Key Points
- A new study provides the first national look at how young people in Australia are exposed to pornography.
- It found the majority of 15-20 year olds, especially males, have been exposed to porn.
- The study’s authors are calling for public health strategies to address the potential harms.
Exposure to pornography among children could lead to gender-based violence and risky sexual practices and should be treated as a public health issue, researchers have suggested.
A growing body of evidence indicates pornography “plays a role in shaping young people’s sexual understandings, expectations, and experiences”, says a study from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
While some research finds exposure to pornography can have positive implications for young people’s sexual experiences, the new study refers to other data which suggests this view is too narrow and doesn’t take into account porn’s negative influences, especially regarding gender inequalities and violence.
Previous studies have said pornography consumption is associated with harmful behaviours and attitudes, including sexual coercion and aggression, rape myth acceptance, and risky sexual behaviours.
It could also make people more likely to sexually objectify others, hold stereotypical views of women and perpetrate sexual violence.
Porn in Australia: By the numbers
The QUT study, released on Wednesday in the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, provides the first national look at how young people in Australia are exposed to pornography.
Administering an anonymous online survey, researchers from OurWatch, the national organisation working torecruited 1,985 young Australians aged 15-20 from a range of geographical locations and socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds to discuss pornography.
Michael Flood, a professor of sociology at QUT and co-author of the report, told SBS News the new research provided “a very good snapshot of the extent and character of pornography exposure” among young people in Australia.
“The takeaway is that exposure to pornography is common, particularly among boys and young men, and is likely to be having harmful effects,” he said.
“So we need to do something about it.”
The study found that the majority of young people aged 15–20 years old had been exposed to pornography, intentionally or accidentally.
Boys and young men were significantly more likely than girls and young women to have viewed pornography (86 per cent compared to 69 per cent, respectively) and to use it more frequently, with 54.4 per cent of young men viewing pornography at least weekly compared with 14.3 per cent of young women.
The male subjects were also more likely than the female subjects to have sought out porn intentionally, and to first see it while alone, versus with others present.
Of all the young people surveyed who reported they had seen pornography, most were first exposed to it years before their first sexual experience with another person.
Meanwhile, 89 per cent of both male and female study participants were most likely to view porn at home, with 94 per cent viewing it on an electronic device like a smartphone or laptop.
One “particularly confronting” finding of the study, Flood said, was the young age at which respondents reported first seeing pornography.
“The average age of first exposure was 13.2 years for males and 14.1 years for females — and that’s typically two or three years before those individuals are becoming sexually active,” Flood said, adding that some people reported encountering porn at the ages of eight, nine and 10.
The age of first exposure is likely trending downwards as the spread of technology makes porn more accessible, said Flood, who also co-authored the first Australian research on children’s exposure to pornography in 2003.
“Young people’s access to pornography is essentially unfettered,” he said.
“Because of rates of smartphone use and internet use, and because of the ease of availability of pornography, there’s every reason to think that those ages of first exposure are declining over time.”
What do the results mean?
The researchers said the study shows pornography likely has a “significant influence” on sexual attitudes and behaviours in young people in Australia, especially boys and young men.
They also argue that it “supports the need for public health strategies to address the potential harms associated with pornography use”.
Flood outlined four critical strategies:
- Sex education in Australia should cover porn more comprehensively, and invite young people to think more critically about it.
- Parents should be better equipped to have productive conversations about porn with their children
- Large-scale social marketing campaigns should raise community awareness about the sexist and harmful content in pornography and foster more gender-equitable and inclusive social norms.
- The government should play a role in supporting legal and regulatory strategies to lessen the exposure of minors to pornography.
The study suggests in its concluding remarks that reducing pornography’s potential harms could play an important role in the prevention of future sexual violence.
While this particular research focused on the extent and character of young people’s exposure to pornography, rather than collecting data on its impacts, the evidence is well-documented, Flood said
“There’s certainly a solid body of evidence to suggest that pornography use is one risk factor — not the only risk factor, but one risk factor — for sexual violence, perpetration and victimisation,” he said.
What does the literature say?
Previous peer-reviewed studies have found associations between pornography use and sexually aggressive and violence-supportive attitudes.
One study from 2019 found that boys exposed to violent pornography were two to three times more likely to report sexual teen dating violence perpetration and victimisation, compared to their non-exposed counterparts.
That study also found that girls exposed to violent pornography were over 1.5 times more likely to perpetrate threatening teen dating violence.
A 2015 longitudinal study — a method that measures individuals over a prolonged time period — found that pornography use predicts later sexually violent attitudes and behaviours.
That study noted that “consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females”, and that “associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant.”
This year, research about the Man Box — a concept made up of 19 rules that characterise stereotypical ideals related to masculinity — found agreement with the rules was linked to “hostile attitudes towards women as well as viewing of violent pornography”.
The research, by social change organisation Jesuit Social Services, also found “the stronger a man’s agreement with traditional ideas about masculinity, the more likely he was to report using violence against a current or former intimate partner.”
“The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor,” the latter study said.
Flood told SBS News that at an individual level, pornography use is a risk factor for sexual violence victimisation and perpetration. He’s concerned that in Australia, this connection could be fuelling increased rates of sexual violence.
“Sexual violence is getting worse in Australia,” he said. “And one factor that may be driving that is pornography.”
