Abstract
Since the advent of the Internet, the pornography business has expanded to reach audiences that historically lacked access to sexually explicit media. Simultaneously, Internet-based pornographic media has grown in intensity and explicitness that surpasses any of the previous and more traditional forms of eroticism (e.g., books, magazines, and mainstream movies). While pornography is legally produced exclusively for adult consumption, it is widely used by adolescents, with males generally regarded as the primary consumers. Coupled with the reported negative consequences of male adolescents’ use of pornography is the lack of understanding of the content of contemporary pornography among most family counselors. This article reviews implications of counseling families with adolescents impacted by pornography use.
Marriage and family therapists and mental health counselors who work with families (hereby referred to as “counselors”) are tasked with assisting a wide variety of client dynamics and clinical concerns. Be it their work with couples, blended families, parent–child relationships, and/or individuals struggling to resolve family of origin issues, counselors must remain aware of the current societal issues that can impact their clients. Many clients will present with their adolescents, often labeled as the “identified patient,” challenging the counselor to “fix him because he is withdrawing from the family system.” While there are numerous reasons that make adolescent males pull away from their siblings and parents, one area that counselors continuously fail to assess and address is their clients' use of Internet pornography. Given some of the negative behaviors (isolation, aggression, addiction) and feelings (confusion, shame, anger) associated with Internet-based pornography use (Cooper, 1998; Hald, Malamuth, & Lange, 2013; Hald, Malamuth, & Yuen, 2010; Owens, Behun, Manning, & Reid, 2012; Peter & Valkenburg, 2010), an uninformed counselor may employ interventions without first understanding the source of the issues they treat.
Approximately 78% of the United States population has access to the Internet (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2012), which is generally regarded as a primary resource for information gathering. It is not difficult to imagine how the advent and widespread use of the Internet has changed the way adolescents understand and view sexuality. For example, an adolescent looking up the meaning of a sexual term on the Internet could simply type the word into a search engine and find the sexual act portrayed in high definition. Perhaps because of its ready availability, access, and affordability (Cooper, 1998), Internet pornography has become the major source of erotic media, far surpassing that of traditional media (i.e., books, magazines, Video Home System tapes and Digital Video Disc movies; Chen, Leung, Chen, & Yang, 2013). While early exposure to traditional pornography may have historically been less than ideal for boys' perceptions of sexuality, exposure to contemporary pornography has several potential negative impacts on male adolescents, which can lead them and their families to eventually land in a counselor’s office (Ayres & Haddock, 2009).
There are several reported concerns associated with adolescents’ use of sexual media. For example, there have been reports of viewing women solely as sexual objects (Peter & Valkenburg, 2007, 2009) and promoting violent attitude against women (Bonino, Ciairano, Rabeglietti, & Cattelino, 2006; Foubert, Brosi, & Bannon, 2011). In line with Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory, a review of the literature showed that adolescents are capable of both learning from and imitating the sexual acts they see through Internet pornography (Owens et al., 2012). This is particularly troublesome given the research which states that Internet pornography is frequently described as an inappropriate tool to educate adolescents about healthy sexual experiences due to its distorted modeling of sexual relationships (Flood, 2009; Häggström-Nordin, Tydén, Hanson, & Larsson, 2009; Latzman, Viljoen, Scalora, & Ullman, 2011; Owens et al., 2012). Unfortunately, as counselors often find themselves contacted only after a dilemma has occurred (be it directly connected, such as a sexually related incident [unwanted pregnancy, sexual assault charge, etc.] or indirectly connected, such as isolation from the family system, poor academic performance due to lack of sleep, etc.), many are ill-prepared to address the concerns of their clients and their families (Ayres & Haddock, 2009).
Given that males ubiquitously use pornography more often than females (Bleakley, Hennessy, & Fishbein, 2011; Chen et al., 2013; Häggström-Nordin et al., 2009; Peter & Valkenburg, 2006) and that the majority of published literature focuses largely on heterosexual males (Owens et al., 2012), this article will (a) review the content of contemporary pornography in order to help counselors recognize the changes that have evolved, (b) discuss the counseling needs of adolescent males who have experienced consequences of their exposure to contemporary pornography, and (c) offer suggestions for counselors to better prepare them to prevent and treat concerns that emanate from early exposure to pornography.
