Nearly a third of today’s youth have been involved in ‘sexting,’ the sharing of sexual content online via a computer or mobile phones.
According to a new Associated Press-MTV poll, a majority (56%) of youth have experienced some form of online abuse such as harassment or bullying. The trend has seen a slight increase over two years, according to the survey.
The poll asked teens and young adults aged 14-24 about online behaviors such as sexting, cyberbullying and harassment. An overwhelming percentage (76%) of the youth respondents said online abuse was a "serious problem," a third of them admitted they had engaged in sexting, and 10% of those said they had done so with persons they only knew online.
The survey found that 15% of young people (7% teens and 19% young adults) had shared a nude photo of themselves. However, almost a fourth said they had been exposed to sexting in some way. Around 37% of the young adults had some experience with "sexting" images.
Among those in a relationship, 4 out of 10 said that their partners have used Internet or mobile phones to abuse or control them.
The poll is part of an MTV campaign, "A Thin Line" on digital abuse. It was conducted in August and is based on interviews of 1,355 people, including 631 teens ages 14-17 and 724 adults ages 18-24.
The national survey was conducted online by Knowledge Networks of Palo Alto, California, under the direction and supervision of the AP’s polling unit.
Earlier this year, in an anti-bullying conference hosted by President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Obama revealed that he had been a victim of taunts as a child and that torment and intimidation must not be tolerated.
Obama had said, "If there’s one goal of this conference, it’s to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up. It’s not."
