Youth Sexting Essay

The study by Melissa Burkett (2015), where she conducted qualitative interviews about youth sexting, found that there appear to be unspoken rules that govern their behaviour. It is assumed by the participants that there is a mutual understanding of what the sexting behaviour means (Burkett, 2015). The study notes this process reflects normal face-to-face sexual encounters, which includes ‘tacit knowledge’ also known as ‘you just know’ what your partner wants without the need to explicitly say it out loud (Burkett, 2015). However, casual sexual encounters have found to be typically engaged in face-to-face interactions and researchers emphasized the implicit assumption between the two partners that sexual activities will indeed happen in person following certain flirtatious behaviour (Burkett, 2015). Yet, in terms of

With who engages in it, we can see that women and men try to control their image and don’t want to certain meanings attributed to them within sexting. Women do not want to be seen as slutty or objects when engaging in sexting and men want to be seen as gentlemen and need to make sure they don't say the wrong things. Pertaining to the meanings in how they carry out the activity, both parties are very wary about how they are constructing these sexts, making sure to not take things too far or cross any moral boundaries they have created. With the risks involved, the participants know the act has been deemed as deviant and they don’t want to risk being seen as deviant themselves so they use neutralizing techniques. These neutralizing techniques (justification of normalcy, justification by comparison & justification of benefits) have perceptions attached to them that let participants alleviate this label of morally deviant within this behaviour from the