Contemporary Pornography
In recent history, the term pornography has been associated with media such as adult (largely men’s) magazines, movies, books, and games that portray sexually explicit content. In the 1980s, the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (initiated by then president Ronald Reagan), comprehensively defined pornography as any material that is, “sexually explicit and intended primarily for the purpose of sexual arousal” (McManus, 1986, p. 8). More recently, the Internet has popularized a variety of other pornographic mediums that have broadened the earlier definition of pornography. One definition set forth by Bleakley, Hennessy, and Fishbein (2011) defined pornography as media content (e.g., television shows, magazines, movies, Internet web sites, chatrooms) that portray, “talking about or showing: Hooking-up/making out, sexy clothes, nudity, sex (oral, anal, or vaginal), safe sex (condoms, birth control, etc.), sex crimes (rape) or homosexuality (gay or lesbian)” (p.311). Further, Peter and Valkenburg (2010), two of the foremost researchers studying the effects of adolescent pornography use, defined sexually explicit Internet material as “[…] professionally produced or user-generated (audio)visual material on or from the Internet which depicts sexual activities and (aroused) genitals in unconcealed ways, usually with a close-up on oral, anal, and vaginal penetration” (p. 358). They further stated that nudity shown in traditional erotic media, such as Playboy magazine, was not included in their definition. For the sake of this article, the authors will refer to the latter definition as contemporary pornography and further differentiate it from prior traditional definitions of pornography.
Added to these accepted definitions, counselors must remain vigilant to cocreating definitions with their clients in order to design specific interventions that meet their counseling goals. For example, while clients with conservative beliefs may associate images of bikini-clad women as pornographic and experience extreme levels of guilt and/or shame, clients with less conservative beliefs may not experience guilt/shame until the content is much more explicit and intense. In considering the cocreation of a pornography definition, counselors need to be aware that the content portrayed in contemporary Internet pornography has evolved to a significantly more explicit and extreme nature than that found in more traditional pornography (Chen et al., 2013).
Contemporary Pornography versus Traditional Pornography
A review of the literature noted that in the 12 years between 1986 and 1998, erotic media showed a significant increase in behaviors termed “unaffectionate sex,” which were characterized by sexual acts devoid of “warmth, care, or love” (Peter & Valkenburg, 2010, p. 359). In their summary of the literature in this time span, Peter and Valkenburg found that pornography was increasingly defined by themes of male dominance in which a male used a female as a sole means of his own satisfaction without regard for her sexual desires or gratification. The authors summarized that during that span of time, the portrayal of these kinds of sexual encounters increased in frequency from 54% to 94% of pornographic scenes, and that 98% of sexual scenes concluded with a male satisfying himself onto the woman’s body. The authors concluded that the pornography from previous decades that had once showed a consensual sexual experience between partners has evolved into a misogynistic act of male domination and self-satisfaction that perpetuated female degradation.
Not only has contemporary pornography escalated the presence of male domination, it has also taken on a particular form of sexual violence (Foubert et al., 2011). Along these lines, Foubert, Brosi, & Bannon (2011) summarized the literature on the content of mainstream pornographic movies and noted that 88% showed signs of physical aggression toward women (in the form of slapping, choking, hair pulling, or bondage) and 41% of scenes involved a man sodomizing a woman followed by immediately having her perform oral sex on him. Foubert and associates also described the growing popularity of scenes that portrayed males forcing women to perform oral sex to the point of gagging and vomiting. While many readers may find these descriptions extreme, research has shown that individuals who consistently consume pornography typically pursue content in increasingly extreme and deviant ways (Svedin, Åkerman, & Priebe, 2011). It is thus important that counselors be aware of the contemporary material to which their adolescent clients have been exposed. Otherwise, the unprepared counselor might inadvertently minimize an adolescent client’s shame-based disclosure with, “You should not worry about looking at Internet pornography: It is a healthy source of information.”
