Adolescent Pornography Exposure, Condom Use, and the Moderating Role of Parental Sexual Health Communication: Replication in a U.S. Probability Sample

ABSTRACT

Following calls for an increase in replication studies in communication science as well as multiple other disciplines, the present study provides a direct replication of a pragmatically and theoretically important investigation of U.S. adolescents’ pornography exposure, parent-adolescent sexual health communication, and condomless sex published in this journal. Parent-adolescent sexual health communication has been suggested as a sexual risk-reduction mechanism, but condomless sex among U.S. adolescents is increasing. Simultaneously, pornography remains an extremely popular media genre and condomless sex is the norm in pornographic depictions. The findings of the present study replicated the findings of the original study, with the most notable replicated finding being an interaction between pornography exposure and parent-adolescent sexual health communication on the likelihood of condomless sex. Both in the original and present study, the association between U.S. adolescents’ pornography exposure and likelihood of condomless sex decreased as parental-adolescent sexual health communication increased. Results are discussed in terms of the challenges to examining these particular relationships among U.S. youth and the state of replication in the pornography effects literature.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

The institutional review board at the authors’ university reviewed and approved study protocols and measures. Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Notes

1. Please see Wright et al. (2020) for additional background and literature review.

2. An additional impetus for some replications has to do with perceived limitations of the original study’s method (e.g., perceptions of invalid measures or inappropriate statistical application and inference). Although Wright et al. (2020) identified several areas where future studies could expand on their method (e.g., employ a multi-wave longitudinal design, assess mediating mechanisms in addition to moderating factors), the present effort was not motivated by perceived deficiencies with Wright et al. (2020). Because of the novelty of Wright et al. (2020), we deemed a direct replication to be the indicated next step. This decision is consistent with the sentiments of a recent pornography effects review article: “As in other areas of media and sexuality research … our confident knowledge will expand more quickly with a focused effort on direct replication rather than a scattered and divergent approach to variable selection and measurement” (Akbari et al., 2024, p. 5).

3. Wright et al. (2020) analysis included 95 adolescents. The decrease in sexually active youth from Wright et al. (2020) to the present study is consistent with other national probability studies of changes in youth sexual behavior in the U.S. over time (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023; Lindberg, Firestein, et al., 2021; Lindberg, Scott, et al., 2021).

4. Two differences between the present study’s measure of pornography exposure and Wright et al. (2020) measure should be noted. First, Wright et al. (2020) included an additional category: amateur pornography. Second, Wright et al. (2020) asked youth who had seen pornography whether they had ever seen these specific types. In the present study, youth who had seen pornography were asked about exposure to these types in the last six months. The present method was adopted to be consistent with Peter and Valkenburg’s approach to pornography exposure assessment among youth, as their measurement is seminal (Peter & Valkenburg, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2008), including in the evaluation of adolescents’ pornography exposure and condomless sex (Peter & Valkenburg, 2011), and continues to be widely modeled (van Oosten et al., 2017; Wright & Herbenick, 2022; Wright, R. S. Tokunaga, et al., 2023).

5. The present assessment of condomless sex expanded on Wright et al. (2020) approach in two ways. First, Wright et al. (2020) asked only about condomless sex during sexual intercourse. Second, Wright et al. (2020) asked about condom use in general, while the present study demarcated between external and internal condom use, with utilization of either method garnering a “0” (i.e., condom used) score in the present analysis. The present study’s point-estimate of 52.90% of adolescents using a condom during their last sexual experience is consistent with recent data (i.e., 2021) from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), which found that 52% of adolescents used a condom during their last sexual intercourse (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). That fewer youth in the present study reported using a condom than in Wright et al. (2020) is also consistent with trends over time reported in the YRBS: 2011 (60%), 2013 (59%), 2015 (57%), 2017 (54%), 2019 (54%), 2021 (52%).

6. It should be noted that the correlation between pornography exposure and condomless sex in the present study (r = −.03) fell below the lower bound of the meta-analytic confidence interval (r = .11; 95% CI: .06, .15) found by Tokunaga et al. (2020).

7. It should be noted that the negative correlation between parent-adolescent sexual health communication and condomless sex in the present study (r = −.17) was stronger than the parallel (variables coded so that positive correlations equated to lower sexual risk) meta-analytic association (r = .10; 95% CI: .08, .13) found by Widman et al. (2016).

8. For example, an a priori G*Power analysis (Faul et al., 2009) suggests that to detect a significant point-biserial correlation of .17 (the size of the correlation between pornography exposure and condomless sex in Wright et al., 2020), a sample size of 210 or greater would be preferred (assuming a one-tailed test and power of .80). Likewise, an a priori G*Power analysis suggests that to detect a significant point-biserial correlation of −.15 (the size of the correlation between parent-adolescent sexual health communication and condomless sex in Wright et al., 2020), a sample size of 270 or greater would be preferred (assuming a one-tailed test and power of .80).

Additional information

Funding

The NSSHB was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under the Award Number [R01HD102535]. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.