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Published in final edited form as: Sex Educ. 2023 Aug 7;24(6):799–815. doi: 10.1080/14681811.2023.2241133

Critical media attitudes as a buffer against the harmful effects of pornography on beliefs about sexual and dating violence

Reina Evans-Paulson 1, Christina V Dodson 1, Tracy M Scull 1
PMCID: PMC11654991  NIHMSID: NIHMS1920223  PMID: 39703665

Abstract

Pornography often depicts traditional gender norms and aggression paired with sexual behaviour. Among adolescents, exposure to pornography is related to unhealthy beliefs about gender, sex and relationships. Critical thinking about media may reduce the internalisation of unhealthy messages in pornography. However, there is a dearth of research examining how critical media attitudes are protective for youth in early adolescence. Using a US sample of ninth and tenth grade students (n=558; Mage=14; 53% female), this study examines how the relationship between frequency of pornography use and acceptance of traditional gender norms, dating violence and rape myths may be moderated by critical media attitudes. More frequent pornography use was related to greater acceptance of rape myths and gender norms, but only for adolescents who were less sceptical of media messages. For adolescents who were sceptical of media messages about sex, there was no relationship between pornography use and their acceptance of rape myths and gender norms. This study provides preliminary evidence of the protective influence that critical media attitudes may have on adolescents’ sexual and relationship health. In our increasingly digital world, it is critical to provide early media literacy education as part of sexuality education to promote adolescents’ health.

Keywords: Adolescence, relationship health, gender norms, pornography use, media skepticism

Introduction

Many adolescents are exposed to pornography. A national US study of 14–18-year-olds found that nearly 70% had viewed pornography at least once (Wright, Herbenick, and Paul 2020). In an increasingly digital world, pornography has become more accessible to adolescents via free to access online platforms (Wright, Tokunaga, and Herbenick 2023). Thus, adolescents are likely exposed to pornography more often and at increasingly younger ages. Although pornography use is more common among older adolescents (Farré et al. 2020), recent studies have found that many early adolescents are exposed to pornography (Herbenick et al. 2020).

Pornography often depicts aggression paired with sexual behaviour (Fritz et al. 2020). In a content analysis of heterosexual scenes on a free pornographic website, 45% of scenes were found to depict physical aggression (Fritz et al. 2020). Recent studies have shown that early adolescents are exposed to these types of extreme pornography, with over 20% of 10th grade students reporting exposure to pornography that depicts women being forced to engage in sexual acts against their will (Rostad et al. 2019; Rothman et al. 2015). Pornography also often presents representations of harmful traditional gender norms. Men are often depicted in more dominant, and sometimes aggressive, roles and women are depicted as more submissive, and sometimes the target of aggression (Klaassen and Peter 2015; Fritz et al. 2020). Women are also more likely than men to be sexually objectified and degraded in pornography (Vangeel, Eggermont, and Vandenbosch 2020; Klaassen and Peter 2015; Wright 2014).

Theoretical framework: Overview of the 3AM

The script acquisition, activation and application model (3AM) of sexual media socialisation provides a helpful framework for understanding how media messages about sex–including those in pornography–can impact young people’s sexual behaviour (Wright 2014). The 3AM highlights how depictions of sex in media can shape sexual scripts—making it seem as though sex roles and behaviours portrayed in media are normal or appropriate (Wright 2011). Pornography may be especially influential, as more sexually explicit media content can lead viewers to pay greater attention to the media they are viewing which contributes to stronger acquisition of scripts from this media (Wright 2011). Sexual scripts—which have been formed through exposure to sex/relationships in media, including pornography— can serve as a guide for future behaviours (i.e., future sexual relationships; Wright 2014). When young people find themselves in sexual or romantic situations, they may look to their sexual scripts to determine how they will act—and, thus, may be likely to enact those behaviour patterns that they have seen in pornography.

Pornography and sexual and relationship health

The empirical literature also shows a link between pornography use and adolescents’ beliefs about gender and sexual and relationship violence. Pornography use during early adolescence is associated with adherence to more traditional gender role norms and notions of women as sex objects (Brown and L’Engle 2009; Koletić 2017; Peter and Valkenburg 2009). Traditional gender role norms may include beliefs that women should be submissive and focused on their appearance, while men should be smart, be strong, and never show emotion (Foshee et al. 2005). Additionally, among adolescents and young adults, pornography use has been linked to greater acceptance of dating and sexual violence—including rape myths (i.e., false beliefs about rape and sexual assault that can reinforce harmful stereotypes and are used to justify or excuse acts of sexual violence; Rodenhizer and Edwards 2019; Burnay, Kepes, and Bushman 2022; Payne, Lonsway, and Fitzgerald 1999).

