Sexting concerns the act of sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages or photos (i.e., ‘sexts’) through electronic means. When sexts are received or forwarded without the consent of the original sender, this is called non-consensual sexting. Our study set out to increase our understanding as to why individuals engage in non-consensual sext forwarding, by examining the role of sexting intentions, attitudes, and experience with non-consensual sext receiving. Data were collected through a cross-sectional survey among a sample of 218 Belgian adults. Of this total sample, 169 (Mage = 25.85 years, 73.4% women) respondents had at least once received a sext from someone, resulting in a subsample of 169 respondents for the present study. Correlation analyses showed that non-consensual forwarding of sexts was significantly positively linked to stronger attitudes towards the risks of sexting and to experiences of non-consensual sext receiving. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that non-consensual sext forwarding was significantly linked to negative attitudes about sexting, but that this significant link disappeared when non-consensual sext receiving was included as a predictor in the model. Thus, our findings show that non-consensual sext forwarding is primarily linked to non-consensual sext receiving, suggesting that individuals who experience non-consensual sexting as a recipient are inclined to non-consensually forward a sext themselves regardless of their attitudes about (the risks of) sexting. This suggests that non-consensual sexting behaviours may be driven by social learning and/or impulsive decision-making processes, indicating an important avenue for future research.@en

Digital media offer ample possibilities for individuals to control and monitor their dating or romantic partner and to make hurtful comments. Although online psychological intimate partner violence has received increased research attention over the past few years, much remains unknown about its nature and its association with offline psychological intimate partner violence, especially among the adult population. Previous research remains inconclusive regarding the gendered nature of online intimate partner violence, and differences among various age groups have yet to be examined. The present study is intended to address these gaps in the literature by assessing the co-occurrence of psychological intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration, and the overlap between offline and online forms thereof. We conducted a large-scale survey study among a representative sample of 1,587 adults between the ages of 18 and 94 (M = 48.1, SD = 18.6), of which 1,144 (M _age = 47.7 years, 51.3% female) were in relationships at the time of data collection (2019). Our study findings indicate that experiences of online and offline psychological intimate partner violence tend to co-occur, as do victimization and perpetration experiences. Furthermore, we found that men were more often victims of both online and offline psychological partner violence than women, and women were more often perpetrators of both forms of psychological intimate partner violence than men. Younger age groups reported more victimization and perpetration of online and offline psychological intimate partner violence than older respondents. The results of our study underscore the need for age-appropriate intimate partner violence prevention.

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