Best Practice

The rise of the ‘sext’

Behaviour PSHE
Sex-related messaging among teens is increasingly common, with three in five reporting that they have been asked to send indecent images of themselves. Hannah Crown looks how schools can best handle the rise of the ‘sext’.

Last year, a Childline survey found that 60 per cent of young people have been asked for a sexual image or video of themselves, 

40 per cent have actually created one, and 25 per cent admit to having sent one. What’s more, of that 25 per cent, a third sent the image to someone they met online but didn’t know.

In 2012, the NSPCC revealed that “sexting” had become as “common as exposure to sexual or pornographic content online” and its research found that a key reason why young people sext is peer pressure.

Its report, A Qualitative Study of Children, Young People and ‘Sexting’, states: “The problems posed by sexting come from their peers – indeed, from their ‘friends’ in their social networks.”

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