Normative beliefs about how people should behave in sexual encounters or within their romantic relationships can have an impact on behaviour in sexual and romantic relationships (Ajzen 1991). Acceptance of dating violence and gender roles has been linked to dating violence perpetration among youth (Karlsson et al. 2016; Reyes et al. 2016). Among men, acceptance of rape myths has been linked to perpetration of sexual assault (Mouilso and Calhoun 2013). Given the criticality of developing healthy beliefs about gender and relationships during early adolescence, it is important that we better understand the factors–including pornography—that may influence the beliefs that young people hold.

The 3AM also highlights contextual factors, including age, that make it more likely that new scripts will be acquired from messages in media–with early adolescents being particularly vulnerable to acquiring scripts from pornography (Wright and Donnerstein 2014; Wright 2014). Adolescence is marked by neurobiological and physical development that leads to increased interest in relationships and exploration of gender and sexual identity (Suleiman et al. 2017; Steensma et al. 2013). Early adolescence is the developmental stage from around age 10–14 years (Feldman, Elliott, and Elliott 1990; Irwin Jr., Burg, and Cart 2002). Early adolescents may be curious about gender, sex and relationships and seek out information from online sources–including pornography (Peter and Valkenburg 2016). However, in the US comprehensive school and family-based sex education may not occur until middle or late adolescence, if at all (Guttmacher Institute 2019; Flores and Barroso 2017), leaving early adolescents with little information to contextualise unhealthy messages in pornography.

Given the links between pornography use and the development of harmful beliefs about gender, sex and relationships among early adolescents, how can we protect members of this group? Most research on pornography effects has focused on delaying or limiting pornography exposure. But early adolescents do report exposure to pornography and restriction as a strategy will continue to become less feasible as adolescents spend more unsupervised time on the Internet. Importantly, this strategy ignores the developmental normativity of adolescents seeking information about sex and relationships and exploring their own sexuality (Harden 2014). While restricting early adolescents’ access to pornography can be protective, an alternative, or complementary, strategy may be to provide adolescents with the information and skills to prevent the internalisation of unhealthy beliefs and attitudes from exposure to pornography. The 3AM posits that critical media attitudes can attenuate the relationship between pornography use and sexual and relationship health outcomes (Wright, Herbenick, and Paul 2020).

Critical media attitudes as a protective factor

Theories of media message processing suggest that adolescents who hold more critical views about media will be less likely to internalise unhealthy media messages—and, thus, are less likely to be negatively affected by the media messages they encounter (Austin and Johnson 1997b; LaSala 2007). Specifically, media scepticism and perceived media realism are critical media attitudes that the 3AM posits may attenuate the negative impact of media on health outcomes–including sexual health outcomes (Wright 2011). While there is a lack of consistency in how studies have operationalised these variables, there is agreement that central to media scepticism is a feeling of distrust towards the media, and central to perceived media realism are judgements about the degree to which media depictions align with reality (Dodson 2023). These critical media attitudes have been explored as moderators of the relationships between various types of media exposure and health outcomes. However, limited research has explored the role of these attitudes in the effects of pornography on predictors of sexual violence, and no research has examined these relationships among early adolescents. For example, while researchers posit that scepticism of sexually themed media messages may serve as a protective factor against the potential harmful impact of sexual media on adolescent sexual and relationship health outcomes (Scull et al. 2022; Scull, Kupersmidt, Malik, and Morgan-Lopez 2018; Wright et al. 2019; Wright, Sun, and Miezan 2019), there is a dearth of empirical research to elucidate the role of media scepticism in adolescents’ processing of sexual media messages.

Among US young adults, perceptions of the realism of pornography moderate the relationship between pornography use and condomless sex, such that adults who watch more pornography are more likely to have condomless sex but only if they perceived pornography to be very realistic (Wright, Herbenick, and Paul 2021). Additionally, older US adolescents who identify with the actors in pornography and believe sex in pornography is more realistic, are more likely to report having perpetrated sexual aggression (Wright, Paul, and Herbenick 2021).

