Mom and Dad Are Sexting: 18 Percent of Adults Send Lewd Messages

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — And you thought it was just the younger generation and Anthony Weiner sending explicit text messages — or sexts. According to a survey conducted by Lookout, a mobile safety company, 18 percent of American smartphone owners say they sext.

But even more revealing are the age breakdowns. The data show that one in five moms and dads of children under 18 use their smartphones to text. Additionally, 25 percent of women between the ages of 35 and 44 send sex text messages from their phones.

And there’s also data on what sort of content are in these messages. Eleven percent of Americans admitted that they have recorded explicated videos on their phones; five percent of moms have done so and 18 percent of dads have.

But the most surprising part? Not many of them are worried about the photos or videos being exposed. Only three percent of American adults said their biggest concern about losing the phone would be that the inappropriate pictures or text messages would be revealed to a stranger.

“The survey results were especially interesting because we found that even though people are sharing extremely private content on their smartphones, many do nothing to prevent an embarrassing exposure,” Alicia diVittorio, mobile safety advocate at Lookout, told ABC News.

The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, surveyed 2,097 adults over the age of 18 in the United States. The survey was conducted online and variables of age, sex, race, education, region, etc. were weighed to reflect population breakdowns.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio