engleski

Effects of pornography use on adolescents’ sexual debut and condom use: A longitudinal assessment

Pornography has been recently described as a “public health crisis”, partially in a response to the substantial increase in adolescent exposure to and use of pornography. With the increase in the accessibility and use of pornography, there are growing concerns about the association between pornography use and risky sexual behaviors. The concerns have been based on different but interrelated conceptual models, such as the cultivation and sexual scripting theories. Cross-sectional studies that explored the role of pornography in hastening sexual debut and discouraging condom use produced mixed findings—reiterating the importance of longitudinal assessment. Previous longitudinal studies, which mostly focused on the effects of sexualized media (rather than pornography) use, observed a significant association between media use and earlier sexual debut. The two panel studies that did investigate the relationship between pornography use and sexual debut in the USA and Belgium also found a significant positive relationship. Building on the previous research, this presentation aims to further the understanding of the relationships between pornography use, the timing of sexual initiation and condom use at most recent sexual intercourse—taking into account peer influence and controlling for the age at first exposure to pornography. Does pornography hasten adolescents’ sexual debut? Does it influence the odds of condom use? Using data collected in a cohort of 16-year-old Croatian students over a period of 1.5 years, mixed-effects modeling of repeated measurements and a propensity matching strategy to assess the robustness of findings were employed to address the key research questions. This study’s findings are intended to inform the field, but also to provide evidence relevant to educational experts and policy makers.

effects of pornography use ; adolescents’ sexual debut ; condom use

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