No Substitute for Sex Ed

Although pornography isn’t made for adolescents, it would be naïve to believe they don’t watch it. Earlier generations snuck peeks at their parents’ magazine or VHS collections. Today most U.S. teenagers have Internet access and thus a virtual buffet of porn. But how does such exposure affect them?

Scientifically, it is difficult to tease out the effects that porn use has on adolescents; some of the correlations may not be causations. Research has found that adolescents who seek out porn are more likely to engage in certain sexual behaviors (like anal sex and group sex) and to begin having sex at younger ages. But are they engaging in more varied sex acts and at younger ages because they watched porn? Or are they highly sexually interested young women and men who sought out sexual stimulation in the form of both pornography and partners?

Of course, porn isn’t going anywhere – nor is it becoming more vanilla or true to life. A recent study found that popular mainstream porn featured anal sex in about 55 percent of scenes. However, my research team’s data suggest that only about 4 percent of Americans engaged in anal sex during their most recent sexual experience -- a sizable difference that emphasizes that porn is fiction. Other issues that concern people include how porn generally depicts women, shows sex as casual rather than intimate, and frequently has partners couple and part ways without exchanging names or wearing condoms.

Yes, pornography is fiction. That’s part of why many people enjoy it. However, there’s a risk if young women and men misunderstand sex as a result of a porn-only sex education.

Many of my college students who have watched porn but had little sex education (whether in schools or from their families) often have a skewed view of sex. They may believe that anal sex and group sex are common, that genitals should be hairless, and that facials (not the spa kind) are par for the course. Once they engage in a real relationship with someone they care for, many of their beliefs are challenged and they find themselves readjusting to sex in the real world -- very different from the sex they’ve seen online. Then again, young women whose ideas about sex and love are shaped by “Fifty Shades of Grey” or Hollywood romantic comedies will also have to make room for reality.

It’s the larger context of sex education that is critical to examine. Pornography and “Fifty Shades” aren’t the problem.

Many college students say I am the first adult to teach them about sex. This is striking. If parents and schools don’t teach teenagers about sex, intimacy and healthy relationships, then pornography will remain their primary source of sex information. It doesn’t have to be that way. We need age- and developmentally appropriate sex education in schools that spans years, not just a single video about puberty in fifth grade.

Young women and men need to learn about their bodies, how to be emotionally vulnerable with one another, and what’s common (and not) about sexuality so that when they’re faced with creating their own sexual lives, they can create the sexual life that feels good to them rather than recreating the fictionalized, and often risky, sex they’ve seen online. They’ll know that pornography and romantic novels are fictions of sex and love -- and that it’s for them to create reality.