Over Half Of Millennial Women Have Received Unsolicited NSFW Pics

If you are an 18- to 34-year-old woman with a phone, chances are at some point in your life you’ve been sent a naked photo from a dude. A new survey from YouGov, an internet-based market research company, found 53 percent of millennial women have received a dick pic (short for dick-ture picture). This information is perhaps unsurprising to roughly 100 percent millennial women.

YouGov’s survey, conducted online between October 2 and October 3, asked 2,302 adults about the nude photos they’d received or sent, if any. That sample size included 1,156 women of all ages. Among women overall, 29 percent say they have received a dick pic (penis picture, if we’re being proper) at some point in time. However, that number increases significantly among millennial women, with a majority (53 percent) saying they have received a nude photo from a man. The same is true for 35 percent of women age 35 to 54 and only 8 percent of women age 55 and older.

While more than one in two millennial women say they’ve received a dick pic, roughly only one in four millennial men (27 percent) admit to sending one. 20 percent of the 1,143 millennial men surveyed say they “prefer not to say” whether they’d sent a dick pic (a phallic photograph, if you will). Half of millennial men (50 percent) say never have they ever sent a dick pic.

The most confusing information out of the survey is that 3 percent of millennial men “don’t know” if they’ve sent a dick pic. Which, like...what part don’t you know???

The survey also reveals some problems with the way people view consent and sending nude photos. While 34 percent of millennial men who’ve sent a naked picture say they were asked by the recipient to sent it, a whopping 24 percent say they have done so without being asked. That’s almost one in five men.

Women also say they are not asking for these pictures. Only 11 percent of women overall say they have asked to be sent a dick pic. That number increases to 23 percent among millennial women. However, of the 53 percent of millennial women who have received a dick pick, more than three in four 78 percent) say those pictures were unsolicited. In fact, YouGov found “more young women responded that they’d received an unwanted “dick pic” than had received one because they asked for it.” 60 percent of women overall say they’ve received an unsolicited dick pic.

This miscommunication about nude photos also extends to the ways women perceive those pictures and how men think women perceive them. When given a range of adjective to describe what they thought about dick pics, most millennial women picked the words “gross” (49 percent), “stupid” (48 percent), and “sad” (24 percent). When millennial men were asked how they think women would describe dick pics, the number one answer was “gross” at 32 percent. However, the second highest adjective chosen was “sexy” at 30 percent. Only 17 percent of millennial women described dick pics as “sexy.” The same was true for just 9 percent of women overall.

A 2013 survey from security software company McAfee, as reported by Scientific American, also found young people among those most likely to sext. 70 percent of young adults ages 18 to 24 say they’ve received “sexually suggestive photos and messages.” McAfee’s survey also found that young men were more likely to partake in sexting than young women, with 61 percent of 18- to 24-year-old men saying they sext and only 48 percent of women of the same age group saying the same.

Previous research has found young men are less aware about what constitutes sexual assault. A survey by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that young men are less likely than women to view things like non-consensual voyeurism, sexual coercion, and verbal harassment as forms of sexual assault. This is especially troubling given the number of young men who are sending dick pics and the even greater number of women who are not asking for them.

Sexting (e.g. sending dick pics) is a form of sexual engagement, as its name suggests. And like any other form of sexual contact, it requires consent. So, my dudes, next time you want to send a Snapchat of your scrotum, maybe ask first.