Prospective Associations Between Pornography Viewing and Sexual Aggression Among Adolescents

Abstract

Adolescence is a critical period for sexuality development; this study examined prospective associations between pornography use and sexual aggression using a longitudinal study of middle and high school students surveyed five times across 3 years (mean age = 13.7 years at baseline; 53.2% female; 76.5% White; 21.0% Native American; 88.9% heterosexual). Across waves, 15.7%–29.0% of adolescents had viewed pornography in the past 6 months. Results indicated significant, reciprocal associations between pornography and sexual harassment perpetration that were stronger for male adolescents, and some significant associations between pornography use and subsequent sexual assault perpetration. Findings underscore the need to consider multiple theories of the link between pornography viewing and aggression and need for media literacy sexual education beginning in middle school.

Attitudes and Sexual Behaviours Associated With Adolescent Online Pornography Consumption: A Critical Commentary During COVID-19

“…Our focus here is on repeated and intentional consumption of online pornography. Lifetime prevalence rates of adolescents who intentionally seek out pornography have been reported to be as high as 98% (Weber et al, 2012) with consistent findings of higher rates for boys when compared to girls (Peter & Valkenburg, 2016;Waterman et al, 2022). This suggests that a substantial proportion of adolescents intentionally seek out pornography.…”

“…Pornography can easily be accessed by minors, which has become a topic of scholarly interest in recent years given that adolescence is a time of particular sexual development and curiosity (Waterman et al, 2022;Weber et al, 2012). Weber and colleagues (2012) argued that among adolescents, pornography use has become "an everyday phenomenon" among youth living in Western countries (p. 410).…”

“…There are no restrictions on the genre of pornography that can be viewed (DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2018) with previously placed protections between the viewer and the online material having been gradually eliminated (Mead & Sharpe, 2020). The vast majority of pornography is of heterosexual content made by men for men, which uses predictable patterns of showing degrading, humiliating, and objectifying content with explicit sex scenes involving forced vaginal and anal intercourse that are readily available on the Internet (Bradfield, 2015;Bridges, 2019;DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016;DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2018;Malamuth, 2018;Powell & Henry, 2017;Quadra et al, 2017;Shor, 2019;Waterman et al, 2022).…”

“…While many females consume online pornography, there are important gender differences. Research consistently indicates that more boys and men than girls and women consume online pornography (Boniel-Nissim et al, 2020;Bridges, 2019;de Alarcón et al, 2019;Grubbs et al, 2022;Malamuth, 2018;Rasmussen et al, 2015;Schneider, 2004;Shor, 2019;Stanley et al, 2018;Svedin et al, 2011;Waterman et al, 2022) with the average age of first exposure of adolescents being around 11 years of age (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016;Foubert et al, 2019;Hall & Hearn, 2018). Rothman et al (2015) reported that nearly one in four 10-15-year-olds have intentionally viewed pornography with 66% of boys and 39% of girls by the age of 14 years.…”

“…High-speed network services and the availability of mobile internet removed previous barriers to accessing pornography as an acceptable form of recreation among the young demographic (Mead & Sharpe, 2020). Given these new developments, concerns have been raised in the literature about negative impacts (Hilton, 2013;Svedin et al, 2011;Waterman et al, 2022). The largest supplier of commercially produced pornography is Pornhub, which streamed over 115 billion videos last year to a global audience of an estimated one billion viewers, which suggests a high frequency of pornography use (Mead & Sharpe, 2020).…”