Understanding Adolescents’ Views on Pornography and Violence

In this blog we hear from Irish Research Council DOROTHY MSCA COFUND awardee Dr Sandra Sanmartín Feijóo on her research project MARIGOLD (a Mixed-method study on the relAtionship between pornogRaphy and attItudes towards aGgression and viOLence among aDolescents)  that will investigate how consuming pornography affects adolescents’ views on violence, gender roles, and sexual health.

The goal of the MARIGOLD project is to reduce violence and improve young people’s sexual wellbeing across Europe through better education around pornography, or pornography literacy. Dr Sanmartín Feijóo is the lead researcher on this project with the mentoring of Prof Heidi Vandebosch from the Media & ICT in Organisations and Society (MIOS) research team at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), and Dr Mairéad Foody from the School of Psychology at the University of Galway (Ireland).

Many teenagers learn about sex from online content, including pornography. This may be due to a lack of quality sex education and the perceived ‘taboo’ to discuss the topic with others. Online sexual content is not always controlled or appropriate and can be very explicit, and sometimes violent. Therefore, adolescent exposure to this content can have deleterious effects on sexual maturation, behaviour and overall personality development.  These adolescents may come to perceive violent acts in pornography as ‘normal’ and may expect what they observe in pornography to be similar in real world sexual experiences. In addition, pornography often shows unequal power dynamics in which men dominate women. MARIGOLD will explore teens’ understanding of sex and relationships from pornography, as well as their awareness of gender dynamics and how we can improve their knowledge to prevent the normalisation of sexual violence. For this, Dr Sanmartín Feijóo will use surveys and interviews to understand teens’ pornography habits and their views on violence, gender, and sexual health. This research will help answer some key questions about young people’s perceptions and what they need to know to improve their sexual health.

In the words of Dr Sanmartín Feijóo “This fellowship is allowing me to conduct research about how to prevent the normalisation of sexual violence linked to viewing pornography uncritically. Girls and women are especially targeted by sexual violence, undermining their sexual health and human rights at increasingly younger ages. We need to stop things getting worse and invest in educating young people about sexual wellbeing and promoting pornography literacy.

This postdoctoral project builds on my doctoral research, which was a quantitative analysis of gender differences in various online behaviours, including the use of pornography by young people. By addressing several issues at once, I was able to do a descriptive study, but I could not go into as much detail as I can now with MARIGOLD. With this fellowship, I will be able to use a mix of different methods to understand how porn affects attitudes towards aggression, violence and gender among young people. I have a background in social psychology, but my main and outgoing supervisors have backgrounds in developmental psychology and communication studies, respectively. This will ensure that the findings of this study are interpreted through an interdisciplinary lens, taking into account both individual and social factors that contribute to violent pornography consumption among young people and attitude development.”

Dr Sanmartín Feijóo will attend the 15^th European Society for Prevention Research [EUSPR] Conference and Member’s meeting in September 2024 to showcase her research. Future plans include attending other conferences, written publications, and organising workshops and seminars to share findings with teachers, policymakers, and healthcare professionals and others who maybe interested in the project. If you want to stay up to date, you can follow  Dr Sanmartín Feijóo on X (previously Twitter), ResearchGate, or connect via LinkedIn.