Risks associated with the use of mainstream pornography in adolescence

Abstract

Recent studies indicate that the consumption of pornography has become a normalised habit for a growing number of adolescents in Spain. This has been made possible thanks to the Internet and a business model based on explicit and invasive advertising on virtual networks, which has favoured the dissemination of a huge amount of easily accessible and usually free pornographic content. Mainstream pornography, the most abundant on the net, in addition to showing a biased view of sexuality, harbours misogynist and sexist narratives. The aim of this article is to offer a review of the most significant risks that have fuelled the debate on the consumption of pornography among adolescents. In doing so, we provide recent empirical and theoretical references to help those who want to investigate this phenomenon in depth, to raise the state of the art in this regard and to design possible preventive or regulatory interventions. In particular, we focus on the risks related to the unrealistic conception of sexual relations, the development of attitudes of sexual violence, risky practices, the objectification of bodies and the manifestations of potentially addictive behaviours. Such risks may be heightened among adolescents, who are going through important stages of their own psycho-physical, intellectual and character development, but their harmful effects have yet to be objectively quantified and verified in their life trajectories and sex-affective practices once they become adults.