Impacts on Young People
We know that young people are accessing explicit content online. We know less about how this exposure is impacting their attitudes and behaviours. If kids are finding accurate and good quality information about sexual health or healthy relationships, that’s a positive thing. However, if the bulk of their exposure is to pornography, then they may be receiving distorted messages about relationships and sexual behaviour.
Numerous concerns relating to young people’s exposure to explicit sexual depictions have been raised by health professionals and others. These include becoming sexually active at earlier ages, experiencing increased violence or abuse in sexual relations, increased acceptance of sexual stereotypes and increased obsession with body image. However, the evidence is either absent or inconclusive in most of these cases. For instance, the average age of sexual debut did not change meaningfully in Ontario between 2000 and 2012, despite the tremendous changes in the availability of online pornography during that period,[2] while a 2022 study of 3000 Canadian adults found an average sexual debut at 17[3] - roughly the same as in 1994.[4]
There is more evidence for the idea that pornography provides viewers with sexual scripts - ideas about what kinds of behaviour are expected and pleasurable for different people during sex.[5] This seems likely to be true, given that many youth turn to pornography to learn about sex and to “find out what arouses and excites them.”[6] But as Blake Spence, co-creator of the Calgary-based program, puts it, “the script about what sexual relationships should be has been written for young men – that they have to be the aggressors and that it’s about their pleasure, not necessarily their female partner’s… They need a lens to understand that those messages can be harmful, and that they’re actually not realistic.”[7]
Here, too, though, the evidence is mixed. The concerns most often raised are that youth will learn aggressive sexual scripts,[8] or that particular sexual acts that are violent or even dangerous – such as spanking or choking – will be normalized.[9] While there is some evidence that these practices are on the rise, there is little evidence that many people are specifically inspired by pornography to try them;[10] as well, these behaviours appear fairly infrequently in the most commonly-viewed pornographic videos and their occurrence in videos hasn’t become more frequent over time.[11]
There is significant evidence that most pornography – either because of the imagined audience, industry practices or the conventions and technical limitations of genres such as first-person point-of-view videos – prioritize male sexual gratification.[12] While they frequently show women exhibiting pleasure,[13] they relatively rarely show sexual behaviors focused specifically on women’s pleasure.[14]
Some qualitative research has shown that about a third of young people who are sexually active have tried something that they first saw in porn (young men and young women report this at the same rates), with those who have done so reporting a mix of positive and negative results.[15] Attitudes towards consent may also be influenced, as porn fairly often depicts scenarios in which one partner is not giving full and free consent (such as when there is a power differential between partners or when an initially resistant person is persuaded to engage in a sexual act)[16] and watching it has been associated with greater acceptance of rape myths.[17]
As with most media effects, the possible impacts of pornography are complex. While we can say with confidence that it does overall have some impact on young people’s views of sex and relationships, as well as their sexual behaviours,[18] it is also true that “recent research suggests that the effects of pornography exposure likely depend on a large number of qualifying and moderating factors.”[19]
Among these factors is the fact that many of the impacts of pornography are also associated with media content that is sexualized but not explicit. For instance, music videos have a similar relationship with several sexting behaviours as pornography does,[20] while a meta-study that looked at “sexualized media ranging from scantily clothed characters to hard-core pornography” found that associations with aggression were similar for both pornography and non-explicit sexualized content such as mainstream movies and video games.[21]
Another factor is that, as with other media, young people are not necessarily passive audiences. While they may be more likely than adults to be influenced by what they see in porn, they already have beliefs, values and tastes. Most, for instance, don’t enjoy videos that include aggression or obviously non-consensual sex[22] and would like to see less of it; as a participant in one study said, aggression in porn is “a turn off. I don’t know why it’s there... I’d like to see less of it. Even if it’s an act, it’s a turn off.”[23] As a result, most (though not all) youth prefer to watch content that matches their own real or hoped-for sex lives.[24]
"[It made] me question if I’m not being aggressive enough sometimes. Or if there’s a general preference for aggression. I wonder if people like it and whether they are pretending or not.”[25]
Despite their own general awareness that porn is not real, many feel that it is “sort of” real[26] – a misconception that may be made worse by the popularity of amateur or supposedly “candid” videos and by the parasocial relationships created on platforms such as OnlyFans. As well, even if they themselves do not think porn reflects reality, many youth experience a two-step flow effect,[27] where they’re not directly influenced by media but by their perception of how others are influenced: “viewers may support the inclusion of some aggressive sexual acts simply because they believe such acts are normative and most—or at least many—viewers desire them.”[28] Similarly, one study found that university students who watched pornography were less likely to use condoms when having sex because it decreased their estimate of how many of their peers used them.[29]
[1] Quoted in The Collaborative Trust for Research & Training in Youth Health & Development (2020) Growing Up With Porn: Insights from young New Zealanders. https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/media/documents/Growing_up_with_porn.pdf
[2] Peel Public Health. (n.d.) Age of first sexual intercourse. https://www.peelregion.ca/health/statusdata/pdf/sexual-intercourse-d.pdf
[3] Peragine, D. E., Skorska, M. N., Maxwell, J. A., Impett, E. A., & VanderLaan, D. P. (2022). The Risks and Benefits of Being “Early to Bed": Toward a Broader Understanding of Age at Sexual Debut and Sexual Health in Adulthood. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 19(9), 1343-1358.