Only one study has examined how critical media attitudes may moderate the relationship between pornography use and sexual and relationship health outcomes earlier in development. Among early adolescents, pornography use is longitudinally linked to more permissive attitudes about sex but only for adolescents who perceive pornography as realistic (Baams et al. 2015). Though this study, again, points to the moderating effect that critical media attitudes may have on early adolescents’ beliefs about sex, the generalisability of the findings to US youth today may be limited given that the data was collected in the Netherlands in 2009. Many youth in the Netherlands receive more comprehensive sex education than youth in the US (Dodge et al. 2005; Ferguson, Vanwesenbeeck, and Knijn 2008), equipping them with useful information to combat misinformation about sex in pornography. Thus, US youth may be more vulnerable to acquiring harmful cognitions from exposure to pornography and more positively impacted by tools to critically analyse these messages.

Clarifying the influence of scepticism and the perceived realism of sexual messages in general media (including mainstream media and pornography) could be critical. Importantly, most research on critical media attitudes has focused on young people’s perceptions of how realistic messages about sex are in pornography, specifically. This research has consistently shown that believing messages about sex in pornography are not realistic is protective against negative effects of pornography (Wright, Herbenick, and Paul 2021; Wright, Paul, and Herbenick 2021). But there is a need to understand whether critical attitudes about media in general, can carry over and impact the effects of pornography on young adolescents. This is of particular relevance in the US where there may be additional barriers to teaching about pornography literacy to younger adolescents (Pappas 2021). There are efficacious sex education programmes that have been developed to improve critical media analysis among early adolescents (Scull, Kupersmidt, Malik, and Morgan-Lopez 2018; Scull et al. 2022). If critical media attitudes about general media do protect early adolescents from adopting the harmful beliefs that are often perpetuated in pornography, then strengthening critical media attitudes could be an important and more feasible point of intervention. This would also provide additional supportive evidence for the integration of media literacy education into general sex education for early adolescents.

The current study

The current study tests two hypotheses regarding the association of pornography use and critical general media attitudes with beliefs about gender, sexual violence, and dating violence among US early high school students:

  • H1: Adolescents who are more frequently exposed to pornography, also report greater acceptance of traditional gender norms, rape myths and dating violence.

  • H2: The positive correlation between pornography use and acceptance of traditional gender norms, rape myths, and dating violence is weaker for adolescents who hold more critical attitudes about media more generally–i.e., those who are sceptical of messages about sex in media more generally (including mainstream media and pornography) and those who believe messages about sex in media are often unrealistic.

Methods

The data for this study come from the baseline assessment of a larger randomised controlled trial with a school-based sample of early high school students (Scull et al. 2022). Additional details about the methods can be found in a protocol paper (Scull et al. 2020). All methods and measures used in the study were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Innovation Research & Training (Approval number: 19-002-11-EFF). Teachers from seventeen public high schools (including charter schools) from multiple states across the US distributed consent and assent form packets to their 9th and 10th grade students (n=785). 685 students returned the consent forms and 611 agreed to participate in the study (with both student and parent agreeing). Research staff led data collection with students during the autumn of 2019. Students were prompted to spread out around the classroom and their computers/tablets were blocked by privacy shields to protect their confidentiality as they completed the computer-based questionnaires. Each questionnaire was completed within a 45-minute class period. To address the aims of the main randomised controlled trial, this pretest was followed by the delivery of an intervention and posttest; however, the analyses for the current study include pretest data alone. Thus, students that were not present at pretest are not included in the current analytic sample (n=34). 19 participants did not have data for the current outcome variables of interest (i.e., acceptance of traditional gender norms, rape myths and dating violence), so they are not included.

Participants

The final analytic sample included 558 students. The majority of participants were early adolescents (Mage=14.4, SD=0.69), with just 45 participants being older than 15 years. See Table 1 for sample characteristics.

Table 1.

Sample characteristics (N = 558)

N %
Gender
 Boy 234 43.66
 Girl 282 52.61
 Non-binary/prefer to self-describe 20 3.73
Race
 American Indian/Alaskan Native 4 .01
 Asian 43 .08
 Black or African American 85 16.28
 White/Anglo/Caucasian 299 57.28
 More than one race 91 17.43
Ethnicity-Hispanic/Latino 69 12.97
Received free or reduced-price lunch at schoola 111 20.75
Ever had oral, anal, or vaginal sex 75 15.24
Ever been in a relationshipb 239 47.99
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Note. Due to missing data, the total N for sample characteristics varies and the percentage represents the percent of participants that reported each characteristic out of all the available data (excluding cases of missing data).

a

111 participants reported that they received free/reduced-price lunch, 356 reported that they did not, and 68 were unsure.

b

239 participants reported that they have been in a romantic relationship, 237 reported that they have not, and 22 were unsure.

