Lucy Murray

23 November 15
JOUR175
Section 0103
Pornography and Male Adolescent Sexuality
The Federal Trade Commission defines sexually explicit content as Depictions or
descriptions of: (1) sexual references; (2) full or partial nudity, including depictions of uncovered
female breasts, aroused or unaroused male or female genitalia, and unrealistic or overly detailed
genitalia; (3) bestiality; (4) sexual acts to or with minors (anyone under the age of 18); (5) sexual
acts including, but not limited to, penetration/intercourse, and/or oral sex with or without another
avatar or any other object, including overt sexual toys and/or sexual aids; or (6) sexual behavior
that has a violent context (Marcus et al., 2009).1 In the United States, there is a high rate of
youth exposure to sexually explicit content through online mediums; a majority of this exposure
to adolescents is unwanted. However, wanted exposure to online pornography is highest among
teenage males (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2007). In one study, it was found that 87 percent of
adolescent online-seekers of pornography were male (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005). There is
research supporting the idea that adolescents who frequently visit sexually explicit websites are
more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors and more likely to have sexually permissive
attitudes (Braun-Courville & Rojas, 2009). Additionally, there is evidence that male adolescents
that seek out pornography, with certain predisposed attributes for sexual aggression, will have
greater rates of actual sexual aggression compared to their peers who do not seek out
pornography (Owens, Behun, Manning, & Reid). Thus, this paper will attempt to establish that
male adolescents seek out pornography at a higher rate than female adolescents, indicate that
high exposure to pornography leads to a negative impact on male adolescent sexuality, and that
1 Inthispaper,thetermssexuallyexplicitcontentandpornographyareusedinterchangeably.

proposed solutions to this issue can be found in an approach that utilizes media literate
techniques.
Male adolescents seek out sexually explicit content online more often than their female
peers. In 2005, researchers Michele Ybarra and Kimberly Mitchell published a report for the
Crimes Against Children Research Center, examining data collected from the Youth Internet
Safety Survey.2 Data for this study was collected between the fall of 1999 and spring of 2000 and
had a sample size of 1,501 American adolescents (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005). In 2007, a similar
study was also published for the Crimes Against Children Research Center. Researchers Janis
Wolak, Kimberly Mitchell, and David Finkelhor conducted a survey, and data was collected
between the spring and summer of 2005, with a sample size of 1,500 American adolescents
(Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2007). Both reports had similar findings about male exposure to
pornography. In the 2005 report, it was revealed that 8 percent of all adolescents reported wanted
exposure; in the 2007 report, this statistic increased to 15 percent of adolescents reporting
wanted exposure. Finally, Ybarra and Mitchell found that boys were more than 7 times as likely
to report online-seeking (p <.001) (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005). This statistic increased to 8.6
times (p <0.000) in the 2007 report (Wolak, Mitchell, & Finkelhor, 2007). Finally, both reports
found that male adolescents 14 years and older, as compared to their younger counterparts, were
nearly three times as likely to report wanted exposure. Thus, these surveys indicate that male
adolescents seek out pornography online significantly more often than female adolescents;
moreover, there is an overall increase in this trend over time. There have been attempts to explain
the gender difference in online porn-seeking behavior, which refer to both pressures created by
social spheres and physiological explanations.
2 The Youth Internet Safety Survey was a telephone survey conducted to gain a greater
understanding about the quantity and effects of online exposure to sexual content.

In the academic journal, Porn Studies, a qualitative study was published that attempted to
explain the phenomenon of male adolescents seeking pornography online more often than their
female peers. It found that there are social conventions and habits that have been ingrained over
time and that make pornography a predominantly male field. It also happens because
pornography, frequently, is a product created by men for men (Scarcelli, 2015). While this
series of interviews is less empirical by nature, it confirms the societal view that adolescents tend
to view pornography as socially acceptable for males to consume for sexual arousal. An article
The Journal of Early Adolescence gave more nuances to this explanation by stating that there is
also a physiological component.3 They hypothesized that viewing sexually explicit content
fulfills the sensation-seeking desire in adolescent males. Further, they proposed that adolescent
males in that pubertal stage tend to have higher levels of sensation seeking desire. Thus, it
follows that males in the pubertal stage will view pornography online more often. This
hypothesis was accepted as true by their statistical analysis (Beyens, Vandenbosch, &
Eggermont, 2014). Thus, there is a physiological explanation for the higher rate of male
adolescent exposure to pornographyon a most basic level, male adolescent sexuality will be
intrigue and inclined to be aroused by porn. However, both social pressures and physiological
sensation seeking that encourages male adolescents to view pornography may have negative
impacts on male adolescent sexuality.
High exposure to pornography has a negative impact on male sexuality. According to a study
published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, adolescents with higher exposure to sexuality
explicit websites were more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors such as anal sex,
multiple sexual partners, and substance use during sex (Braun-Courville & Rojas, 2009).
3 According to Medical News Today, physiology is the study of the mechanisms that are
consistent with an organisms normal functioning. In this case, physiology refers to the natural
development of male adolescent sexuality.

