Exploring sexting and online sexual victimization during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown
Author
Gassó, Aina M.
Mueller-Johnson, Katrin
Agustina Sanllehí, José Ramón
Gómez-Durán, Esperanza Luisa
Publication date
2021ISSN
1660-4601
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has impacted daily routines, forcing people to stop socializing in person and changing the way people express their feelings and their romantic or sexual interactions. Social distancing has changed the way people behave online, and we expect that engagement in sexting and online sexual victimization behaviors have increased during lockdown. The aim of this paper is to study the prevalence of sexting and online sexual victimization behaviors during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spanish adults in order to explore how social distancing has affected these behaviors. The sample comprised 293 Spanish adults (mean age = 30.3; 66.2% female) who took part in an online survey about their engagement in sexting behaviors and online sexual victimization experiences. Overall results were apparently not supportive of our main hypothesis, showing that both sexting engagement and online sexual victimization decreased during lockdown despite the increase in internet use. Apart from differences in time period of reference, some alternative hypotheses relate to the increased presence of capable guardians according to the routine activities theory and to forced distance as a demotivation to sext. Possible explanations and hypotheses for these results are discussed further in the paper.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
02 - Librarianship
Keywords
Sexting
Victimització sexual en línia
Abús sexual basat en imatges
Confinament
COVID-19 (malaltia)
Sexting
Victimización sexual en línea
Abuso sexual basado en imágenes
Aislamiento
COVID-19
Sexting
Online sexual victimization
Image-based sexual abuse
Lockdown
COVID-19
Pages
9
Publisher
MDPI
Collection
18; 12
Is part of
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Citation
Gassó, Aina M.; Mueller-Johnson, Katrin; Agustina, José R. [et al.]. Exploring sexting and online sexual victimization during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021, 18(12), 6662. Disponible en: <https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/12/6662>. Fecha de acceso: 8 jul. 2021. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18126662
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Ciències de la Salut [740]
Rights
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/