Study Shows That More Than 20% Of Black And Hispanic Teenagers Have Sent Freaky Phone Messages And Pics Before

Bossip.com:

More than 20 percent of black and Hispanic teens say they have used their cellphones to send a “sext” message showing a nekkid or semi-nekkid photo or video of themselves to another person, and more than 30 percent say they have received such sex messages, according to a new study.

The research was done by University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Health Services. Why the focus on the two groups?

“Although sex messages among U.S. youth has received much popular media attention, there are only limited data on its prevalence among ethnic minority youth,” say the researchers in their study, published online journal, Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

The concern about sex messages, the researchers say, is whether it “impacts other behaviors and health outcomes among youth and adults and, if so, what is the direction of the impact.”

That said, not every scientist is convinced that sexting will lead to ho-ish tendencies.

Balderdash, says Deb Levine, the executive director and founder of the Internet Sexuality Information Services, based in San Francisco, which uses the Internet and mobile apps and texts to share information about sexual health, disease prevention and assault.

“From a public health perspective, we have not as yet identified ‘sex messaging’ as a risky sexual behavior as regards HIV, STDs and unplanned pregnancies,” Levine told NBC News. “Therefore, the need to identify young people who sex message seems unnecessary.”

In a recent editorial piece, “Sex!ng: A Terrifying Health Risk … or the New Normal for Young Adults?” for the Journal of Adolescent Health, Levine wrote that “If we are to use sex messaging to create relevant health messaging for youth, the messages could focus less on shame and more on mutual consent, communication about sexual desires, and regular testing for HIV and other STDs, especially for sexually active members of high-risk groups.”

One thing that is not in question however, is which demographic of people are more likely to be prone to having a lil freaky phone fun.

“The results of this study indicate that sex messaging is prevalent among ethnic minority youth,” the researchers said in the study. “

And while the authors acknowledge that more research is needed to understand the context and circumstances of that sex messaging, “the first step in any public health inquiry is to understand the scope and prevalence of a potential health problem. Some data exist on the prevalence of sex messaging among youth in general. However, prevalence data for ethnic minority youth specifically are scarce.”

The researchers’ data is based on findings from 1,034 tenth-graders from a “large, urban school district in southeast Texas.”