Young teenagers who receive sext-text messages are six times more likely to have had sex, and those who send more than 100 texts a day are also more likely to be sexually active.

Those stunning statistics are from a University of Southern California research study on understanding the relationship between sext messaging behavior and sex behavior in the early adolescent crowd. There's been much debate on whether sexually explicit communications should be considered a risk behavior or just digital teen flirtation.

"These findings call attention to the need to train health educators, pediatricians and parents on how best to communicate with young adolescents about sexting in relation to sexual behavior," said lead author Eric Rice, assistant professor at the USC School of Social Work, in a press release on the study. "The sexting conversation should occur as soon as the child acquires a cell phone."

The research was published in the July issue of Pediatrics. The study was intended to examine links between early sexual activity and risky sexual behavior, such as sex under the influence of drugs and a higher risk of sexually transmitted disease.

"Our results show that excessive, unlimited or unmonitored texting seems to enable sexting," Rice said. "Parents may wish to openly monitor their young teen's cell phone, check in with them about who they are communicating with, and perhaps restrict their number of texts allowed per month."

The research used an anonymous process to gather data from 1,300 middle schoolers, ranging in age from 10 to 15 years old, in California using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The study results indicate that even if sexting behavior is controlled, those teens sending 100 texts a day were more likely to be sexually active.

Here are some other key findings: Students self-identifying as gay or lesbian were nine times more likely to have sent a sext message, but not more likely to be sexually active. Youths sending more than 100 texts a day were more than twice as likely to have gotten a sext and almost 4.5 times more likely to have sent a sext.

As Tech Times reported a few months earlier, iPhone users are more prone to sexting than those using BlackBerry and Samsung, at least in the UK. The survey states 30 percent of iPhone users sexted, while just 21 percent of BlackBerry users report having sent a sext and just 17 percent of Samsung users have sent a sext.

"It does seem that iPhone owners are certainly a little more risque when it comes to their mobile communications," says Duncan Spencer, managing director of insurance2go.co.uk, which conducted the study.