Violence
Analyzing University Students’ Perceptions Regarding Mainstream Pornography and Its Link to SDG5
Open Access: No.
Abstract
Background: Violence against women and girls continues to be a widespread problem, and its elimination is one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goal 5 toward achieving gender equality. One of the main causes of this violence is the structural sexism present in societies that continues to be perpetuated through pornography, especially among young people. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to analyze the consumption of pornography among young people, studying its effects and relationship with affective-sexual education.
Methods: This study was carried out with a sample of 280 students in the north of Spain. The ages of the entire sample ranged from 18 to 37 years (M = 20.3, SD = 2.6). From the sample, 78.9% (n = 221) define their gender identity as women and 21.1% (n = 59) define their gender identity as men; no person within this research self-identify as non-binary. The instrument used was the Survey on Affective-sexual Education and Pornography (Ballester et al., 2019). The sample was recruited by snowball sampling.
Results: The results of the present study show that the average age at which people start watching pornography is 10.4 years. The majority of young people consume it to satisfy their curiosity. In addition, with regard to gender, boys consume more pornography, especially for masturbation. Finally, 20.5% of the participants believe that the sexual education they have received has not been adequate, and most of them solve their sexual doubts by asking friends.
Conclusions: The results indicate that it is necessary to improve the affective-sexual education provided in schools, since students consume pornography at a very early age, and young people have normalized its consumption to address their curiosity and satisfy their sexual needs. Finally, the impact of pornography consumption on SDG5 was reflected on.
Relevance
The average age at which participants started watching pornography for the first time was 10.4 years old. “This is a worrying starting point, since children are still at an age when they have not even started adolescence” and “through watching pornography, they normalize violent sexual practices especially against women.”
Almost half of all women in the study, and 42% of all participants aged 18-21, agreed that pornography has “affected my relationship with my partner.”
Almost half of the female participants have received some type of offer trying to recruit them to the pornography industry. “This situation raises concerns about the vulnerability of many young women who could be recruited out of economic necessity to participate in so-called “sex work”. This finding also reveals that young women’s bodies are still considered merchandise.”
“When young people were asked about the positive effects of consuming pornography, its use for masturbation was the principal response…[yet] needing pornography to masturbate can lead them to feel sexual desire for these practices in which men exercise power over women, which can generate inequality and even gender-based violence.”
“Many young people may feel that their relationships were disturbed by the perception that they should repeat in their real life the things that they have previously seen in pornographic content.”
“Of particular concern is the early age at which they start consuming pornography, its link to sexual offers received especially by women, the addiction it can create especially in underage children, the generalization of violent and misogynistic practices to real life and above all the lack of tools that young people acknowledge they have to deal with it.” In all, pornography helps prevent the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, which aims to achieve gender equality.
Citation
Biota, I., Dosil-Santamaria, M., Mondragon, N. I., & Ozamiz-Etxebarria, N. (2022). Analyzing University Students’ Perceptions Regarding Mainstream Pornography and Its Link to SDG5. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(13), 8055. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19138055