Measures

Age, gender, race, ethnicity, relationship status, sexual activity, and free/reduced-price lunch status were assessed.

Pornography use

Pornography use was assessed using the following question (Bleakley et al. 2008): ‘Think about your average week. How often do you view pornography?’ The item was rated on a 4-point scale from 1=never to 4=often.

Acceptance of rape myths

Belief in harmful myths about rape was assessed via responses to five items (Payne, Lonsway, and Fitzgerald 1999). Items such as, ‘If a girl doesn’t physically resist sex - even if protesting verbally - it can’t be considered rape,’ were rated on a 4-point scale from 1=strongly disagree to 4=strongly agree. Higher scores indicate greater belief in rape myths (α=0.84).

Acceptance of traditional gender role norms

Acceptance of traditional gender role norms was assessed with six items (adapted from Foshee et al. 2005). Statements such as, ‘Men should be smarter than their girlfriends,’ were rated on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 4=strongly agree. Higher scores indicate greater belief in traditional gender role norms (α=0.75).

Acceptance of dating violence

Endorsement of harmful dating violence norms was assessed with three items (adapted from Foshee et al. 2005; Karlsson et al. 2016). Statements (e.g., ‘It is OK for people to hit their girlfriends/boyfriends if they did something to make them mad’) were rated on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 4=strongly agree. Higher scores indicate greater acceptance of dating violence. The scale reliability was low, but acceptable (α=0.62; Taber 2018).

Scepticism of messages about sex in general media

Scepticism of portrayals of sex, relationships and alcohol use in the media was assessed (Scull et al. 2022). Three items (e.g., ‘Media do not tell the whole truth about romantic relationships’) were rated on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 4=strongly agree. The scale reliability was low, but acceptable (α=0.65).

Perceived realism of messages about teen sexual health in general media

Perception of how realistic portrayals of teenage sexual health are in media was assessed with three items (Scull, Malik, and Kupersmidt 2014). Items such as, ‘Teens in the media are as sexually experienced as average teens,’ were rated on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 4=strongly agree (α=0.77). Of note, this measure assessed the percived realism of media messages about teenage sexual health, broadly–including messages in mainstream media–while other related studies have used measures of perceived realism that are specific to the messages in pornogaphy (Baams et al. 2015; Peter and Valkenberg 2010; Wright and Štulhofer 2019).

Analysis Plan

Hypotheses were tested by analysing the path model shown in Figure 1. This approach has two key advantages: 1) the relationship between the endogenous variables can be accounted for in analyses (Reyes et al. 2016), and 2) full information maximum likelihood estimation can be used to account for missing data and non-normal endogenous variables (Bollen 1989). There were no restrictions placed on the parameters of the path model; thus, model fit statistics all indicated perfect fit and were omitted from the results.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Hypothesised path model with scepticism and perceived realism moderating the relationship between pornography use and endogenous variables.

Prior to analysis, all continuous exogenous variables were mean-centred and two-way interaction terms were computed. The interaction terms were then centred again as this double-mean centring approach is more robust to cases of non-normal data (Lin et al. 2010). The model included the following exogenous variables: pornography use, scepticism about messages about sex in general media, and the perceived realism of messages about teenage sexual health in general media. The following interaction terms were also included as exogenous variables to determine whether the relationship between pornography use and endogenous variables (acceptance of rape myths, traditional gender role norms, and dating violence) was attenuated by critical media attitudes: pornography use*scepticism, pornography use*perceived realism. Additionally, gender was dummy coded and included as a covariate (Reed et al. 2021; Taylor and Xia 2022). In post hoc analyses, sexual experience and relationship status were added to the model as covariates; however, the pattern of results did not change, so the more parsimonious model was selected for inclusion in this manuscript (Wright 2021). The hypotheses were also tested with separate models for each endogenous variable; however, the pattern of results was the same, so the original model was retained. For significant interactions, simple slopes were probed at one standard deviation above and below the mean of the moderator.

