engleski

The Role of Religiosity in Adolescents’ Compulsive Pornography Use: A Longitudinal Assessment

Objective: There is increasing concern that adolescent males are vulnerable to developing compulsive pornography use. Recent research and theorizing suggests that some compulsive pornography use my stem from a conflict between moral values and behavior among religious individuals rather than dysregulated pornography use per se. Pornography use among such individuals is thought to be low despite high distress over use. We hypothesized that compulsive pornography use should generally be associated with higher initial levels and increased growth in male adolescent pornography use over time but that this pattern would be attenuated among the very religious. Design and Method: Hypotheses were tested with a nested linear growth model using longitudinal data of male Croatian adolescents’ pornography use, compulsive pornography use, and religiosity collected over 5 waves that were spaced 6 months apart. Results: As expected, adolescent men who reported features of compulsive pornography use exhibited higher initial levels of pornography use at baseline and more growth across time. Contrary to expectations, compulsive users who were more religious started with lower initial levels of pornography use which grew over time, while compulsive users who were less religious reported high initial levels of pornography use that did not change over time. Conclusions: While results are preliminary, they suggest that adolescent males reporting compulsive pornography use exhibit higher rates of pornography use than males who do not report compulsive pornography use. Rather than negating this tendency, religiosity appears to delay the onset of high pornography use among male adolescents.

child and adolescent sexuality, pornography use, compulsive pornography use, religiosity, moral incongruence

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