Three-Quarters of Teens Have Viewed Pornography: So What?

Recently, the news media engaged in collective hand-wringing when a survey showed that three-quarters of U.S. teens said they’d viewed online pornography. The report disturbed many parents, school administrators, youth advocates, and religious leaders, who assume that exposure to porn must harm teens. In addition, during the COVID lockdown of 2020 to 2022, many of these same folks fretted that pandemic-related isolation, boredom, and loneliness would drive a huge increase in teen porn viewing.

Anxious adults got it wrong on two counts. There is no credible evidence that teens suffer harm from viewing porn. And a recent Belgian study shows that the COVID lockdown caused no significant increase in teen porn viewing.

Teens Watching Porn: Get Scared!

The figures about teen porn consumption come from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit youth advocacy organization whose researchers surveyed 1,358 teenage boys and girls aged 13 to 17. Their average age at first porn viewing was 12. Forty-one percent said they viewed porn during school hours. The report also noted that porn rarely discusses consent, contraception, and sexual infections. The report’s message was clear: Teen porn viewing is a problem, and viewing sucks teens into a black hole of sexual irresponsibility.

Teens Watching Porn: No Biggie

Porn is huge, no question about that. Internet porn revenues tripled from 2012 to 2022, from $5 billion to $15 billion. But a great deal of information shows that neither tons of free porn on cell phones nor viewing during the COVID lockdown years has caused teens demonstrable harm.

In the Common Sense survey, more than half of the teens who viewed porn (58 percent) were not looking for it. They stumbled across it while surfing the Internet for other destinations. Some undoubtedly stayed and watched, but a study by Dutch researchers shows that when teens happen upon porn accidentally, they’re more likely to click away quickly.

The Common Sense report also showed that 45 percent of teen viewers considered the porn they saw as educational, particularly LGBT+ youth. It’s often difficult for teens who are not exclusively heterosexual to find sympathetic depictions of LGBT+ sex. Porn provides a window into the erotic realm they hope one day to enter.

Meanwhile, in a recent study, Belgian researchers tracked porn viewing by 522 teen boys and girls at three points in time: (1) before the COVID lockdown, (2) during the lockdown when many teens reported feeling isolated, bored, and lonely, and (3) after COVID restrictions ended. The investigators reported that teens’ porn viewing held remarkably steady during the study’s three waves. Porn viewing “did not increase” during the COVID lockdown. “In that time of social isolation, adolescents in general did not turn to sexually explicit Internet media to cope with pandemic-related emotional challenges.”

Of course, some teens viewed porn during the COVID lockdown. They watched for the same reason they watch at any time—curiosity about sex and as a visual aid to enhance the pleasure of self-sexing. The researchers remarked: “Adolescents mainly turned to pornography as a response to sexual arousal needs, and the prevalence of these needs did not significantly differ according to their gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pubertal timing, or sensation seeking.”

Now, sexual conservatives voice strenuous objections to solo sex and excoriate porn because it goes hand-in-hand, as it were, with self-sexing. But solo sex is normal and healthy at any stage of life.

More Porn, Less Teen Sex

If porn spurs teen sexual irresponsibility, then since the late 1990s, when porn exploded on the Internet, teens should have become more sexually active. The teen birth rate should have risen. And there might well have been an increase in teen sexual assaults. None of that happened. All three declined.

A team led by San Diego State University researchers surveyed 26,707 Americans, some born in the 1960s and ’70s, who came of age before Internet porn, and others born in the ’80s and ’90s, who grew up in a world glutted with it. The latter reported less sex. In addition, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the teen birth rate peaked in 1991, years before Internet porn. Since then, it has fallen 70 percent. The CDC’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey corroborates these findings and shows that teen-involved sexual assaults also declined.

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In other words, teen porn viewing has caused no social harm. It’s no big deal.

Our Ancestors Saw More Real, Live Sex

Social conservatives lament that today’s sex-drenched media warp little minds in ways far different from the experiences of previous, supposedly more chaste generations. True, today’s young people see more sex media than their ancestors did as teens. But those forebears saw much more real live sex.

As John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman relate in Intimate Matters, their classic history of American sexuality, from ancient times well into the 19^th century, the vast majority of the world’s population—and most Americans—were poor farmers living in one- or two-room shacks. “The small size of the vast majority of dwellings allowed children to witness adult sexuality with their ears and eyes. Curtains might have screened the parental bed, but all family members commonly slept in the same room, especially during winter, when a single fireplace provided heat.” Furthermore, bed-sharing was common. One daughter recalled getting into bed with her mother and siblings, and when her father joined them, her mother instructed the kids to give the couple room to play, “or she would kick us out of bed.”

In addition, from ancient times well into the 19^th century, farming was the world’s main occupation. It included raising pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, donkeys, and horses. Animal fecundity meant the difference between food on the table and starvation. Our farmer ancestors took livestock breeding very seriously. Many children witnessed livestock intercourse and drew the obvious inferences. Sex was no secret. Teens of yesteryear did not need Internet porn to see it. All they had to do was open their eyes.

So today, three-quarters of teens have watched Internet pornography. So what? Except possibly in rare cases, the available evidence shows it causes no harm.