Results

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations were conducted to examine the characteristics of all study variables, prior to mean centring (Table 2). As hypothesised (H1), pornography use was significantly correlated with greater acceptance of traditional gender role norms, greater acceptance of rape myths, and greater acceptance of dating violence. Results from the test of the hypothesised path model are shown in Table 3. The overall hypothesised model fit significantly better than the null model χ2(24)=418.77, p<.001.1

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics and correlations for study variables

N M SD Range 1 2 3 4 5
1. Pornography use 505 1.73 1.01 1–4
2. Scepticism 555 2.86 0.59 1–4 −0.04
3. Perceived realism 547 2.10 0.63 1–4 −0.02 −0.02
4. Rape myth acceptance 556 1.37 0.53 1–4 0.10* −0.17*** 0.12**
5. Traditional gender role norm acceptance 556 1.46 0.46 1–3.5 0.16*** −0.19*** 0.13** 0.55***
6. Dating violence acceptance 556 1.46 0.50 1–4 0.14** −0.18*** 0.08 0.37*** 0.40***
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Note. Pornography use, scepticism, and perceived realism were mean-centred for all analyses. However, the values provided in this table are the variable means and ranges prior to centring.

*

p < .05;

**

p < .01;

***

p < .001.

Table 3.

The association of pornography use, critical media attitudes, and moderators with acceptance of rape myths, traditional gender roles, and dating violence

Rape myth acceptance Traditional gender role acceptance Dating violence acceptance
Estimate SE z-value p-value Estimate SE z-value p-value Estimate SE z-value p-value
Gender – Non-Binary 0.18 0.12 1.46 .144 −0.03 0.10 −0.26 .797 −0.12 0.12 −1.06 .288
Gender – Boy 0.18 0.05 3.63 <.0001 0.21 0.04 4.93 <.0001 0.08 0.05 1.69 .091
Pornography use 0.02 0.03 0.94 .350 0.04 0.02 1.94 .052 0.05 0.02 2.19 .029
Scepticism −0.13 0.04 −3.41 .001 −0.12 0.03 −3.79 <.0001 −0.14 0.04 −3.97 <.0001
Perceived realism 0.10 0.04 2.91 .004 0.09 0.03 3.06 .002 0.06 0.03 1.81 .070
Pornography use x Scepticism −0.08 0.04 −2.14 .033 −0.10 0.03 −2.99 .003 −0.02 0.04 −0.51 .613
Pornography use x Perceived realism 0.03 0.04 0.94 .350 0.03 0.03 0.99 .324 −0.01 0.03 0.19 .848
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Note. Estimates included in this table for each path are standardised regression coefficients.

Relationships between exogenous variables and acceptance of rape myths

The exogenous variables explained 8.9% of the variance in acceptance of rape myths. There was a significant positive association between perceived realism of messages about teenage sexual health in general media and acceptance of rape myths. There was a significant negative association between scepticism of messages about sex in general media and rape myth acceptance; however, this relationship was qualified by a significant pornography use*scepticism interaction (Figure 2). H2 was partially supported. Simple slopes tests revealed that for early adolescents with low levels of scepticism, greater exposure to pornography was significantly related to greater acceptance of rape myths (B=0.07, SE=0.04, z-value=2.05, p-value=.041). However, the relationship between pornography use and rape myth acceptance was not significant for early adolescents with moderate (B=0.02, SE=0.03, z-value=0.94, p-value=.350) and high (B=−0.03, SE=0.03, z-value=−0.77, p-value=.440) scepticism.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

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Interaction between pornography use and scepticism on acceptance of rape myths

Relationships between exogenous variables and acceptance of traditional gender role norms

The exogenous variables explained 13.8% of the variance in gender role norms. There was a significant positive association between perceived realism of messages about teenage sexual health in general media and gender role norms. There was a significant negative association between scepticism and acceptance of traditional gender roles. This relationship was qualified by a significant pornography use*scepticism interaction (Figure 3). Simple slopes tests revealed that for early adolescents with low levels of scepticism, greater exposure to pornography was significantly related to greater acceptance of traditional gender role norms (B=0.10, SE=0.03, z-value=3.32, p-value=.001)—again, confirming partial support for H2. However, the relationship between pornography use and acceptance of traditional gender role norms was not significant for early adolescents with moderate (B=0.04, SE = 0.02, z-value=1.94, p-value=.052) and high (B=−0.02, SE=0.03, z-value=−0.60, p-value=.551) scepticism.

