Study: 'Sexting' Gets More Play From Women Than Men

A study, “Let My Fingers Do the Talking: Sexting and Infidelity in Cyberspace,” by Dr. Diane Kholos Wysocki found that women are more likely to punch their own buttons -- on a cell phone, that is.

The study, conducted in 2009, showed roughly two-thirds of the women surveyed were more likely to send nude photographs or sexually explicit text messages than about half the men surveyed; sexting was more likely among the few surveyed who were aged 19-24. Researchers administered an online survey luring 5,187 adult visitors to the Web site AshleyMadison.com, an infidelity service aimed at married men and women, and 68 questions to users about their Internet use, sexual behaviors and demographics.

Cheating is alive and well, and 'sexting' is on the rise. Wysocki told The New York Times. But I don't believe the Internet is causing people to cheat. There seems to be something going on with marriage that's the bigger social issue. Before, people would just get a divorce. For some reason, people are staying and cheating instead.

In the study, women were also more likely to meet people in real life after meeting them online, specifically, 83 percent of women compared with 67 percent of men, yet, women were less likely to be anxious about being caught looking at sexually explicit material and less cautious than men about erasing their naughty tracks on the Internet.

By nature, men are known to be visually stimulated, and women are definitely visually stimulated but are known to be turned on in a creative fantasy sense. So, I would say stereotypically, men are more interested in receiving the photos, Amy Levine, a certified sexuality educator in New York and founder of Sex Ed Solutions, tells ABC News.

Of course, this is a self-selected population, but I've also observed that women are more likely to show pictures of themselves than guys are. I think that may be changing though -- evening out, adds Diane Kholos Wysocki, co-author of the study and a professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Although Wysocki's research may not be totally reliable due to a self-election process from respondents because a number of people who responded to the survey differ from the general population in the reality of cheating phenomenon.