Over one in 10 teenagers have had their own sexual images shared or sent to them.
A cyberbullying and sexting expert has said that more than one tenth of 15 to 18 year olds have had the sexual pictures of themselves posted online.
Mairead Foody who is an investigator of this behaviour spoke about this issue at the World Anti-Bullying Forum at Dublin City University.
She said: “24% of young people between 15 and 18-years-old said they had shared a sexual image to someone by choice.
"Most said this was with someone their own age, or someone they were in a relationship with.
"That's not that scary, as that's part of a relationship.
"But when we asked if anyone had had a sexual image of themselves shared non-consensually - of that same age group, 13 percent said that had happened once or more. That is the scary part.
"That young person may have taken the original image or video and sent it to a partner and it may have been passed on later, when they have broken up or it might have been a photo or video of someone that was taken without consent."
Mairead told the Irish Independent that her research was based on 900 young people.
She said that the issue is not due to parents being technologically inadvanced but being open with their children.
When young people had their photos shared, just under half of them told nobody.
Mairead said: “It's happening, there's nothing we can do about that but we need to open dialogue with our young people and talk about consent.”
