What Does Porn Teach Kids About Sex?
While porn is often called “adult material,” many of its consumers are well under the legal age.
Studies show that most young people are exposed to porn by age 13, and according to a nationally representative survey of U.S. teens, 84.4% of 14 to 18-year-old males and 57% of 14 to 18-year-old females have viewed pornography.
That means that most young people are getting at least some of their education about sex from porn, whether they mean to or not. In fact, one study shows that approximately 45% of teens who consumed porn did so in part to learn about sex.
Similarly, survey results also show one in four 18 to 24-year-olds (24.5%) listed pornography as the most helpful source to learn how to have sex.
But what’s the big deal?
According to a 2021 study, 1 out of every 8 porn titles shown to first-time visitors to porn sites described acts of sexual violence.
And according to studies analyzing the content of porn videos themselves, it’s estimated that at least 1 in 3 porn videos (35%) and as many as 9 in 10 videos (88.2%) show acts of physical aggression or violence, while 48.7%—about half—contain verbal aggression. These studies also found that despite the levels of violence and aggression, the targets were almost always portrayed as responding with pleasure or neutrality.
What type of message does that send to young people who turn to porn to learn about sex?
Porn is primarily produced for entertainment purposes, not education, but the ideas porn sells are not conducive to a healthy understanding of sex, sexuality, or mutual pleasure.
In fact, research confirms that women are the targets of aggression or violence in porn about 97% of the time,9 and that only 18.3% of women in popular porn videos (compared to 78% of men) were shown to reach climax.
In addition to the abusive behaviors consistently shown in porn, porn often promotes a number of other problematic sexual narratives. Porn sites are full of videos that not only portray but normalize and fetishize incest, unequal power dynamics, and a variety of situations where marginalized or vulnerable people are abused or taken advantage of.
For example, porn often presents sexual orientation or gender identity as a fetish, dehumanizing those who are not cisgender or heterosexual rather than normalizing them as people deserving of equal love and respect. Whether using degrading slurs to describe transgender people, or the common theme of “girl on girl” content that’s actually catered to the male gaze, porn regularly exploits those in the LGBTQ+ community and caricaturizes, mischaracterizes, and co-opts their experiences as entertaining fetishes rather than legitimate lived experiences.
Additionally, porn often depicts and profits from blatantly racist narratives.
The porn industry often fetishizes race, reducing people of color to sexual categories that often focus on damaging stereotypes.
According to researchers who performed a content analysis of more than 1,700 scenes from two of the world’s most popular porn sites, videos featuring Black people disproportionately emphasize violence and aggression, perpetuate harmful racist stereotypes, and often depict Black people as “worse than objects.”
Also, studies have found that porn tends to use harmful racial stereotypes when portraying Asian women, displaying them as submissive and without agency.
Dr. Carolyn West, an expert on domestic violence and cultural sensitivity, has taught courses on Human Sexuality for more than 20 years. Discussing the porn industry’s history of perpetuating racism against the Black community, she explains, “The porn industry appears to get a free pass to promote horrifically racist and abusive content in the name of sexual entertainment to anyone with internet access, even children.”
Porn isn’t just entertainment. It isn’t just intended for arousal. Whether intentionally or not, it teaches toxic messages that can have real-world consequences.
The research is clear—porn can warp consumers’ ideas about sex and relationships. But the good news is that we can limit those negative effects by raising awareness on this issue, especially to young people. So let’s refocus on healthy relationships and reject the toxic narratives porn perpetuates. Let’s consider the facts before consuming.
Read the full article at https://fightthenewdrug.org/what-does-porn-teach-kids-about-sex/
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