Psychological aspects, attitudes and behaviour related to the practice of sexting: a systematic review of the existent literature

There are few studies about the sexting phenomenon, and most of them are of a descriptive nature. However, not many of them relate this practice with psychological or social constructs. Our aim is to explore what psychological aspects, attitudes and behaviour have been associated with the practice of sexting. To achieve this, we have made a systematic review of the existent literature. One remarkable evolution in these studies is that their amount has grown, and more attention has been paid to the above mentioned issues. If we take a general view to the results, we can distinguish a clear 'criminalizing' tendency, since most of the investigation lines have been oriented to relate sexting with health risk behaviour. One of the main conclusions to emphasize is that despite the risks of this practice, young people continue doing it. We find it convenient to look closer at this psychological framework to obtain relevant data for the future. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).