Adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit internet material and sexual satisfaction: A Longitudinal study

The aim of this study was to investigate, within a social comparison framework, the causal relationship between adolescents’ use of sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) and their sexual satisfaction. In addition, we tested which adolescents were most susceptible to a potential influence of SEIM on sexual satisfaction. Between May 2006 and May 2007, we conducted a three-wave panel survey among 1,052 Dutch adolescents aged 13–20. Structural equation modeling revealed that exposure to SEIM consistently reduced adolescents’ sexual satisfaction. Lower sexual satisfaction (in Wave 2) also increased the use of SEIM (in Wave 3). Moderator analyses showed that the negative effect of SEIM on sexual satisfaction was stronger for adolescents who had no or limited sexual experience as well as for adolescents who perceived the majority of their peers to be sexually inexperienced. The effect of exposure to SEIM on sexual satisfaction did not differ among male and female adolescents.

[1]  Diane Carlson Jones,et al.  Social Comparison and Body Image: Attractiveness Comparisons to Models and Peers Among Adolescent Girls and Boys , 2001 .

[2]  E. Donnerstein,et al.  Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Issues and Solutions , 1999, Pediatrics.

[3]  Ven-Hwei Lo,et al.  Exposure to Internet Pornography and Taiwanese Adolescents' Sexual Attitudes and Behavior , 2005 .

[4]  J. Wolak,et al.  Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users , 2007, Pediatrics.

[5]  Jane D. Brown,et al.  Sexy Media Matter: Exposure to Sexual Content in Music, Movies, Television, and Magazines Predicts Black and White Adolescents' Sexual Behavior , 2006, Pediatrics.

[6]  L. M. Ward,et al.  The role of the media in body image concerns among women: a meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies. , 2008, Psychological bulletin.

[7]  R. Larsen,et al.  The Satisfaction with Life Scale , 1985, Journal of personality assessment.

[8]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  The affective consequences of social comparison: either direction has its ups and downs. , 1990, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[9]  Richard E. Lucas,et al.  Personality, culture, and subjective well-being: emotional and cognitive evaluations of life. , 2003, Annual review of psychology.

[10]  Edward E. Rigdon,et al.  A Comparative Review of Interaction and Nonlinear Modeling , 1998 .

[11]  W. Snell,et al.  Reliability and validity of the sexuality scale: A measure of sexual‐esteem, sexual‐depression, and sexual‐preoccupation , 1992 .

[12]  Tom W. Smith,et al.  ASKING SENSITIVE QUESTIONS THE IMPACT OF DATA COLLECTION MODE, QUESTION FORMAT, AND QUESTION CONTEXT , 1996 .

[13]  Ladd Wheeler,et al.  Individual Differences in Social Comparison , 2000 .

[14]  W. Dunlap,et al.  Testing Interaction Effects in LISREL: Examination and Illustration of Available Procedures , 2001 .

[15]  Patti M. Valkenburg,et al.  Adolescents' Exposure to Sexually Explicit Internet Material, Sexual Uncertainty, and Attitudes Toward Uncommitted Sexual Exploration , 2008, Commun. Res..

[16]  Shirley A. Star,et al.  AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH , 1980 .

[17]  S. T. Buckland,et al.  An Introduction to the Bootstrap. , 1994 .

[18]  Brian Mustanski,et al.  Getting wired: Exploiting the internet for the collection of valid sexuality data , 2001 .

[19]  L. Festinger.  A Theory of Social Comparison Processes , 1954 .

[20]  Susan S. Hendrick,et al.  Multidimensionality of sexual attitudes , 1987 .

[21]  Jane D. Brown,et al.  Sexual Teens, Sexual Media: Investigating Media's Influence on Adolescent Sexuality , 2001 .

[22]  S. Finney,et al.  Item parceling issues in structural equation modeling , 2001 .

[23]  Jerry Suls,et al.  Social Comparison: Why, With Whom, and With What Effect? , 2002 .

[24]  B. Oliver,et al.  Individual Differences in Media Effects , 2002 .

[25]  Herbert S. Lin,et al.  Youth, Pornography, and the Internet , 2002 .

[26]  Mark Helfand,et al.  Ten Years of Longitudinal Research on U.S. Adolescent Sexual Behavior: Developmental Correlates of Sexual Intercourse, and the Importance of Age, Gender and Ethnic Background. , 2008 .

[27]  M. Wiederman,et al.  The Measurement of Sexual-Esteem: Investigation of Snell and Papini′s (1989) Sexuality Scale , 1993 .

[28]  L. Steinberg,et al.  Handbook of adolescent psychology , 2009 .

