Sexting teens likelier to have sex

Washington -  Teenagers who send sexually explicit text messages are more likely to engage in risky behaviors, like being sexually active and having unprotected sex, a new study has  revealed.

The study looked at the survey data from more than 1,800 Los Angeles-area teenagers between 9-12 grades, who were part of a nationally representative Centers for Disease Control and  Prevention study of youth-risk behaviors.

The researchers determined that 15 percent of the adolescents who had a cell phone said they sexted, with more than 50 percent of the teenagers admitting knowing someone who had

sexted. The majority of students with a cell phone who took part in the study did not engage in sexting.

“No one’s actually going to get a sexually transmitted disease because they’re sexting,” CBS News quoted Dr. Eric Rice, a researcher from the School of Social Network at the University of  Southern California in Los Angeles, as saying.

“What we really wanted to know is, is there a link between sexting and taking risks with your body? And the answer is a pretty resounding ‘yes’,” he said.

However, teens whose peers sexted were more likely to sext themselves - about 17 times more likely than other teens who didn’t send sext.

But teens who said they themselves sexted were seven times more likely to be sexually active, and nearly twice as likely to engage in unprotected sex than their peers, raising their risk of  transmission of HIV and of other sexually transmitted diseases.

“We recommend that clinicians discuss sexting as an adolescent-friendly way of engaging patients in conversations about sexual activity, prevention of sexually transmitted infections and  unwanted pregnancy,” the authors of the study wrote.

And they added that such discussions should also be built into the health curriculum at school.

The study has been published in journal ‘Pediatrics.’