This study explores how consent has been conceptualized and studied in research on young people’s sexual communication online and through digital devices. By adopting an iterative review method the study maps recent developments within adolescent sexting literature in order to critically discuss how sexual consent is conceptualized within the literature. The review reveals the gendered and technological conditions youth face in their everyday digital sexual practices yet the limited ways in which consent has been considered within the literature. To enrich the recent turn toward consent within sexting literature this paper contributes to the field by drawing on concepts and findings from consent literature and suggests consolidation between the fields. The study further highlights the need to include a concept of consent in sexting literature which considers young people’s embeddedness in heteronormative technologies that reach far beyond their immediate social settings. Lastly, implications for sexuality education and policy are considered. 

In 2018, Sweden removed the use of force or violence from the sexual offences law. Sexual consent, as a legal construct, became based on the lack of voluntariness or willingness rather than the occurrence of violence or threat. Sexual consent is a complex and situational social process; explicit verbal consent is the exception rather than the rule in sexual interactions. Research on consent in relation to sexually aggressive online practices (e.g., unsolicited dick-pics or nudes) is lacking, especially within youth populations. Sexual aggression among youth is significantly tied to online interactions, and young people navigate sexually aggressive environments and cultures on a daily basis. Sexual abuse can occur solely online or through mediated technologies. But online technologies can also be used in sexually violent behaviour that transcends the internet or the mediated interaction itself, such as in grooming cases or as part of intimate partner violence perpetuated over time. In a Swedish context, civil society organizations point to how technologies are central to controlling and violent intimate partner violence among youth. However, a large part of young people’s romantic and sexual lives take place online. Therefore, studies of sexually aggressive practices online need to understand the issue from this perspective. The purpose of the study is to explore how young people negotiate sexual consent in online contexts and/or through mediated technologies. This includes situations such as sending and receiving sexual texts, images or videos, but also engaging in various forms of sexual interactions and negotiations online. The study will further explore how young people’s possibilities to negotiate sexual consent in these contexts are conditioned by their belonging to social categories such as gender, age, sexuality, class, functionality and race/ethnicity. The study will employ focus-group interviews using a vignette-method, as well as individual follow-up interviews.