Critical media attitudes as a buffer against the harmful effects of pornography on beliefs about sexual and dating violence

ABSTRACT

Pornography often depicts traditional gender norms and aggression paired with sexual behaviour. Among adolescents, exposure to pornography is related to unhealthy beliefs about gender, sex and relationships. Critical thinking about media may reduce the internalisation of unhealthy messages in pornography. However, there is a dearth of research examining how critical media attitudes are protective of youth in early adolescence. Using a US sample of ninth- and tenth-grade students (n = 558; M_age = 14; 53% female), this study examines how the relationship between frequency of pornography use and acceptance of traditional gender norms, dating violence and rape myths may be moderated by critical media attitudes. More frequent pornography use was related to greater acceptance of rape myths and gender norms, but only for adolescents who were less sceptical about media messages. For adolescents who were sceptical of media messages about sex, there was no relationship between pornography use and their acceptance of rape myths and gender norms. This study provides preliminary evidence of the protective influence that critical media attitudes may have on adolescents’ sexual and relationship health. In an increasingly digital world, it is critical to provide early media literacy education as part of sexuality education to promote adolescents’ health.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescence
• relationship health
• gender norms
• pornography use
• media scepticism

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. To ensure the relationships between endogenous variables were not inflating this Chi-squared value and driving the significance of the test, a Chi-squared value was calculated to examine the model without the relationships between the endogenous variables: χ² (21) = 162.59, p < .001. This model also fit the data significantly better than the null model.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the US National Institutes of Health under award number R44HD088254 to the third author. Research reported in this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the US National Institutes of Health.