Peer-Reviewed Study

Recognizing and Addressing How Gender Shapes Young People's Experiences of Image-Based Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Educational Settings

Feb 2023 🇬🇧 Journal of Social Issues (Wiley) Ages 12–21 PEER-REVIEWED

Published in the Journal of Social Issues in February 2023, this peer-reviewed paper by Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr analyzes focus-group and arts-based data from 150 young people aged 12 to 21 across England to examine how gender shapes adolescents' experiences of image-based sexual harassment and abuse. The authors argue that pressure on girls to send nude images functions as harassment, while pressure on boys to obtain and non-consensually share such images constitutes a distinct form of abuse, and that sexual double standards leave girls disproportionately shamed and blamed when images circulate. The paper concludes that school relationships-and-sex-education policy would benefit from adopting this combined harassment-and-abuse framework rather than treating all sexting as equally risky. TechKids Foundation includes it as peer-reviewed evidence linking specific platform-mediated behaviors to gendered social and school-based harms among children.

150 young people, ages 12–21

The analysis draws on focus-group and arts-based data collected from 150 young people aged 12 to 21 across England.

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CITATION

Ringrose, Jessica, and Kaitlyn Regehr. "Recognizing and Addressing How Gender Shapes Young People's Experiences of Image-Based Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Educational Settings." Journal of Social Issues, February 7, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12575

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