Lee and Crofts, 2015).…”

“…The reasons given for this phenomenon’s potential impact include the transgression of sexual boundaries and the non-consensual distribution of sexual content to third parties (Dekker and Thula, 2017). Impact is also linked to different motivations (sexual, instrumental, and body image reinforcement) of sexting behavior, being instrumental reasons which cause higher negative impact (Bianchi et al, 2018). In addition, previous studies have shown how online victimization is associated to negative emotional impact (Ortega et al, 2012; Slonje et al, 2017).…”

Family functioning patterns predict teenage girls’ sexting

“…Morelli, Bianchi, Baiocco, Pezzuti, and Chirumbolo (2016b) investigated a specific dimension of aggravated secondary sexting consisting of forwarding sexts from someone without his or her consent, which we refer to as nonconsensual forwarding of sexts . This behavior may be a cyber form of sexual harassment (Machimbarrena et al, 2018) and can include dating aggression and revenge (Bates, 2017; Bianchi, Morelli, Nappa, Baiocco, & Chirumbolo, 2018; Morelli, Bianchi, Cattelino, et al, 2017) and cyberbullying (Medrano, Lopez Rosales, & Gámez-Guadix, 2018).…”

Prevalence of sending, receiving and forwarding sexts among youths: A three-level meta-analysis

“…However, the available empirical evidence also suggests that sexting entails risks such as the intentional, non-consensual distribution of sexts beyond the intended recipient [5]. Several empirical studies have also found that sexting involvement was associated with participation in undesirable dynamics such as dating violence, sextortion, cyberbullying and grooming [6][7][8][9][10]. Likewise, in some studies, sexting has also been associated with anxiety and depression symptomology, as well as attempted or ideated suicide [11][12][13].…”