TECH

A quarter of teens admit to sexting

The practice of exchanging sexually explicit messages, especially explicit pictures, among children and adolescents has been growing in the past 10 years, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
According to the report, one in four young people said they received messages of a sexual nature and one in seven reported having sent explicit content, a practice known by the English term sexting (contraction of sex and texting).
The research, done in Cadaná, gathered data from 39 studies conducted between January 1990 and June 2016, with a total of 110,380 participants, all under 18 years old - including several children.
The researchers found that as of 2008 there has been a significant increase in the practice of sexting, which, in the opinion of experts, is due to the increasingly easy access of young people to mobile devices.
"As teens grow older, we see these numbers grow, as does real sexual behavior," said Jeff Temple, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas and co-author of the study.
In the second article, the authors of the report suggest that "specific information about sex and its possible consequences should be adequately provided through the exercise of sex education in schools."

Sapo