Pornography Consumption in People of Different Age Groups: an Analysis Based on Gender, Contents, and Consequences. Rafael Ballester-Arnal, Marta García-Barba, Jesús Castro-Calvo, Cristina Giménez-García & Maria Dolores Gil-Llario. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, May 14 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-022-00720-z
Abstract
Introduction: Pornography consumption has increased exponentially in recent decades. Most studies conducted so far are focused on adult samples (typically, between 18 and 30 years old), limiting the generalizability of their results. This study aims to create a taxonomy that groups various pornographic contents and thus explore different aspects of its use (e.g., preference for different pornographic content, excessive and problematic use) in people at different life stages.
Methods: Between 2016 and 2019, 8,040 individuals (71.3% men) between 12 and 85 years old (M = 33.25, SD = 14.31) completed a battery that explores pathological and non-pathological pornography use. Participants were distributed into five age groups (< 18 years old, between 18–25, 26–40, 41–60, and > 60) to perform the different analyses (ANOVA and chi-square tests for the differences between the groups, EFA for the analyses of categories of pornographic content, and hierarchical linear regressions to identify the factors related to problematic use).
Results: Pornography use was highly prevalent (> 85%) in all age groups. Using a data-driven approach, we found that the pornographic content explored in this research can be classified within four categories. Using this taxonomy, we found differences according to the age for most of the pornographic content explored (e.g., sexual intercourse with opposite-sex partners [71.6–84.5% in males and 70.2–89.5% in females]). Finally, we found that age conditions the way in which preference for different pornographic content increases the risk of excessive and problematic use.
Conclusions: Pornography consumption is frequent in different age groups, although it varies depending on age and content. In addition, some particular pornographic contents were identified that increase the risk of developing an addiction in different developmental stages.
Policy Implications: This study provides a preliminary foundation for identifying the unique characteristics of pornography use in different age groups as well as content related to increased problematic use.
Discussion
In this study, we aimed to (1) generate a data-driven taxonomy of pornographic contents, (2) analyze and compare the use of different pornographic materials in different age groups, and (3) explore whether the use of different pornographic content predicted an increased risk of cybersex addiction. In this sense, we found four categories of pornography to classify the wide variety of normophilic (i.e., vaginal, anal, oral, and group sex) and paraphilic or non-mainstream contents (i.e., sadomasochism, fetish, bondage and dominance, violent coercive, and bizarre/extreme) (Hald, 2006; Hald & Štulhofer, 2016; Štulhofer et al., 2010). As for the preference for different pornographic contents in different age groups, contents depicting sexual intercourse were the most consumed in practically all age groups, with hardly any variation according to age and gender. Other content that may be classified as unusual or uncommon such as sexual relations with more than two people or sexual activity involving domination and submission are also relatively frequent in men and women, although they decrease in the more extreme age ranges (children and adolescents and elderly). Finally, this study provides a nuanced description of which particular pornographic contents increase the risk of cybersex addiction in different developmental stages.
As one of our main objectives, in this study, we have created a taxonomy of pornographic content that comprises four categories: soft pornography, sexual intercourse, unusual sexual interests, and chronophilias. This classification resonates with other more theoretical proposals that have not been empirically proven, such as that proposed by Leonhardt et al. (2019) with their categories sexually suggestive, sexually explicit, and paraphilic, according to the degree of sexual explicitness and the kind of sexual content. Except for the small nuance of the chronophilias where according to our results seem to have some distinction of what could be considered "paraphilic" or "unusual sexual interest", although both categories have a high correlation with each other. On the contrary, our taxonomy differs from that proposed by Hald and Štulhofer (2016). With a methodology similar to that employed in this study, they suggested a classification into three categories, focusing on gender, sexual orientation, or non-mainstream pornographic contents. These differences may be due to the number of participants (being much larger in our study) and, above all, to the age range of the respondents. In our study, we cover much broader age ranges that help us to take into account the differences in the consumption of pornography that can occur at different stages of life (Ballester-Arnal et al., 2021; Ševčíková et al., 2020), offering us a taxonomy of pornographic content with greater validity and internal consistency.
Analyzing the consumption of pornography following this categorization, we observe that, in general, there are hardly any variations in the pornographic content searched based on age, and, following the same line as the most recent research, we show a slight decrease in the consumption of pornography in older adults compared to younger people (Price et al., 2016). The most frequent pornography preferences in both genders in the different age groups explored is classified as normophilic (i.e., sexual intercourse with opposite or same sex partners). These data would not support the hypothesis that some authors hold about the increase in recent decades in exposure to paraphilic pornography, mainly among men, especially that containing sexual violence or child pornography (Davis et al., 2018; Romito & Beltramini, 2015). This hypothesis is given by the apparent increase in aggressive content in pornographic videos, especially the more subtle violence (Bridges et al., 2010; Carrotte et al., 2020) and how viewing of this pornographic material can favor the acquisition of these sexual scripts in offline sexual behaviors (Bridges et al., 2016; Wright, 2011). However, as studies like those of Baer et al. (2015) or Shor and Seida (2019) show, despite the increase in paraphilic content available online, this type of online sexual content is the least consumed by users, as well as the worst valued. Except for the use of online pornography with adolescents’ sexual content, whose frequency is logically higher among the group of children and adolescents who would seek sexual practices with their peers, so it could not be considered a paraphilic practice. Our results reflect lower percentages of paraphilic pornography interests than other studies, which may be due to methodological differences, including the characteristics of the participants (clinical vs non-clinical sample, cultural differences, etc.) or the limited list of pornographic content provided (Hald & Štulhofer, 2016; Neutze et al., 2011; Sun et al., 2015).
