Motivations, Behaviors and Expectancies of Sexting: The Role of Defensive Strategies and Social Media Addiction in a Sample of Adolescents

Alessandra Ragona, Martina Mesce, Silvia Cimino and Luca Cerniglia ()
Additional contact information
Alessandra Ragona: Department of Dynamic, Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Rome, Sapienza, 00186 Rome, Italy
Martina Mesce: Department of Dynamic, Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Rome, Sapienza, 00186 Rome, Italy
Silvia Cimino: Department of Dynamic, Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Rome, Sapienza, 00186 Rome, Italy
Luca Cerniglia: Faculty of Psychology, International Telematic University Uninettuno, 00186 Rome, Italy

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: Adolescents and young adults engage in sexting behaviors. Research has mainly emphasized the relationship between motivations and sexting behaviors, with little attention paid to sexting expectations and the potential role of coping strategies. This study aims to explore the measure of emotional–behavioral functioning with the Youth/Adult Self Report (based on the subject’s age), the use of defensive strategies measured with the Response Evaluation Measure (REM-71), social media addiction with the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) and all dimensions of sexting: motivations, behavior and expectations measured with the Sexting Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ), Sexting Behavior Questionnaire (SBQ) and Sexpectancies Questionnaire (SQ), respectively. N = 209 adolescents and young adults were recruited from high schools and universities in Rome to complete the self-report questionnaires. Results show that males tend to have higher expectations of sexting than females. We also found that expectations play a role in determining sexting behaviors and motivations. Our hypotheses on social media addiction and sexting were confirmed, while the relationship between the defensive strategies and sexting was not significant as expected. Further studies on this topic are desirable in the future.

Keywords: sexting; defensive strategy; expectancies; social media addiction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/3/1805/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/3/1805/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:3:p:1805-:d:1040401

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().