• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

Youth sexuality, romance & digital media in Canada: Study

June 26, 2014 By Anne 1 Comment

When MediaSmarts conducted its focus groups with young Canadians, it heard quite a bit about the important role the Internet plays in their “exploring and learning about sexuality and relationships,” the Canadian digital literacy organization says. But the authors write that the survey itself – of 5,000+ students in grades 4-11 – suggests that that role may be smaller than you’d think, with only 8% of students saying that they go online to learn about sexuality. That goes up as they age up, though, so the figure is 1% for 6th graders and 20% for 11th graders. Still, they use the Net more for information on physical health (18%) and mental health (11%), compared to that 8% for info on sexuality. [Not all questions about sexuality were asked of kids in younger grades, the authors write. Some, “including questions about pornography and sexting, were asked only of students in grades 7-11.]

Other interesting findings in three categories:

MediaSmartsRomantic partners vs. everybody else: Young Canadian interact more with friends and family in social media than with boyfriends and girlfriends. “Over 90% of students in grades 7-11 think their friends should be able to read their social media posts compared to 59% who think their boyfriend or girlfriend should be able to.” This too changes as they age up, but with 11th graders, 95% are open to friends reading their social media posts vs. 70% romantic partners doing so. They also feel friends should be able to track their whereabouts using geolocation tech) more than romantic partners (and almost as much as their parents), for 11th graders, the percentages were 49% for parents, 45% friends and 30% romantic partners. Canadian teens “more actively engage in deleting posts … to avoid misunderstandings on the part of their family and friends than they are in keeping something from a romantic partner.”

Pornography: Seventy-seven percent of students in grades 7-11 reported they’ve never looked for pornography online, but of those who have, there’s a significant gender difference: 40% of boys vs. 75 of girls. Eighty-eight percent of boys who have sought out online porn have done so more than once a month. Parents may be interested to know that “students who report having a rule at home about sites they are not supposed to visit are more likely to say that they have never looked for pornography online.” The percentage of Canadian students (grades 7-11) who seek out adult content online has increased from 16% in 2005 to 23% in 2013, when this survey was conducted.

Sexting: Questions on this topic only went to students who had their own cellphones or had access to a shared one, but – since 87% of older students have access to a cellphone – “it seems safe to say that our findings capture most of the sexting activity happening among the youth in our survey.” Eight percent of students in grades 7-11 have sent and 24% have received a “sext” (defined as “sexy, nude or partially nude photo”) of themselves to someone – about the same percentage for boys and girls. The low for sending is 2% in grade 7 and the high 15% of 11th graders and the low for receiving a sext is 11% for 7th graders and 36% for 11th graders. An important finding in terms of a sense of ethics that is developing around the practice is that about three-quarters of students who send sexts of themselves have never had one forwarded by the recipient, and 85% of students who have received a sext have not forwarded it. Also interestingly, “having a household rule about treating people online with respect does not correlate with lower likelihood of forwarding sexts.”

Related links

  • “‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc.”: A series I posted a year ago, based on unusual qualitative research by Australian researcher Nina Funnell. Part 1: “A spectrum of motivations”; Part 2: “For better youth education”; and Part 3: “Bias in the news coverage”
  • Other 2014 research from MediaSmarts.ca: “Major study on teen online conflict in Canada: Insights for all of us” and “Social media reality check from Canadian youth: Key study”
  • MediaSmarts in 2012: “WHAT has online safety wrought (with parents)?!” and “Kids & teens not only ok, but smart!: Study”
Share Button

Filed Under: Research Tagged With: MediaSmarts, pornography, romantic partners, sexting

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Youth sexuality, romance & digital media in Canada: Study by Anne Collier | MiFam says:
    July 25, 2014 at 12:32 pm

    […] Anne Collier at NetFamilyNews.org on June 26, […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Lawmakers, controlling and banning kids doesn’t help
  • New clarity on child sexual exploitation online
  • Game-changer: Child rights-by-design
  • Why I struggle mightily with the new Utah law
  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.