Further, adolescents who intentionally viewed online pornography had a higher sexual
permissiveness score4, at 2.3, compared to those who had not been exposed, at 1.9 (p <.001)
(Braun-Courville & Rojas, 2009). In the report submitted to Communication Research, this
sexually permissive attitude in male adolescents was found to likely be accompanied with less
progressive attitudes toward gender roles, sexual harassment perpetration, and having oral sex
and sexual intercourse two years later (Brown & LEngle, 2009). Pornography has a negative
impact on male sexuality, because it is not only indicative of unsafe sexual practices, but it also
reinforces the stereotype of women as sexual objects (Flood, 2009). This objectification and
degradation of women, due to pornography, may translate into male adolescents committing acts
of sexual aggression.
The possible link between male adolescent consumption of pornography with sexually
aggressive behavior should be explored, because an increase in sexually aggressive behavior
among males has negative consequences for society. In the aforementioned study for Crimes
Against Children Research Center by Ybarra and Mitchell (2005), it was found that frequent
exposure to online pornography could not be directly related to increased sexual aggression.
However, they did find that male adolescents who have predisposing risk levels towards
aggressive sexual behavior, those who frequently consume pornography have more than four
times greater levels of sexual aggression compared to their peers who infrequently seek out
pornography (Ybarra & Mitchell, 2005). This finding may be elucidated further by a study
conducted for the journal Aggressive Behavior, which differentiates between pornography that is
violent and nonviolent. It was found that intentional, high exposure to violent pornography
increases the chance of sexually aggressive behavior by an almost 6-fold increase while
exposure to nonviolent pornography is not statistically significantly related to sexually
4 Sexual permissiveness refers to leniency or casual attitude toward sexual encounters.

aggressive behavior (Ybarra et al., 2010). The reality that violent pornography can be connected
to sexually aggressive behavior in male adolescents is disconcerting, because the pornography
industry often produces media with high levels of violence. A content analysis of 304 popular
pornographic scenes found that 88 percent contained physical aggression and 48 percent
contained verbal aggression. Women were the targets of both physical and verbal aggression in
94.4 percent of the occurrences (Bridges et al., 2010). Sexually aggressive behavior, encouraged
by increasing numbers of violent sexually explicit available online, can be reduced in male
adolescents if an approach toward higher media literacy is made.
The negative impact of pornography on male adolescent sexuality can be reduced with
efforts to increase media literacy among both parents and adolescents. In the book Media
Literacy by W. James Potter, children are identified as a special audience that should be protected
from the negative effects of media. Potter claims that children are an especially vulnerable group,
because they lack experience and have lower levels of cognitive, emotional, and moral
development. To help facilitate better media literacy among adolescents, Potter suggests that
parents impose restrictions on adolescents exposure to media (Potter, 2012). The American
Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that parents (1) limit total screen time for children
older than 2 years to no more than 1 to 2 hours/day, (2) avoid screen time for children younger
than 2 years, (3) keep childrens bedrooms free of screen media (Strasburger, Jordan, &
Donnerstein, 2009). The AAPs recommendations seem to coincide with Potters ideas about
restricting media content for adolescents. Applying this idea to the issue of adolescent
pornography viewership, it holds that reducing access to pornography will mitigate the negative
effects on adolescents. This imposed restriction could take form of parents reducing allowances
for adolescents to use the Internet, reducing allowances for adolescents to use devices that can

access the Internet, or creating filtering systems that decrease the likelihood that adolescents will
view sexually explicit content. Potter also suggests that families practice active meditation.
Active meditation describes conversations parents have with their children about media content
that they consume to reduce the negative impact of said content (Potter, 2012). This kind of
meditation seems to work, because according to the AAP: adolescents who report that they
discuss the content of what they see on television are less likely to engage in risky sexual
activity (Strasburger, Jordan, & Donnerstein, 2009). And again, the AAP recommends that
parents co-view media with their children and discuss the content (Strasburger, Jordan, &
Donnerstein, 2009). Discussing the viewership of pornography, specifically, may also better
enable parents to address inaccuracies or unsafe practices in such content. Media literacy, as
perpetuated by a parental figure, can help reduce the negative effects of pornography on male
adolescent sexuality. The entertainment industry could greatly help parents facilitate these
conversations about sexual health between parents and adolescents.
When producers of media are conscientious of providing accurate or healthy depictions
of sexual practices, the negative effects of pornography can be reduced. Pornography is
particularly harmful to adolescents, because it does not accurate information about sexual
practices. Young people are inherently disadvantaged by this information gap, because they will
tend to lack the experience that adult viewers have (Potter, 2012). However, if entertainment
media makes an effort to provide accurate information, it can increase the knowledge of sexual
health in adolescent viewers. This was found to be true in several cases. For example, a survey
was conducted after an episode of the television show Friends aired that depicted a condomefficacy message. It was found that ten percent of adolescent viewers talked to adult about
condom efficacy, due to the show (Collins et al., 2003). Another study looked at the effects of

viewers after watching health-related storylines in the television show ER. One episode had a
scene that provided information on emergency contraception, and a different episode contained
information about the human papilloma virus (HPV). Of those surveyed, 20 percent had learned
about emergency contraception and 32 percent had learned about HPV from ER (Brodie et al.,
2001). Thus, this provides evidence that producers of entertainment media can positively impact
adolescents and their knowledge of sexual health. This may very well help mitigate the
detrimental effects of pornography on male adolescent sexualityand on adolescent sexuality in
general.
There is strong evidence to suggest that adolescent males view sexually explicit content on the
Internet at rates much higher than that of their female peers. Further, as male adolescents
increase in age, their intentional exposure to pornography online increases. This behavior may be
attributed to psychological effects of social expectations that accept male viewership of porn. It
may also be explained by the physiological effects of puberty that exacerbate sensation-seeking
desire, which pornography fulfills. The pervasive effect of pornography on male adolescent
sexuality has been found to: lead to unsafe sexual practices, encourage the objectification of
women, create misleading or inaccurate perceptions of sex, and exacerbate aggressive sexual
behavior. Thus, it may be imperative for parents and the entertainment industry to encourage
greater media literacy within male adolescent to negate the harmful effects of online, sexually
explicit content.

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