Chicago, Ill., Jan 27, 2018 / 16:09 pm
In a recent study, teenage girls were found to feel powerless when asked for a nude image of themselves from young men, most often saying they felt trapped, bombarded, coerced, and confused when confronted with "sexting" requests.
Perhaps even more alarming is that most of the young women in the study reported that the pressure to sext was normal and accepted boys' aggressive behavior as acceptable. Even more, the only negative language the girls used was not against their male counterparts – but instead to describe themselves or other girls.
The study, "What Should I Do?: Young Women's Reported Dilemmas With Nude Photographs," was conducted by Sara E. Thomas, a doctoral student at Northwestern University, and was published by Springer Science and Business Media in December 2017. The study looked at 7,000 stories from girls who posted their experience on the online platform "A Thin Line."
Of the 7,000 experiences, Thomas focused on 462 stories in which girls reported sexting, sending nude photos, and related experiences from the years 2010-2016. The average age of the girls was 15.