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

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Interaction between pornography use and scepticism on acceptance of traditional gender role norms

Relationships between exogenous variables and acceptance of dating violence

The exogenous variables explained 6.3% of the variance in acceptance of dating violence. There was a significant positive relationship between pornography use and acceptance of dating violence. There was also a significant negative relationship between scepticism and acceptance of dating violence. However, perceived realism of messages about teenage sexual health in general media was not a significant moderator of the relationship between pornography and acceptance of dating violence. Scepticism was also not a significant moderator. Though the direction of the estimate for the pornography use*scepticism interaction term was the same as the direction of the aforementioned pornography use*scepticism interaction terms (i.e., those that were significantly related to the other outcomes).

Discussion

Today’s adolescents are growing up in a world where pornography is highly accessible (Wright, Tokunaga, and Herbenick 2023). Pornography has the potential to shape young people’s beliefs about gender, sex, and relationships in unhealthy ways (Koletić 2017; Rodenhizer and Edwards 2019). The current study sought to examine the relationship between pornography use and acceptance of traditional gender norms, rape myths, and dating violence, and to better understand whether perceived realism and scepticism of sexually themed messages in general media (as opposed to just sexually explicit media) may moderate these relationships in a sample of early high school students.

In support of assertions by the 3AM, this study found that, at the bivariate level, more frequent pornography use was significantly related to greater acceptance of traditional gender role norms, rape myths, and dating violence. (Some of these relationships were moderated by media scepticism, which is discussed in the paragraph that follows). These findings make salient the importance of efforts to protect early adolescents from the negative effects of pornography. Importantly, beliefs about sex and relationships that are formed during early adolescence can lay the foundation for behavioural patterns and relationship wellbeing throughout the lifespan.

Also, in support of the 3AM, results from the current study point towards critical media attitudes as protective factors for early high school students—although the patterns of these associations differed for scepticism versus perceived realism of sexually themed messages in general media. For adolescents with low levels of scepticism (i.e., with more trust in general media messages about sex), frequency of pornography exposure was related to greater acceptance of rape myths and traditional gender norms; however, no relationship was found between pornography and these unhealthy outcomes among adolescents with moderate and high scepticism. Additionally, adolescents who believed that general media messages about teenage sexual health were less realistic were less accepting of traditional gender norms and rape myths and adolescents who were more sceptical of media messages about sex were less accepting of dating violence. Together, these findings provide preliminary support for efforts with early adolescents to promote scepticism and reduce perceived realism of general media messages about sex. Also, the findings highlight how scepticism, specifically, may buffer against the internalisation of harmful messages in pornography. Media literacy education programmes are aimed at improving critical media attitudes and those specific to sexual and relationship health, directly address problematic depictions of sex in the media (Scull, Kupersmidt, Malik, and Keefe 2018; Scull et al. 2022; Rothman, Daley, and Alder 2020). Media literacy-based sexual health programmes may have protective benefits above and beyond traditional sexual health curricula that do not aim to enhance critical media attitudes. However, additional experimental research is needed in this area.

While adolescents who were more skeptical of media messages were less accepting of dating violence, scepticism did not moderate the relationship between pornography use and acceptance of dating violence. This was unexpected, though it may highlight the vulnerability of early adolescents to messages about dating violence in pornography. More research is needed on whether there are other factors (including, other critical media cognitions) that might protect early adolescents who are exposed to pornography from the effects of these messages on their acceptance of dating violence. Of note, the measure used to assess acceptance of dating violence had lower reliability than the other outcome measures–indicating the possibility that there may have been a type II error and measurement issues may explain these non-significant findings (Jaccard and Wan 1995). Importantly, the scales used for many of our measures consisted of few items (to decrease survey length and improve data quality) which can lead to lower reliability scores. Additionally, perceived realism of sexually themed messages in general media did not moderate the relationship between pornography use and any of the outcomes. It is important to note that the perceived realism measure used in this study was specific to teenagers in general media (e.g., ‘Teens in the media are as sexually experienced as average teens’). It is possible that teenagers do not associate depictions of sex in pornography with teenage sex and, therefore, this construct may not have been as relevant to the way adolescents process messages in pornography. Similarly, the measure used in the current study assessed perceived realism of messages in general media – whereas previous studies in the pornography effects literature have largely focused on examining young people’s perceived realism of messages in pornography (Wright, Herbenick, and Paul 2021; Wright, Paul, and Herbenick 2021; Baams et al. 2015). These studies find that perceived realism of pornography does moderate the relationship between pornography use and sexual health-related outcomes. Together, this suggests that intervention developers aiming to buffer young people from the effects of pornography may be wise to focus on reducing perceived realism of messages about sex in pornography, specifically, rather than perceived realism of messages about sex in general media.

