Sexting as a sign of youth in the digital world

On July 23, the UDA Publishing House released the book “Sexting. Sign of Youth Identity in the Digital Society ”by the authors Cesibel Ochoa and Cayetano Aranda.

The Spanish professor Cayetano Aranda has opened a line of research since 2005 on Health Philosophy and works on topics related to human sexuality from a qualitative perspective.

In this framework he directed the doctoral thesis dedicated to sexting by Cesibel Ochoa, origin of the current book.

Professor Ochoa is a clinical psychologist and has been a teacher at the Universidad del Azuay for more than 10 years. Her main line of research in the last five years has been Sexuality and Social Networks.

The interest in this subject in the teacher arose when she was doing the practices of her first master's degree in Integrative Psychotherapy:

"Back then, in 2014, I applied about 700 tests in a very important school in Cuenca to identify levels of depression and suicide risk."

In this investigation it was revealed that three out of 10 students had high levels of depression and Professor Ochoa took charge of the situation of about 10 students, while sending the rest to the educational institution.

"One of those cases I attended was related to the disclosure of personal information, a minor between 14 and 15 years old told me that she had had a problem with her boyfriend who had asked for proof of love."

The test of love turned out to be recording on a cell phone having sex. And after a fight, the boyfriend had disclosed this material that even reached the school teachers.

“Her colleagues were beating her, spitting… a rather complex situation that we knew how to deal with and that led me to become interested in this, because I was not sufficiently steeped in the incidence of the sexting, which is the exchange of messages with sexual content, "recalls Ochoa.

From that, in a master's degree in Sexology, the teacher took that topic as a fundamental problem to be studied:

"And in that same school I applied around 650 surveys to identify the practice, the prevalence, elements related to the reasons for the harassment, who sends more, who receives more content, why they do it and many more variables."

With these results, the professor was admitted to the PhD in Philosophy led by Cayetano Aranda, who suggested that she complement this quantitative vision with what young adults thought of this practice.

The interviews and focus groups that were born from this idea were carried out with the help of the students of Clinical Psychology and this allowed an important source of information on the positive and negative aspects of this practice.

"I had read in all the scientific literature that the sexting it was seen as something bad, as something problematic, as something illegal; But if you write an erotic message to yourself or your partner, you are not doing something illegal, what is illegal is to disclose information that is not yours or that you have not been allowed to disclose, "says the teacher.

The researcher points out that there are no texts in Ecuador or Latin America on this subject published in book form that identify positive aspects of this practice, without obviously neglecting the negative consequences.

"We think that in the digital society the value of youth - both in habits, customs, clothing, clothing - is a rising value that intersects with the digitization of life," says Cayetano Aranda and adds:

"In this union, these practices appear that are no longer just characteristic of adolescents and young people, but that any adult takes for himself to join that social wave that consists of being young above all else, pretending youth."

As the Spanish teacher explains, a hallmark is something that characterizes a way of understanding life, in this case in youth, in the context of digital, where you have to be young using both electronic devices and programs and the networks:

"Today we can say that a way of being young necessarily implies the practice of sexting and that this is increasing in a geometric proportion: millions of messages of sexual content that are exchanged every day in the world, without distinction of cultures, countries, sexes and socioeconomic levels; it has the courage to identify the digital society in the present moment ”.

The book is for scientific dissemination and is aimed at teachers in general, either at secondary or university level; It has been drafted in such a way that it is also of interest to the educated public in general.