- The Role of Religiosity in Adolescents’ Compulsive Pornography Use: A Longitudinal Assessment
Taylor Kohut, Aleksandar Štulhofer - Pornography Use and Adolescents’ Sexual Risk Taking: Longitudinal Insights From the Probiops Study
Goran Koletić, Teo Matković, Aleksandar Štulhofer - Longitudinal Test of The Content Progression Thesis: Is It A Valid Model For Understanding Adolescent Pornography Use?
Ivan Landripet, Aleksandar Štulhofer, Vesna Buško
The Role of Religiosity in Adolescents’ Compulsive Pornography Use: A Longitudinal Assessment
Taylor Kohut, Aleksandar Štulhofer
Objective: There is increasing concern that adolescent males are vulnerable to developing compulsive pornography use. Recent research and theorizing suggests that some compulsive pornography use my stem from a conflict between moral values and behavior among religious individuals rather than dysregulated pornography use per se. Pornography use among such individuals is thought to be low despite high distress over use. We hypothesized that compulsive pornography use should generally be associated with higher initial levels and increased growth in male adolescent pornography use over time but that this pattern would be attenuated among the very religious.
Design and Method: Hypotheses were tested with a nested linear growth model using longitudinal data of male Croatian adolescents’ pornography use, compulsive pornography use, and religiosity collected over 5 waves that were spaced 6 months apart.
Results: As expected, adolescent men who reported features of compulsive pornography use exhibited higher initial levels of pornography use at baseline and more growth across time. Contrary to expectations, compulsive users who were more religious started with lower initial levels of pornography use which grew over time, while compulsive users who were less religious reported high initial levels of pornography use that did not change over time.
Conclusions: While results are preliminary, they suggest that adolescent males reporting compulsive pornography use exhibit higher rates of pornography use than males who do not report compulsive pornography use. Rather than negating this tendency, religiosity appears to delay the onset of high pornography use among male adolescents.
Pornography Use and Adolescents’ Sexual Risk Taking: Longitudinal Insights From the Probiops Study
Goran Koletić, Teo Matković, Aleksandar Štulhofer
Objective: The unprecedented accessibility and affordability of online sexually explicit material (SEM) has facilitated widespread pornography use among adolescents and growing concerns over adverse reproductive health outcomes. Although SEM-related risky sexual behaviors have been one of the central concerns, there is a paucity of longitudinal studies addressing this issue. This study aimed to assess the longitudinal association between frequency of SEM use and risky sexual behavior among adolescents.
Design and Method: Two independent panel samples of Croatian adolescents were used for the analysis. Both panels had 4 measurement points 6 month apart. Indicators of risky sexual behavior were: (1) not using a condom at most recent sexual intercourse and (2) reporting two or more sexual partners. Multilevel logistic regression analysis was used the explore the association between SEM use and risky sexual behaviors.
Results: Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, age at first contact with SEM and sensation seeking, higher frequency of SEM use was associated with higher likelihood of engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse only among male adolescents in the larger panel sample. Direct replication in the smaller panel sample failed to corroborate this finding. No significant association between SEM use and multiple sexual partners was found among adolescent men and women in either panel.
Conclusions: These findings are relevant for various health and educational experts, policy makers and general public, parents in particular. Additional analytically robust studies of this important public health topic are needed.
Longitudinal Test of The Content Progression Thesis: Is It A Valid Model For Understanding Adolescent Pornography Use?
Ivan Landripet, Aleksandar Štulhofer, Vesna Buško
Objective: Content progression thesis – integral to conditioning theories – assumes that pornography use leads to increased pornography use over time and to preferences for increasingly aggressive contents. To assess these propositions, associations were examined between the dynamics of pornography use and the preference for aggressive contents among male Croatian adolescents across a 24-month period.
Design and Method: Participants were 249 high school students who participated in at least three of five waves of the PROBIOPS online panel study. Pornography use was measured by the reported frequency of use in the past six months. Preference for aggressive pornography was measured by two items enquiring if the contents that was typically used depicted someone forced to do something sexually or who seemed to be in pain.
Results: Separate and joint latent change and latent growth curve models demonstrated significant between- and within-individual differences in pornography use and content preferences across five measurement occasions. Latent measures of growth in aggressive content preferences were unrelated, both with the initial level of pornography use and its changes over time.
Conclusions: Pornography use alone was not found to be associated either with increased pornography use over time or with use of increasingly sexually aggressive contents. More integrative frameworks need to be employed to conceptualize additional factors contributing to frequent pornography use, shift in content preference, and aggressive outcomes.