viewing habits

Sexting Is Lose-Lose for Teen Girls

Photo: Darko Zeljkovic/Shutterstock

Sexting seems to be a marvelous, triumphant, solely positive aspect in the lives of contemporary teenagers. Particularly for female teenagers! For young women, sexting is a tightrope above a pit of panthers in the middle of a volcano. Either way they go, it’s the worst. According to a new study, the act of sexting earns young women lovely titles like slutty or insecure. The nonaction of not sexting earns even more complimentary titles like stuck-up prude

All this great teenager reporting is from new study from Journal of Children and Media titled “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t … If You’re a Girl” from researchers at the University of Michigan. Researchers Julia Lippman and Scott Campbell gave 51 teenagers (12 to 18 years old) an open-ended questionnaire about sexting.

The most striking finding with regard to gender was the extent to which girls, but not boys, were judged for their sexting practices… According to these accounts, then, girls who send sexts are—to use some of our male participants’ words—crazy, insecure, attention-seeking sluts with poor judgment.

The study also noted, bless its heart, that teenage boys didn’t understand influencing factors, including themselves, on the behavior of teenage girls.

Sexting Is Lose-Lose for Teen Girls