The influence of online pornography on the sexual objectification of women: The attenuating role of media literacy

Literature has stressed the importance of sexual health education for a healthy sexual development (e.g., Ward, 2003) and has warned that accessing sexually explicit Internet material (= SEIM) relates to adopting views of women as sex objects (e.g., Peter & Valkenburg, 2009). A two-wave panel study among 13-25-years-olds (N = 1,815) examined the potential of sexual health education to attenuate the longitudinal influence of exposure to SEIM on views of women as sex objects. Gender, age, sexual orientation and views of women as sex objects at Time 1 functioned as control variables. Exposure to SEIM positively predicted views of women as sex objects over time. Moreover, a two-way interaction effect between exposure to SEIM and perceived utility of sexual health education emerged. The more young people perceived the sexual health education as useful, the less strong the influence of exposure to SEIM on notions of women as sex objects was. The current study is the first to empirically support the potential of sexual health education to attenuate the influence of exposure to SEIM on sexual attitudes.status: publishe