Consommation de pornographie et sexualité à l’adolescence : entre conduites exploratoires et risques de conduites déviantes ?

Pornographic consumption or exposure to sexually explicit media (SEM) during adolescence raises many questions, in particular concerning its incidence on the level of a teenager's psychosexual development and sexual behaviour. Adolescence is a stage of identity formation, characterized by the adoption of risk taking and exploratory behaviours, of which the consumption of pornography is part. Whereas some studies noticed an impact of the exposure to sexually explicit media on the level of the subject's psychosexual development, attitudes towards sexuality and sexual behaviour, other studies do not highlight any significant links between the voluntary or involuntary exposure to pornography and risk taking sexual behaviours. Two researches will be presented to deal with this question. The first study, relating to a sample of 319 teenagers aged between 15 to 18 (52% boys), shows that 85% of the subjects have already seen pornographic material, the average age a child first views pornography being between 10 and 14. Our results indicate that the forms of exposure to SEM as well as the representations of pornography and the impact of pornographic material on their sexuality are different depending on the subject's gender. Our second study, relating to a sample of 47 juvenile sexual offenders, will make it possible to consider the forms of consumption of these young people and the possible links between their sexual offence and the consumption of pornography