[29]  J. Mathieu,et al.  Influences of Individual and Situational Characteristics on Measures of Training Effectiveness , 1992 .

[30]  J. Brumberg.  The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls , 1997 .

[31]  D. Tolman.  Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality , 2009 .

[32]  R. Hoyle,et al.  Reliability and validity of a brief measure of sensation seeking , 2002 .

[33]  F. Gibbons,et al.  Social comparison: The end of a theory and the emergence of a field , 2007 .

[34]  R. Crosby,et al.  A review of STD/HIV preventive interventions for adolescents: sustaining effects using an ecological approach. , 2007, Journal of pediatric psychology.

[35]  L. Carpenter.  The ambiguity of “having sex”: The subjective experience of virginity loss in the united states , 2001 .

[36]  Patti M. Valkenburg,et al.  Adolescents’ Exposure to Sexually Explicit Material on the Internet , 2006, Commun. Res..

[37]  George R. Goethals,et al.  Social Comparison Theory , 1986 .

[38]  D. Zillmann,et al.  Effect of Erotica on Young Men's Aesthetic Perception of Their Female Sexual Partners , 1984 .

[39]  Randall C. Swaim,et al.  Violent Media Content and Aggressiveness in Adolescents , 2003, Commun. Res..

[40]  J. V. Wood,et al.  Theory and Research Concerning Social Comparisons of Personal Attributes , 1989 .

[41]  Patti M. Valkenburg,et al.  Adolescents' Exposure to Sexually Explicit Online Material and Recreational Attitudes Toward Sex. , 2006 .

[42]  Jennings Bryant,et al.  Pornography's Impact on Sexual Satisfaction1 , 1988 .

[43]  Marsha L. Richins.  Social Comparison and the Idealized Images of Advertising , 1991 .

[44]  James C. Anderson,et al.  STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING IN PRACTICE: A REVIEW AND RECOMMENDED TWO-STEP APPROACH , 1988 .

[45]  L. M. Ward,et al.  Understanding the Role of Entertainment Media in the Sexual Socialization of American Youth: A Review of Empirical Research. , 2003 .

[46]  Douglas T. Kenrick,et al.  Influence of popular erotica on judgments of strangers and mates , 1989 .

[47]  Michael Flood,et al.  Exposure to pornography among youth in Australia , 2007 .

[48]  Willem E. Saris,et al.  Simple, Efficient and Distribution-free Approach to Interaction Effects in Complex Structural Equation Models , 2008 .

[49]  Mary Crawford,et al.  Sexual double standards: A review and methodological critique of two decades of research , 2003, Journal of sex research.

[50]  T. Little,et al.  To Parcel or Not to Parcel: Exploring the Question, Weighing the Merits , 2002 .

[51]  Kristen Harrison,et al.  The relationship between media consumption and eating disorders , 1997 .

[52]  M. Slater.  Reinforcing Spirals: The Mutual Influence of Media Selectivity and Media Effects and Their Impact on Individual Behavior and Social Identity , 2007 .

[53]  Michael W. Wiederman,et al.  Demographic and sexual characteristics of nonresponders to sexual experience items in a national survey , 1993 .

[54]  Patti M. Valkenburg,et al.  Adolescents’ Exposure to a Sexualized Media Environment and Their Notions of Women as Sex Objects , 2007 .

[55]  Renée A. Botta,et al.  Television images and adolescent girls' body image disturbance , 1999 .

[56]  Al Cooper,et al.  Characteristics of men and women who complete or exit from an on‐line internet sexuality questionnaire: A study of instrument dropout biases , 2003, Journal of sex research.

[57]  M B Oliver,et al.  Gender differences in sexuality: a meta-analysis. , 1993, Psychological bulletin.

[58]  Patti M. Valkenburg,et al.  Adolescents' Exposure to Sexually Explicit Internet Material and Sexual Preoccupancy: A Three-Wave Panel Study , 2008 .

[59]  S. Maxwell,et al.  Testing mediational models with longitudinal data: questions and tips in the use of structural equation modeling. , 2003, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[60]  J. Jaccard,et al.  LISREL Approaches to Interaction Effects in Multiple Regression , 1998 .

[61]  E. Higgins,et al.  Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect. , 1987, Psychological review.

[62]  James B. Weaver,et al.  Exploring the Social and Sexual "Reality" of Contemporary Pornography , 1993 .

[63]  Richard H. Smith.  Assimilative and Contrastive Emotional Reactions to Upward and Downward Social Comparisons , 2000 .

[64]  D. Russell,et al.  Analyzing data from experimental studies: A latent variable structural equation modeling approach. , 1998 .