Abstract
Despite international inquiry regarding young people’s encounters with Internet pornography (IP), there is a lack of knowledge about how their caregivers (parents or guardians) and educators perceive these encounters in comparison to young people. Such knowledge is critical to understanding the synergies and discrepancies that might exist between these key stakeholder groups (youth, caregivers and educators) and across genders, to subsequently inform how to best support youth in navigating IP. To this end, the present study describes youth (16–18-year olds) encounters with IP, as well as caregiver and educator perceptions of these encounters. An online survey was completed by 256 youth and 217 caregivers and educators recruited from nine schools with an existing investment in sexuality education in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Similar to global trends, this group of young New Zealanders were familiar with IP and patterns of encounters were gendered. However, there were varied understandings between stakeholder groups and across genders as to why and how these encounters occur. Understanding the ways youth encounter IP—and exploring how caregivers and educators perceive these encounters—serves as a springboard for future research that considers the broader socio-cultural context within which these perspectives are constructed.
Highlights
Youth encounters with Internet pornography (IP) have led to global concern regarding the healthy sexual socialisation of youth (Scarcelli, 2014; Tomić et al, 2017)
Data were collected through a cross-sectional online survey as part of a broader mixed methods study about youth encounters with IP in New Zealand (Healy-Cullen et al, 2021a, b)
Most young people (85.31%) had seen IP on one or more occasion, either intentionally or unintentionally, at some point in their life. This was the case for 95.20% of boys, 70.41% of girls, and 95.45% of gender diverse youth. Of those who had seen IP, the average age of first encounter was 11.70 years (SD = 3.32), this differed according to gender; the average age for boys was similar to the overall average at 11.33 years (SD = 3.16), older for girls at 12.83 years (SD = 2.12), and younger for gender diverse youth at 10.10 years (SD = 5.56)
Summary
Youth encounters with Internet pornography (IP) have led to global concern regarding the healthy sexual socialisation of youth (Scarcelli, 2014; Tomić et al, 2017). Such research provides a broad understanding of young people’s encounters with IP, but does not explore the relevance of IP in the lives of young people, or their thoughts about the involvement of caregivers and educators in youth IP viewing (Attwood et al, 2018). This is problematic because research on sexuality education suggests that there is frequently a disconnect between the ways youth understand and engage with sexual matters and the ways adults tasked with their sexual socialisation believe that they do (Jackson, 2004; Jearey-Graham & Macleod, 2015). In addition to a broader understanding of young people’s encounters with IP, it is important to understand how caregivers and educators perceive young people’s encounters with IP, given their roles in sexuality education
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