Varieties of Religious and Pornographic Experience: Latent Growth in Adolescents’ Religiosity and Pornography Use

ABSTRACT

The relationship between adolescent religiosity and pornography use has been longitudinally tested only in the United States. Given the social relevance of hypothesized mechanisms underlying the association, this study offers a three-wave longitudinal assessment of parallel latent growth in the two constructs carried out in a Southern European country. Using responses of 1,041 Croatian adolescents from the capital city (M_age = 16.14 years, SD = .45; 64.6% of female students) and latent growth curve modeling approach, we explored links between individual trajectories of change in religiosity and pornography use over a period of 24 months. In the observed period, religiosity decreased and pornography use increased among both male and female adolescents, but their dynamics were independent of each other—pointing to other (unmeasured) processes responsible for both adolescents’ sexualization and secularization. Important to note, the findings also pointed to an important role of age at first exposure to pornography for its frequency of use in middle to late adolescence.

Notes

¹ This is reflected in the fact that the pattern of significant covariances in the model was identical to the one observed in the unconditional model.

² A significant negative correlation between the latent intercept and slope of pornography use, according to which users characterized by a higher baseline frequency reported a lower increase in pornography use over time, should be considered with caution. Given that the construct was measured by an ordinal scale with a restricted range, the finding is likely an artifact of the scaling method (cf. Little, 2013, p. 260).

Additional information

Funding

This work has been fully funded by Croatian Science Foundation grant number 9221 awarded to the third author; University of Zagreb.