Safer sexting: Who cares and how?

Résumé fourni par la source

Sexting denotes technology-mediated sexual interactions from text messages to video calls. Involving sensitive data, safer sexting necessitates privacy management. Yet, digital privacy protection in intimate relationships remains understudied. We developed a four-factorial model of privacy strategies, the Sexting Privacy Management Inventory (SPMI). The SPMI distinguishes four kinds of privacy strategies along two dimensions: behaviors individuals employ alone or in interaction with their sexting partner (personal vs. interpersonal), and behaviors before or after sexting (preventive vs. reactive). As predictors of sexting privacy protection, we tested privacy concerns, romantic rejection sensitivity, sexting frequency, and sexting frequency in interaction with loneliness. Results of an online survey in a quota-based sample of 557 sexters (49.9% male) between 16 and 40 years (M = 28.97, SD = 6.67) confirmed the four-factor structure of the SPMI and showed differential effects for the four strategies. Privacy concerns against the sexting partner (social privacy concerns) predicted all privacy strategies, while concerns about how apps handle data (institutional privacy concerns) were unrelated to privacy protection. Individuals with higher romantic rejection sensitivity did not report less privacy management. More frequent sexting was related to more employment of privacy protection behaviors if individuals asynchronously sent storable files (e.g., pictures or videos). Effects of sexting frequency on privacy strategies were independent of loneliness. Thus, safer sexting was reported by those who were concerned about their sexting partner(s) and by frequent sexters (asynchronous). Overall, our four-dimensional model could be applied to other domains of privacy management.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.