Lastly, we explore the relationship between different pornographic content and cybersex addiction. Our results show that only a few types of pornography have been linked to cybersex addiction. Specifically, viewing some pornography content classified as unusual (pornography involving domination or submission or sexual intercourse with more than two people) or paraphilic (chronophilias) is related to cybersex addiction measured by the ISST. Some studies suggest that persistent pornography users may exhibit habituation to normophilic content, which translates into an increase in the use of unusual and extreme pornographic material (Foubert, 2016; Hilton & Clark, 2011; Tripodi et al., 2015). This habituation may be due to the development of tolerance, one of the characteristic symptoms of addictions which, in the particular case of cybersex addiction, may be reflected in a need to seek more exciting and extreme content (i.e., paraphilic) to achieve previous sexual satisfaction (Lewczuk et al., 2021). This phenomenon may explain why the consumption of this particular pornographic content may be related to the development of cybersex addiction. However, as some authors suggest, this relationship may occur in the opposite direction: a previous interest in paraphilic sexual content (in the most severe cases, the presence of a previous paraphilic disorder) may increase the use of the Internet for sexual purposes (Griffiths, 2012; Ross et al., 2012). It would therefore be necessary to further investigate the relationship between these two variables to determine how they are interrelated.
In our study, we also found that the use of non-paraphilic pornographic contents (sexual intercourse with same-sex partners or nude people showing their genitals) increased the risk of developing cybersex addiction, although not in all age groups. This may be due to factors such as anonymity and accessibility, cybersex factors related to its addictive potential (Cooper et al., 1999; Griffiths, 2012). These characteristics of cybersex allow people to experiment with sexuality over the Internet by facilitating access to sexual content that cannot be accessed offline. For example, in sexual relations with same-sex partner –punished in many contexts– or fulfilling certain sexual fantasies that are not easily accessible offline may increase the consumption in people (Castro-Calvo et al., 2018; Giménez-García et al., 2021; Green et al., 2012; Ross et al., 2012). This would explain why factors such as belonging to a sexual minority or sexual dissatisfaction, regardless of having paraphilic sexual attractions or not, have been linked to the problematic cybersex use (Daspe et al., 2018; Studer et al., 2019). Another factor that has been related to a predisposition to problematic cybersex use is gender, specifically being a man (Ballester-Arnal et al., 2021; Weinstein et al., 2015; Wéry & Billieux, 2016). Our results also show this relationship in all age groups; however, in general, the different pornography content does not affect cybersex addiction in a different way. These data show the need to take into account the type of pornography content consumed online when evaluating addiction to pornography and/or cybersex, regardless of age and gender.
This study is not without its limitations. On the one hand, we find limitations related to the sample, including a smaller sample size in some groups (children, adolescents, and the elderly) and the type of sampling (convenience sampling). Furthermore, as it is a cross-sectional study, we do not take into account the effect of the birth cohort which, as other studies such as Price et al. (2016) or Wright (2013) show, could further enrich the study and provide data on both effects (age and year of birth) on pornography consumption. Another limitation of our study is related to the percentage of women in the sample: the proportion of women in the sample notably decreased with age (in particular, in older age ranges), meaning that women in these age ranges are underrepresented in our research. This underrepresentation of women in older age ranges may be explained by the traditional values and social norms related to the expression of sexuality in women: compared to men, women have been more often judged when expressing their sexual experiences and interests (Lai & Hynie, 2011; Zaikman & Marks, 2017). These negative experiences may explain their lower rates of participation in a study focused on sexual behavior and also explain why younger girls (less exposed to traditional sexual scripts) are more likely to participate and report their sexual experiences. Other sociodemographic variables—such as sexual orientation or cultural differences—have also been related to the use of the Internet for sexual purposes (Bőthe et al., 2020b; Green et al., 2012; Velezmoro et al., 2012) but are not analyzed in this research. Therefore, future studies analyzing the effect that these variables have on the use of pornography in different life stages warrant further research.
Another important limitation of this study is the evaluation of cybersex addiction. Due to the multiple manifestations it represents (including the problematic consumption of pornography) (Varfi et al., 2019), the discrepancies in its definition and diagnostic criteria (Wéry & Billieux, 2017) and the limited number of validated questionnaires, especially in Spanish; in this study we decided to use a more general measure of cybersex addiction to assess the excessive and problematic use of pornography. Our taxonomy of pornography was based on only 10 types of content, not including others such as MILF or hentai that can also be prevalent in society (Ogas & Gaddam, 2011; PornHub, 2019), which is another limitation. In future studies, it would be interesting to include a greater number of types of pornography, as well as to explore the frequency of use of each type to know if the negative consequences are associated with a single or prolonged viewing (Kingston et al., 2008; Lewczuk et al, 2021), or the level of arousal, being also an important aspect in the development of addiction (Laier et al., 2013). Despite the limitations described above, we consider that our work provides relevant information on some issues very little studied so far, such as pornographic preferences in men and women in different age groups or how it affects the viewing of specific sexual pornographic content in cybersex addiction, among others.
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