Sexuality and sexualization in youth (Australia)

According to recent nationwide research, by Year 10 the majority of Australian young people are sexually active in some capacity, withapproximately half of Year 12 students having engaged in sexual intercourse (Mitchell et al. 2014). As digital media access andpersonal smartphone technology use are near-universal for youths, we see a corresponding rise in digitally mediated expressions ofsexuality and desire. Across a large Australian sample of high school students, over half reported having received a sexually explicittext message, with the majority of sexually active students reporting having sent (50 percent) or received (70 percent) a nude or nearlynude photo or video of themselves or a peer (Mitchell et al. 2014). According to 2017 data, the millennial generation (18-35 years ofage) are the most frequent users of online-dating applications (YouGov 2017), with young people coming of age at a time where one'ssexuality is increasingly negotiated and curated within online spaces (Albury and Byron 2015).As gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) people become ever more visible in social, political, and media spaces, it is unsurprising that themillennial generation are the most supportive of government recognition of same-sex relationships, with 66 percent in favor oflegalizing same-sex marriage (Reynolds 2017)"”legislation which passed in Australia at the end of 2017. Furthermore, research hasshown an increase in prevalence of Australian secondary school students who do not report an exclusively heterosexual attraction,ranging between 21 percent (Mitchell et al. 2014) and 16.4 percent (Johnson et al. 2016) in recent studies. Research with cohorts ofGSD young people points to both a growing range of identity markers within this community, extending beyond the boundaries of"gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," and "transgender," and, simultaneously, young people eschewing identity labels altogether (Robinson etal. 2014; Smith et al. 2014; Ullman 2015). GSD young people appear to be increasingly more aware and accepting of fluidity andflexibility of romantic/sexual attraction and gender identities (Hillier et al. 2010).