Consumers of Contemporary Pornography
Internet pornography use is not germane to the United States, but rather has an international audience. Due to the vulnerability of adolescents and their status as a protected population, the counseling literature in the United States has been slow to conduct experimental research with adolescents. Consequently, the majority of the current information regarding the impact of pornography use among adolescents has come from international correlation studies conducted in Taiwan (Chen et al., 2013), Sweden (Häggström-Nordin et al., 2009; Svedin et al., 2011), Denmark (Peter & Valkenburg, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), and Italy (Bonino et al., 2006). Nonetheless, results of these studies warrant exploration, as they can help counselors better meet the needs of their adolescent clients.
First, it is important to note that not all adolescents who have viewed pornography have done so purposely. One of the most recently published studies found that over 70% of their 1,166 respondents had been exposed to pornography, with 41.3% of respondents being accidentally exposed to pornography as a result of misspelled searches, advertisements, and redirections from other websites (Chen et al., 2013). Consequently, one must not assume that every adolescent male exposed to pornography actively sought out this exposure voluntarily.
Beyond the accidental exposure to pornographic media, the majority of adolescents who have been exposed to pornography purposely pursued it. The remaining 58.7% of respondents of the study by Chen, Leung, Chen, and Yang (2013) intentionally sought out pornographic media. Weber, Quiring, and Daschmann (2012) found that of the adolescent males between the ages of 16 and 19 that they studied, 98% had viewed a pornographic film, with only five percent reporting that they had viewed it accidentally. A study by Bleakley et al. (2011) found that more than half of the 810 adolescent participants they surveyed had actively pursued sexual content in their media consumption – including movies, television, music, and Internet pornography. In their study, nearly 40% of participating male adolescents reported that they sought their sexual content specifically through pornography. Based on the above reports, one can conclude that whether purposely sought or accidentally found, the vast majority of male adolescents has been exposed to contemporary pornography.
Alternatively, the findings of the studies noted above demonstrate that not all adolescents use pornography. The question then remains: What are the common characteristics of adolescents who do use pornography? Research has shown that males are more likely to use pornography than females (Bleakley et al., 2011; Chen et al., 2013; Häggström-Nordin et al., 2009; Peter & Valkenburg, 2006) and are more likely to use pornography if it is openly discussed in their peer group (Weber, Quiring, & Daschmann, 2012). Males who seek Internet pornography are also more likely to be interested in sex (Peter & Valkenburg, 2006) and are more likely to be high sensation seekers (Brown & L’Engle, 2009; Peter & Valkenburg, 2006). Also, male adolescents are more likely to use pornography if they express lower levels of life satisfaction (Peter & Valkenburg, 2006, 2011), and if they have advanced pubertal status (Peter & Valkenburg, 2006; Skoog, Stattin, & Kerr, 2009).
A comprehensive review of the literature between 2005 and 2011 by Owens, Behun, Manning, and Reid (2012) found that male adolescents who used Internet pornography had correlations with things such as increased social isolation, decreased emotional bonding with care givers, greater instances of conduct problems, increased delinquent behaviors, and increased incidences of depressive symptoms. Given that the aforementioned characteristics and concerns may contribute to an adolescent presenting for counseling (independent of their Internet pornography use), it is imperative that competent counselors recognize the impact that contemporary pornography can have on their clients' presenting concerns. In so doing, counselors will be better prepared to assess for and address problems associated with Internet pornography use as they arise.
