In the age of smartphones, every so often when you’re awake late at night, you’ve probably gotten the ‘You up?’ text.
In the hours of darkness that usually follow the text, there’s a lot of exchange of eggplant and peach emoji, and perhaps more. While this is an universal phenomenon, India is no exception to the rules of sexting on smartphone apps, finds a new study.
The study ‘Mobile sex-tech apps: How use differs across global areas of high and low gender equality’ was published in the science journal PLOS ONE.
The data for the survey was collected via an anonymous questionnaire, and had responses from 1,30,885 women in 191 countries, including 23,093 from India.
About 19% Indian women used an app to find a partner for hookups, long-term or short-term relationships. This is slightly lower than the global average of 21%.
It also found that about 62% of desi women engage in sexting, reported Times Now.
Over half of all women (57.7%) reported having received or sent sexting messages, consistent across all geographic areas.
Researchers also found that women in countries with higher gender inequality reported being more than four times more likely to report sexting than women in more egalitarian regions.
“This suggests that more conservative ideals regarding gender roles do not necessarily prevent women from engaging in taboo or forbidden behaviors," Virginia Vitzthum, professor of anthropology at Indiana University, Kinsey Institute senior scientist and senior research scientist at Clue told Phys.org
The study also found that women in places with greater gender inequality were twice as likely to report that they’ve used apps to improve their sexual relationships, whereas women from places with lower inequality were more likely to report that they’ve used apps to learn about sexual relationships.
Globally, women reported that the most common kinds of partners they sought were short-term partners (9%).
“This is the first study that’s been able to give us insight into the use of technology in the sexual lives of such a large number women around the world," said Amanda Gesselman, associate director for research at the Kinsey Institute.