A longitudinal investigation of television viewing in adolescence and sexual perfectionism and satisfaction in adulthood

ABSTRACT

This study examines associations between adolescents’ exposure to two television genres that convey contradictory sexual messages and the expectation of sexual perfectionism over a period of 15 years (N = 161). All respondents were in a romantic relationship in the final wave of this longitudinal study. Sitcom viewing during adolescence was related to more sexual perfectionism in adulthood, whereas youth drama viewing predicted less sexual perfectionism over the same period of more than a decade. These associations were not moderated by their motivation to learn about dating from television. Adolescents’ sitcom viewing was indirectly related to lower levels of sexual and relational satisfaction in young adulthood, whereas youth drama viewing indirectly predicted more satisfaction through the association with sexual perfectionism.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual perfectionism
• sexual satisfaction
• television
• adolescence
• positive and negative media effects

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laurens Vangeel is a researcher at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research. He studies whether media use during adolescence has a long-term impact on the sexual development across different developmental stages.

Laura Vandenbosch is an assistant professor at the School for Mass Communication Research. The relationship between media and well-being is the core subject of her research, leading to international publications in several fields including developmental psychology, sexology, body image, social relationships and communication theory.

Steven Eggermont is dean at KU Leuven's Faculty of Social Sciences and professor at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research. His work focuses on media use during the life course and effects of exposure to the media on perceptions and behaviors.

Paul J. Wright is an associate professor at The Media School at Indiana University. His disciplinary interests are health and mass communication; his specialty interests within these domains are sexual socialization and sexual health.

ORCID

Laurens Vangeel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6804-3950

Notes

1 Although these questions about genre viewing only included the stated example programs, a list of television programs that preceded these questions in the survey also included programs such as Grounded for Life and My Wife and Kids as examples of English sitcoms and Popular and 15/Love as examples of youth dramas that were being aired at the time of the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant from Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) to the second and third author.