No parent likes to think about what their teenager is watching on the internet, in part because you worry that this will have an impact on your teen’s sexual health and wellbeing. Many parents as concerned that viewing sexually explicit programmes or content on websites may distort young people’s view of sex, leading them to put their wellness at risk by having sex with multiple partners. However, this is not, in fact, the case, say researchers from the Netherlands.
While a new report, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, showed that watching porn does have some effect on teen sexual behaviour, it does not truly influence whether a young adult will have risky sex or lots of partners. The results of the study revealed that watching porn can make your teenager to have a one-night stand or sex for money, but the influence porn has is minimal compared to other factors, like personality type, educational and family background, and poverty. This was based on a survey 4,600 young people between the ages of 15 and 25 living in the Netherlands during 2008-2009.
The researchers, led by Gert Martin Hald of the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen, found that 88% of teenage boys and 45% of teenage girls had looked at some form of sexually explicit media over the past year. This included all kinds of porn, such as bondage, soft core, and violent images, but the influence of that porn on behaviour was small, albeit scientifically significant. The scientists classified sexual behaviours into three broad areas: adventurous sex (e.g. threesomes or sex with someone met online), partner experience (such as one-night stands) and transactional sex, involving payment. Watching porn increased the likelihood of young adults saying “yes” to one or more of these behaviours.
However, the important element of this study is that Hald and his team also asked questions gauging traits like gender, age, education, religious belief, relationship status, ethnicity, self-esteem, sexual sensation-seeking (how driven a person is to seek new experiences) and others. According to Hald, even though few studies have tried to incorporate these other factors, ‘associations between porn and sexual behaviour or attitudes really always should be studied in conjunction with other relevant factors, such as personality.’
Young people with the personality type of sexual sensation-seeking were highly likely to engage in risky sexual behaviours. Hald explained, ‘only 2-3% of our sample engaged in transactional behaviours, and the proportion of these behaviours explained by porn viewing was only 1% for men and 2% for women.’ He noted that other factors, such as poverty and culture, were more important. The frequency of looking at porn explained only about 3-4% of behaviour, and so, the study concluded, ‘This suggests that frequency of [porn] consumption is just one factor among many that may influence the sexual behaviours of young people.’
Still, it’s important to note that this study took place in the Netherlands, which has somewhat more liberal sexual cultures where, for example, prostitution is legal. Hald commented, ‘I think that the social and sexual context of viewing pornography impacts the association between pornography and the sexual behavioural outcomes studied.’ Chauntelle Tibbals, a sociologist at the University of Southern California who studies the adult entertainment industry, agreed, pointing out that young people may turn to porn for sex clues in countries that don’t provide solid sex education. ‘If you did not already know about this in real life, or have sex education, or experience it with a peer, and you see it in porn, you may think, “Oh, I want to do that,”’ she said.