Emotional Problems, Dark Personality, Sexting and Grooming in Adolescents: the role of Gender and Age

SANTIAGO RESETT; PABLO GONZALEZ; BELÉN MESURADO

CES Revista de psicología

Universidad CES

Lugar: Bogotá; Año: 2022 vol. 15 p. 23 - 43

The present study aimed to study if emotional problems(depression and anxiety) and Dark Personality were predictors ofsexting and grooming, and if this behavior differs by gender andage. A sample of 728 adolescents between 11 and 18 years of age(38% male) from three private high schools located in BuenosAires and Paraná, Argentina, was drawn. They completed a Sextingquestionnaire, the Questionnaire for Online Sexual Solicitationand Interaction of Minors with Adults for grooming behavior,Rosenberg Scale of Psychosomatic Symptoms, the KovacsDepression Inventory for Children and the Dirty Dozen for darkpersonality traits. Results showed that 12% of adolescentsadmitted having carried out a sexting behavior. Sending writtenmessages of a sexual nature (11%) and photos (10%) were themost prevalent ways, followed by videos (4%), but no differenceswere detected according to gender. Significant predictors ofsexting and the size of its explained variance ranged by gender(R² = 47% for females and R² = 12% for men, respectively). In thecase of females, older age and psychopathy were the significantpredictors. In the case of males, less anxiety was the significantpredictors. A structural model explained a variance of 6% forsexting and 21% for grooming, indicating that there was noinavariance, according to gender. Linear regressions to predictgrooming from sexting also suggested this relationship wasmoderated by gender.