Impacts of Internet Pornography on Adolescents
Coupling the increase in contemporary pornography’s explicit and male domineering content over traditional pornographic content with the developmental perspectives of sexuality among adolescents, several negative impacts have been noted. For example, studies have found that adolescents who consume pornography also engage in sexual activity earlier than nonpornography consumers (Brown & L’Engle, 2009; Owens et al., 2012), have sex with multiple partners (Weber et al., 2012; Wright & Randall, 2012), and engage in paid sex (Svedin et al., 2011; Wright & Randall, 2012). The associated dangers with these sexual activities are that adolescents who consume pornography are also less likely to use safe sexual practices (Luder et al., 2011). The behavior of male adolescents who view pornography raises concerns beyond a moral imperative: Not only do they learn devaluing messages about women, but when paired with unsafe sexual practices with multiple partners, there are increased risks of contracting or transmitting a sexually transmitted infection and/or creating an unwanted pregnancy. While the debate over direct effects of pornography use upon adolescents in the United States remains somewhat inconclusive, the associated negative consequences have been established by the literature (Bonino et al., 2006; Owens et al., 2012; Peter & Valkenburg, 2007, 2009, 2010) and compel the attention of counselors working with this population. To aid counselors in this endeavor, we now shift the focus to (a) purposes of adolescent pornography consumption, (b) negative messages of contemporary pornography, and (c) maladaptive behaviors of adolescents who consume contemporary pornography.
It is important for counselors to recognize the drive behind adolescents’ viewing of pornography. Developmentally, male adolescents are naturally curious about sexuality. Chen and associates (2013) found that adolescents who purposely viewed Internet pornography did so for a variety of reasons, including peer influence, entertainment, excitement, boredom, and curiosity. In addition to other reasons for viewing pornography, 60.9% of respondents reportedly did so specifically to learn about sexuality. If male adolescents are seeking pornography for sexual education, one must ask how appropriate pornography is as an educational tool: Counselors must be ready to provide alternative educational methods for their curious adolescent clients to combat some of the unrealistic sexual practices portrayed in contemporary pornography.
In general, pornography is an unrealistic representation of sex. In most contemporary pornography, males are seen as having both exceptionally large genitalia and the ability to maintain erections for sexual encounters that last inordinately longer than realistic sexual encounters. Counselors should be prepared to share the fact that many male pornography performers use sexual performance enhancing drugs to increase their endowment, maintain erections, and delay ejaculation. While adults may understand that pornographic portrayals of sexuality are more of a fantastical representation than a realistic representation of sex, adolescents are not privy to this understanding given their lack of personal sexual experiences. Consequently, the content of contemporary pornography can cause distress as adolescents try to reconcile pornography’s messages with the messages they have received about sex from other sources (Peter & Valkenburg, 2010).
In a study of 956 adolescents, Peter and Valkenburg (2010) found that frequent Internet pornography use was correlated with male adolescents questioning their sexual beliefs and values and feeling insecure in their sexual preferences. Some of this sexual uncertainty may be explained by Owens and colleagues (2012) who suggested that adolescent boys might experience distress in comparing themselves to the male performers in pornographic media, fearing being unable to compete with their physical prowess. Viewing pornography increases sexual preoccupation, where the more often a male adolescent uses it, the more interested he becomes in sex, and the more frequently he will be distracted by thoughts about sex (Peter & Valkenburg, 2008); however, in continuation with the idea that many male adolescents pursue pornographic media for sexual education, it would seem that pornography might confuse male adolescents and raise more questions than provide the answers they seek.
In addition to the conflicting personal messages of sex offered by contemporary pornography, the greatest concern is that adolescents learn and replicate behaviors that have been modeled for them (Bandura, 1977). Tellingly, while Dr. Sharon Mitchell (a former pornography actress from the 1970s and former director of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation) stated that she would have once recommended that an adolescent view her pornographic films from the 1970s to learn about intimacy, tenderness, and interaction between sexual individuals, she cautioned that contemporary pornography is devoid of any such intimacy, with men slapping, hitting, and hurting women while calling them derogatory and demeaning names. She continued to note that the direct proof of the violence found in contemporary pornography was often seen first hand in her medical clinic where doctors routinely had to suture torn rectums and vaginas (Tracy, 2007). According to one of pornography’s own contributors, while some value may have once existed in viewing pornography for educational purposes, it no longer exists in contemporary pornography, particularly for adolescents.
