Youth and pornography in social context

Abstract

Data drawn from two studies of adolescents are used to analyze the relationship between indicators of participation in conventional social networks and exposure to sexually explicit media. In both studies, the data indicate that higher degrees of participation in friendship networks, dating patterns, etc., are related to higher levels of exposure to a variety of sexually explicit media. Sexually explicit media are related to sexual behavior, but sexual behavior is also strongly related to participation in adolescent social behavior patterns. Sexually explicit media (pornography) are very often viewed as a powerful behavior-shaping mechanism, but this view is not supported by the data presented in this paper. Rather, pornography is seen as an element in a total picture of media consumption, and like other media it is consumed in proportion to the social position of the consumer. Adolescence is seen as a time of coming to grips with heterosociality and heterosexuality in a world which provides little training for either. Pornography is seen as one of the few media which at least provide an imagery and language for this process of sociosexual development. Levels of exposure to pornography are seen to be low (not exceeding the number of pictures in a year's issue of Playboyor a single deck of sexually explicit playing cards) and unable to increase sexual experimentation, although the reverse may be true.