There is a lack of consistency in the way critical media attitudes have been conceptualised in the empirical literature (Dodson 2023), and future research is needed to understand which critical media attitudes are most likely to promote positive sexual and relationship health outcomes. This study examined how two specific critical media attitudes–perceived realism and scepticism of messages about sex in media—may protect adolescents from the harmful influence of pornography. Other measures assessing perceived realism and scepticism examine critical thinking about media generally (e.g., ‘TV and movies are a realistic source of information for what things are popular, how people act, and what makes people popular’; Austin and Hust 2005) and critical thinking specifically about messages in pornography (e.g., ‘The sex you see in porn is like in real life’; Baams et al. 2015). It is plausible that adolescents may critically evaluate different types of media (e.g., mainstream media vs pornography) in different ways. Therefore, a limitation of the current study is that it only examined critical attitudes toward media in general. Future research is needed to better understand the potential differential impact of general scepticism, scepticism of sexually-themed media messages, and scepticism specific to pornography. The current study suggests that the protective benefits of adolescents having critical attitudes toward sexually themed media messages can extend to the internalisation of messages found in pornography. This is of importance considering the controversial nature of teaching students porn literacy in schools (Pappas 2021). This study shows that including the critical analysis of sexually themed media messages in general sex education may be a promising avenue for not only countering the harmful effects of mainstream media, but also pornography.

Although this study was among the first to elucidate the protective influence that critical media attitudes may have on early adolescents’ cognitions about gender, sex and relationships, there were some additional limitations that may be important for contextualising the current findings. First, though most of the adolescents in our sample were early adolescents, there were no adolescents aged 12 or younger in the sample. Thus, the sample was not representative of the entire early adolescent period– which starts at around age 10 (Irwin Jr., Burg, and Cart 2002; Feldman, Elliott, and Elliott 1990). Also, the cross-sectional nature of the data does not allow for the drawing of conclusions about the temporal nature of these associations. Importantly, previous longitudinal studies have found that earlier exposure to pornography is related to later sexual and relationship health outcomes (Wright, Tokunaga, and Kraus 2016; Wright et al. 2017). Future longitudinal research could expand on this by examining how critical media attitudes may act as a buffer between pornography use during early adolescence and sexual and relationship beliefs and behavioural outcomes (e.g., intimate partner violence) during later adolescence and young adulthood. Measures to assess pornography use have varied greatly across the empirical literature (Kohut et al. 2020). Thus, it is essential that the results of the current study are understood within the context of the measure of pornography exposure that was used. The measure of pornography use that was used in this study captured the self-rated frequency with which participants view pornography in an ‘average’ week. In the future, it may be helpful to measure additional dimensions of pornography exposure (e.g., timing, intentional vs. unintentional), to determine how these may be related to outcomes in early adolescence. Also, no definition of pornography was provided to participants. Although this approach is common in the empirical literature (Kohut et al. 2020), it is possible that participants interpreted the term, “pornography,” differently.

In our increasingly digital world, it is critical to identify the factors that may protect early adolescents from the harmful effects of media. Previous rigorous research on the effectiveness of media literacy education highlights the need for wide-scale implementation of interventions that aim to enhance critical media attitudes as part of comprehensive sexual health education. The results of this cross-sectional study also provide preliminary evidence that this form of education might be helpful for early adolescents and that the benefits of media literacy education may extend to buffering early adolescents from some harmful messages in pornography. Policies are needed to fund and encourage the adoption of sexual health education that includes media literacy content.

Acknowledgments

Funding

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the US National Institutes of Health under award number R44HD088254 to the third author. Research reported in this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the US National Institutes of Health.

Footnotes

Declaration of interest statement

There are no competing interests to declare.

1

To ensure the relationships between endogenous variables were not inflating this Chi-squared value and driving the significance of the test, a Chi-squared value was calculated to examine the model without the relationships between the endogenous variables: χ2 (21) = 162.59, p < .001. This model also fit the data significantly better than the null model.

Data availability statement

The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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