June 27 (UPI) -- A new study by the University of Michigan and the University of California Santa Barbara found that girls are more negatively affected by digital dating abuse.
"Although digital dating abuse is potentially harmful for all youth, gender matters," Lauren Reed, an assistant project scientist at University of California-Santa Barbara, said in a press release.
For the study, which is published in the August edition of the Journal of Adolescence, researchers collected surveys from 703 Midwest high school students who reported digital dating abuse from December 2013 to March 2014.
The students reported sending and receiving at least 51 text messages a day and spending an average of 22 hours a week on social media.
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The teens were asked to report the frequency of experiencing digital dating behaviors such as pressure to sext, sending threatening messages, looking at private information to check up on them without consent and monitoring whereabouts and activities.
The researchers also examined the impact of gender on high school students' digital dating abuse experience, including the use of cell phones or the Internet to harass, pressure, control or threaten dating partners.
The study revealed that girls experienced more frequent digital sexual coercion and victimization, and that they were more upset by the communication and expressed more negative emotional responses to it. Both girls and boys, however, also reported they respond to direct aggression by blocking communication.
"Although both girls and boys experienced digital dating abuse at similar rates of frequency, with the exception of sexual coercion," researchers wrote in the study, "these findings suggest that the experience and consequences of digital dating abuse may be particularly detrimental for girls."