[4] Odynak, D. (1994). Age at first intercourse in Canada: some recent findings. Canadian Studies in Population [ARCHIVES], 51-70.
[5] Sun, C., Bridges, A., Johnson, J., & Ezzell, M. (2016). Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations. The Official Publication of the International Academy of Sex Research, 45(4), 983-994. doi:10.1007/s10508-014-0391-2
[6] Robb, M., & Mann S. (2022) Teens and Pornography. Common Sense.
[7] Bielski, Zosia. “In the age of Internet porn, teaching boys to be good men.” The Globe and Mail, April 21, 2012.
[8] Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2016). Adolescents and pornography: A review of 20 years of research. The Journal of Sex Research, 53(4-5), 509-531.
[9] Herbenick, D., Guerra-Reyes, L., Patterson, C., Rosenstock Gonzalez, Y. R., Wagner, C., & Zounlome, N. (2021). “It was scary, but then it was kind of exciting”: Young women’s experiences with choking during sex. Archives of sexual behavior, 1-21.
[10] Herbenick, D., Guerra-Reyes, L., Patterson, C., Rosenstock Gonzalez, Y. R., Wagner, C., & Zounlome, N. (2021). “It was scary, but then it was kind of exciting”: Young women’s experiences with choking during sex. Archives of sexual behavior, 1-21.
[11] Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2020). Aggression in pornography: myths and realities. Routledge.
[12] Fritz, N., Malic, V., Fu, T. C., Paul, B., Zhou, Y., Dodge, B., ... & Herbenick, D. (2022). Porn sex versus real sex: sexual behaviors reported by a US probability survey compared to depictions of sex in mainstream internet-based male–female pornography. Archives of sexual behavior, 51(2), 1187-1200.
[13] Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2020). Aggression in pornography: myths and realities. Routledge.
[14] Fritz, N., Malic, V., Fu, T. C., Paul, B., Zhou, Y., Dodge, B., ... & Herbenick, D. (2022). Porn sex versus real sex: sexual behaviors reported by a US probability survey compared to depictions of sex in mainstream internet-based male–female pornography. Archives of sexual behavior, 51(2), 1187-1200.
[15] The Collaborative Trust for Research & Training in Youth Health & Development. (2020) Growing up with porn: Insights from young New Zealanders
[16] BREAKING DOWN PORN: A Classification Office Analysis of Commonly Viewed Pornography in NZ (2019) Minds over Media. https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/2292/49408/Breaking-Down-Porn.pdf?sequence=2
[17] Maes, C., Schreurs, L., van Oosten, J. M., & Vandenbosch, L. (2019). #(Me) too much? The role of sexualizing online media in adolescents’ resistance towards the metoo-movement and acceptance of rape myths. Journal of adolescence, 77, 59-69.
[18] Coyne, S.M., Ward, L.M., *Kroff, S.L., *Davis, E.J., *Holmgren, H.G., Jensen, A. C., Erickson, S., & *Essig, L.W. (2019). Contributions of mainstream sexual media exposure to sexual attitudes, perceived peer norms, and sexual behavior: A meta-analysis. Journal of Adolescent Health, 64, 430-436.
[19] Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2020). Aggression in pornography: myths and realities. Routledge.
[20] Van Ouytsel, J., Ponnet, K., & Walrave, M. (2014). The associations between adolescents' consumption of pornography and music videos and their sexting behavior. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(12), 772-778.
[21] Burnay, J., Kepes, S., & Bushman, B. J. (2022). Effects of violent and nonviolent sexualized media on aggression‐related thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors: A meta‐analytic review. Aggressive behavior, 48(1), 111-136.
[22] The Collaborative Trust for Research & Training in Youth Health & Development. (2020) Growing up with porn: Insights from young New Zealanders
[23] Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2020). Aggression in pornography: myths and realities. Routledge.
[24] Vertongen, R., van Ommen, C., & Chamberlain, K. (2022). Adolescent Dilemmas About Viewing Pornography and Their Efforts to Resolve Them. Journal of Adolescent Research, 07435584221133307.
[25] Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2020). Aggression in pornography: myths and realities. Routledge.
[26] Vertongen, R., van Ommen, C., & Chamberlain, K. (2022). Adolescent Dilemmas About Viewing Pornography and Their Efforts to Resolve Them. Journal of Adolescent Research, 07435584221133307.
[27] Valkenburg, P. M., Peter, J., & Walther, J. B. (2016). Media effects: Theory and research. Annual review of psychology, 67, 315-338.
[28] Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2020). Aggression in pornography: myths and realities. Routledge.
[29] Wright, P. J., Tokunaga, R. S., & Kraus, A. (2016). Consumption of pornography, perceived peer norms, and condomless sex. Health Communication, 31(8), 954-963.