Varieties of Religious and Pornographic Experience: Latent Growth in Adolescents’ Religiosity and Pornography Use

Stephen Cranney,Goran Koletić,Aleksandar Štulhofer

doi:10.1080/10508619.2018.1480195

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe relationship between adolescent religiosity and pornography use has been longitudinally tested only in the United States. Given the social relevance of hypothesized mechanisms underlying the association, this study offers a three-wave longitudinal assessment of parallel latent growth in the two constructs carried out in a Southern European country. Using responses of 1,041 Croatian adolescents from the capital city (Mage = 16.14 years, SD = .45; 64.6% of female students) and latent growth curve modeling approach, we explored links between individual trajectories of change in religiosity and pornography use over a period of 24 months. In the observed period, religiosity decreased and pornography use increased among both male and female adolescents, but their dynamics were independent of each other—pointing to other (unmeasured) processes responsible for both adolescents’ sexualization and secularization. Important to note, the findings also pointed to an important role of age at first exposure to pornography for its frequency of use in middle to late adolescence.

Highlights

The rise of widely available internet pornography has stoked research interest in possible associations between pornography use and various outcomes
More recent research has gone beyond establishing cross-sectional relationships couched in OLS models and has begun to investigate the longitudinal interplay between pornography use and religiosity across time
In support of the prior literature, we found strong negative baseline correlations between pornography use and religiosity for both men and women

Summary

Introduction

The rise of widely available internet pornography has stoked research interest in possible associations between pornography use and various outcomes. Germane to this discussion are effects on adolescents, as this is a time when, according to some sensitive period models, sexual socialization is important in terms of later life influences (O’Sullivan & Thompson, 2014). There is a long history in the pornography literature of strong cross-sectional negative relationships between various measures of religiosity and self-reported pornography use (e.g. Carroll et al, 2008; Poulsen, Busby, & Galovan, 2013; Stack, Wasserman, & Kern, 2004). More recent research has gone beyond establishing cross-sectional relationships couched in OLS models and has begun to investigate the longitudinal interplay between pornography use and religiosity across time. More recent research has gone beyond establishing cross-sectional relationships couched in OLS models and has begun to investigate the longitudinal interplay between pornography use and religiosity across time. Perry (2017) made some attempt at this by employing a two-wave survey to investigate the functional form and directionality of the pornography use and religion relationship among adults, finding a negative, though curvilinear relationship between early pornography use and later life religiosity, with high levels of use associated with somewhat greater religiosity six years later relative to those with more moderate use

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion