Summary

Adolescents are commonly exposed online to pornography, or sexually explicit media intended to arouse: two-thirds of girls (62%) and 9 in 10 boys (93%) are exposed to internet pornography before age 18. Studies examining the effects of pornography use have found that, in both males and females, pornography use increases one’s likelihood of engaging in verbal and physical sexually aggressive behaviors, including harassment and assault. In males only, pornography use is additionally associated with increased attitudes conducive to sexual violence (e.g., belief in rape myths) and a decreased likelihood of intervening as a bystander when another person is being or is at risk of being sexually victimized. Research has developed successful interventions such as “porn literacy” classes, and highlighted the importance of establishing a culture of consent, as ways of countering the negative effects of pornography use.

About Pornography

Pornography refers to any sexually explicit material, such as video, photo, audio, or text, that has the main purpose of arousing its consumer.1

Content analyses have identified that themes of aggression, degradation, and objectification are common in popular pornography.23 For example, one study found that 88.2% of scenes depicted acts of physical aggression and 48.7% depicted acts of verbal aggression.2 These behaviors included spanking, gagging, open handed slapping, hair pulling, choking, and insulting or name-calling. Depictions of sexual acts with inappropriate and more powerful sexual partners (e.g., with one's teacher, faith leader, or older famly member), and of painful and humiliating behavior, are readily available on porn sites.

How pornography use affects individual viewers has long been a subject of research interest. A substantial body of evidence now shows that using pornography is significantly associated with specific attitudes and behaviors relevant to sexual violence (see below).

Using pornography is significantly associated with specific attitudes and behaviors relevant to sexual violence.

Researchers have suggested a variety of explanations for this, including through classical conditioning, operant learning, modeling behavior, “scripting” sexual encounters, displaying gendered power, and activating psychological constructs (such as aggression) that have been primed in the viewer through media use, potentially increasing the likelihood of related behaviors by the viewer.45

Pornography use among adolescents

When the viewers of pornography are youth, pornography may act as a sex educator or teach youth what sex “is”,6 often before they have had much experience with developmentally appropriate exploration of sex themselves. This may be particularly true in the absence of comprehensive sexual health education.

Adolescents often seek out pornography in response to natural, developmentally appropriate curiosities about sex or desires for sexual excitement which adults will never be able to curb, no matter how much they may want to.17

Today, teens can easily and discreetly access pornography online via smartphone, tablet, or computer. Though recent data is lacking, studies from the mid-2000s found that:

• 62% of girls and 93% of boys were exposed to online pornography before age 187
• 42% of 10-17 year-olds who used the internet saw online pornography in the past year8 
• It was rare to see online pornography before age 137
• The most frequent age of exposure to online pornography was 14 for boys and 15 for girls7

Attitudes and Behaviors Affected by Pornography Use

Pornography use has been found to have corrosive effects on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors related to sexual violence in the following areas:

Attitudes conducive to sexual violence

Males who use pornography are more likely to hold attitudes conducive to sexual violence, especially if the porn viewed depicted violence.4910 This includes being accepting of interpersonal violence or rape myths that blame victims of violence, such as:

• “In the majority of rapes, the victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation”
• “Any healthy woman can successfully resist a rapist if she really wants to”
• “Sometimes the only way a man can get a cold woman turned on is to use force”
• “Being roughed up is sexually stimulating to many women”11

Sexually aggressive behaviors

Males and females who view pornography are more likely to be sexually aggressive in both verbal and physical ways, especially if the porn viewed depicted violence,412 although some researchers have found that evidence for this is not conclusive.13 Examples of sexually aggressive behaviors include:

• Sexually harassing another person
• Sexually assaulting another person
• Pressuring someone into sex (such as through repeated asks, displays of unhappiness, lies or false promises, or threats of ending a relationship or spreading rumors)
• Using a weapon or threatening to use one to obtain sex
• Preventing another person’s movement or escape by using one’s body weight or pinning them down
• Creating a sexually hostile climate4

Bystander behaviors to prevent sexual violence

Males who view pornography that depicts violence are less likely to engage in bystander behavior,1014 which means intervening to support another person before, during, or after they are sexually victimized.15 This includes:

• Walking a friend who has had too much to drink home
• Talking to the friends of a drunk person to make sure they do not leave their drunk friend behind at a party
• Asking another person who seems upset if they are okay or need help
• Speaking up against racist or sexist comments
• Distracting a peer who appears to be about to abuse another peer15

Ways to Mitigate Negative Effects of Pornography Use

Researchers are continuing to develop and test interventions that may counteract the negative effects of pornography use. So far much of this interest has focused on reducing attitudes conducive to sexual violence following pornography use, for which several interventions have been found promising or effective:

• Debriefing interventions are educational tools that contain information on sex, rape myths, and the fictional nature of pornographic depictions.16 Presenting debriefing interventions to someone after they have viewed pornography has been shown to reduce the likelihood that they will hold attitudes conducive to sexual violence.16 
• Having parent-child conversations that are critical of pornography, also known as negative active mediation, has received some support for decreasing attitudes conducive to sexual violence. Specifically, one study found that young adults who received negative active mediation more frequently in adolescence were more likely to endorse that pornography “degrades women” or “increases violence towards women.”17
• Porn literacy classes attempt to teach critical awareness of pornography use and address related attitudes through providing media literacy skills. Early studies have shown that porn literacy education may be able to reduce sexist attitudes or perceptions of pornography as realistic among participants.1819

As holding attitudes conducive to sexual violence increases males’ likelihood of committing sexual violence,2021 the interventions above may have implications for reducing sexually violent behavior by altering the attitudes that support it. More broadly, and at the societal level, researchers have argued that there is a need to create a culture of consent in which it is normalized and central to any sexual activity to establish mutual consent.

There is a need to create a culture of consent in which establishing mutual consent is normalized as a central part of any sexual activity.

Consent requires an affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement by all parties, and can be withdrawn at any time22 (See What is child sexual abuse?). A culture of consent rejects the messages that popular pornography sends – that sexual assault and abuse are normalized and trivialized.23

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• 2. a. b. Bridges, A. J., Wosnitzer, R., Scharrer, E., Sun, C., & Liberman, R. (2010). Aggression and sexual behavior in best-selling pornography videos: A content analysis update. Violence against women, 16(10), 1065-1085.
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