Van Ouytsel; Sexting within adolescents’ romantic relationships 

Van Ouytsel 

Introduction 

Sexting: the sending of self-made sexually explicit pictures. Adolescent sexting mostly takes place within the context of establishing or maintaining romantic relationships. Mixed studies: some studies have found a positive association between engagement in sexting and perceived relationship quality, other researchers have found no or only limited evidence that sexting is related to higher relationship satisfaction among adults. Adults who engaged in the sending of sexually explicit text messages and images reported higher sexual satisfaction compared to those that did not engage in sexting.  

Intimacy: feelings of closeness, connectedness, and boundedness within the romantic relationship. Passion refers to the motivations that romantic partners experience to be physically close to, physically attracted to, and sexually involved with their partner. Commitment refers to the commitment to love the romantic partner and to stay in the relationship for a longer period of time. 

Research question: how adolescent sexting relates to perceptions of intimacy, passion, and commitment.  

Results 

Adolescents' perceptions of passion and higher levels of perceived verbal aggression were significantly related with their engagement in sexting. This means that youth who perceive their relationship as more passionate or perceived more verbal conflict within their romantic relationship, were more likely to engage in sexting. Having sexual intercourse was significantly related with sending sexually explicit photographs to the romantic partner, which indicates that youth who have engaged in prior sexual intercourse were more likely to have engaged in sexting. The relation between relationship length and having engaged in sexting was marginally significant. 

Discussion 

Using the theoretical constructs of the triangular theory of love, the results showed that higher feelings of sexual attraction, passion and sexual arousal towards a partner are found to be related to their engagement in sexting. The findings also echo recent research among an adult sample, which found that sexting was associated with a higher self-reported sexual satisfaction compared to non-sexters. This finding, coupled with a significant relationship between having had sexual intercourse and having sent a self-made sexually-explicit photograph is also in line with previous studies that found that sending self-made sexually explicit images is associated with adolescents' offline sexual behaviors.  

There are no significant associations between perceptions of emotional intimacy or commitment and engagement in sexting behavior. Adolescents might rather engage in sexting out of the motivation to fulfill their needs for sexual intimacy than to sustain emotional connectedness with their partner.