There are greater implications at hand than violent and/or degrading sexual performances. As noted earlier, pornography consumption is associated with both less progressive attitudes and increased feelings of hostile sexism toward women (Hald et al., 2013). Peter and Valkenburg (2007, 2009) have found that adolescents’ exposure to sexualized media is associated with stronger beliefs that women are to be used as sexual objects. Similarly, a study of 967 adolescents performed by Brown and L’Engle (2009) found that early exposure to pornography was associated with males having less progressive gender role attitudes toward women and an increased likelihood to perpetrate sexual harassment. Further, Hald, Malamuth, and Yuen (2010) stated that there was a clear and significant correlation between pornography consumption and attitudes that promoted violence against women. Clearly, pornography is influencing how men treat and view women, which results in negative consequences for both parties.
The use of pornography has detrimental impact on adolescents’ beliefs of sexual violence against women. For example, Foubert et al. (2011) studied 489 fraternity men at a large Midwestern public university and found that one in four participants had viewed sadomasochistic pornography and nearly one in five participants had viewed rape pornography. Among those late adolescents who had viewed the sadomasochistic and rape pornography, participants reported a greater likelihood of committing rape and/or sexual assault, a greater acceptance of rape myths (e.g., that women invited the rape), and a decreased likelihood of intervening in a sexual assault than those who did not view pornography in the previous year. While specific sadomasochistic/rape pornography may be a small niche among Internet pornography, the content found in contemporary pornography is steadily moving toward increases in violent sexual expressions. Therefore, the correlation found by these authors between the viewing of this type of pornography and the acceptance of sexual violence against women is troubling and will likely increase the number of sexually motivated crimes in the future.
The greatest concern about adolescent males adopting violent attitudes toward women through the consumption of contemporary pornography is that attitudes and beliefs can mediate behaviors for both genders. For example, a study performed by Bonino, Ciairano, Rabeglietti, and Cattelino (2006) on 804 adolescents indicated that pornography consumption by participants was correlated with increased aggressive sexual behaviors by males (e.g., forcing a sexual act or sexually harassing) and passive sexual behaviors (i.e., unwanted sexual acts) by females (e.g., being sexually harassed or forced to engage in a sexual act). While not all male adolescents who utilize contemporary pornography go on to commit aggressive sexual acts, it is unknown how the increasingly violent nature of contemporary pornography would influence the way adolescent males adopt violent attitudes toward females.
At their level of development, it is normal for male adolescents to be curious about sexuality and interested in learning more about it. However, contemporary pornography models unhealthy sexual behaviors and practices for male adolescents. The consequences of this can be seen in male adolescents’ conflicted views about sexuality, their potentially increased violent beliefs and attitudes toward women as well as the consequential behaviors that follow, and unhealthy sexual practices. Despite this, the literature suggests that educational efforts may deflect some of the adverse effects correlated with adolescent males’ pornography consumption (Häggström-Nordin et al., 2009; Peter & Valkenburg, 2010; Weber et al., 2012).
Implications for Counselors
Thus far, we have explored the content of contemporary pornography and its potential impacts on adolescent males. At this point, we would like to move into some suggested strategies for working with clients and their families where pornography use becomes a point of contention, thus warranting a counselor’s intervention. We would like to note that, while we assume that working with the family system tends to be the most utilized technique by readers of the Family Journal, we have found that working individually with an adolescent around areas of pornography use may prove more effective once trust has been established. Therefore, we begin by exploring counselors’ feelings of competence and comfort and conclude with suggestions for cocreating definitions and goal setting for working with the individual adolescent.
Competence and Comfort
Competent counselors who work with families and adolescents fulfill a variety of roles, two of which are in the domains of prevention and education (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, 2009). It is a counselor’s duty to both prevent harm to a client’s wellbeing and to educate clients so that they may be informed and empowered to promote their own wellness. According to the guidelines set forth by the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics (2014), ethical counselors fulfill these roles with respect to their own limitations in skill and competence. In regard to counselors’ feelings of competence in addressing male adolescent pornography use, information in the counseling literature is quite sparse. One study by Ayres and Haddock (2009) was closest to investigating this area of inquiry. The authors recruited 99 clinicians from the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and examined the clinical approaches used to working with clients where pornography was associated with their presenting concerns. Nearly three quarters of counselors reported having seen individual clients (74%) and couple clients (76%) with issues related to pornography. At the same time, 47.4% of clinicians reported that they had received no training as graduate students about pornography use and 79% of clinicians reported that they were “minimally” or “not at all” prepared by their training to deal with pornography use in relationships. The lack of additional studies warrants future research in and of itself, though two conclusions can still be inferred: First, training programs must better prepare counselors to work in this arena; and second, counselors must take it upon themselves to utilize the professional literature to aid them in working with clients’ concerns related to pornography.
In addition to self-education through the literature, counselors can take additional actions to generally enhance their competence in working with male adolescent clients and their families. Before engaging clients in conversations about pornography use, it is essential that counselors take a personal inventory of their own values and attitudes related to pornography use. As it may be difficult and uncomfortable to discuss highly sexualized content with an adolescent, counselors must be aware of their own level of comfort in having such discussions. Similarly, counselors must model maturity and appropriate use of sexual language when working with adolescents, being mindful to avoid language that sends a punishing or judgmental message to clients regarding their pornography use.
Given male adolescents’ comfort level to engage in discussions of sexuality and/or their highly sexualized mannerisms, additional considerations are important. First, the counselor must decide if he/she should continue to work with the issue with the entire family involved or see the adolescent separately. This decision should be made in consultation with the family and be aligned with their therapeutic goals. The other consideration is in regard to male/female counseling relationships. Female counselors are encouraged to consider how they plan to work with male adolescents who (a) may want to avoid such discussions with a female or (b) are preoccupied with the sex of their counselor to the point of a disruption of the therapeutic alliance. In this regard, consultations with colleagues and supervisors to assess the depth of exploration can be helpful. To conclude on competence and comfort, we believe that a strong therapeutic relationship can be established by counselors who are vigilant at being mindful of their own values and attitudes related to pornography and who work to establish boundaries for the topics and timing of what is appropriate to discuss in a family session and/or in a female to male counseling relationship.
Definitions and Goal Setting
Given that an adolescent’s pornography use will likely not surface until a strong therapeutic relationship has been established with the family counselor, the importance of the previous section is clear. Once the door to discussions regarding pornography use (and/or its impacts) has been opened, and given the family’s therapeutic goals, counselors can begin by asking their adolescent client if he would like to meet separate from the family system. If consent is granted, we suggest the counselor begin by considering the aforementioned definition of pornography established by Peter and Valkenburg (2010), but still deferring to the client’s definition of pornography – personally, culturally, and religiously. As noted earlier, counselors are cautioned against qualifying a male adolescent’s definition of pornography as appropriate or inappropriate, and instead cocreate a working definition of what constitutes pornography for that particular client.
One strategy to initiate conversations regarding pornography use and definitions is to include space on counseling intake forms where clients can indicate how much of their concerns are related to such use. Even if clients initially minimize or deny their use of pornography, counselors can begin to normalize the discussion of such topics. Counselors are also encouraged to add questions related to pornography viewing habits as a standard part of the initial family intake interview regardless of how the questions were answered on the intake documents. Once trust and rapport has been established, counselors are encouraged to revisit these initial discussions to determine if clients have underreported their use of pornography, particularly if the presenting concerns appear to be connected. Utilizing intake interviews and establishing a conversation about honest disclosures at the outset of counseling is a powerful way to normalize conversations about sexuality.
Once norms for appropriate and healthy conversations about sexuality and pornography use have been created, counselors can establish therapeutic goals aimed at helping clients to resolve any pornography-related concerns. For most adolescent clients, topics related to sexual education and prevention of maladaptive consequences are warranted. In delivering sexual education, counselors will need to simultaneously assist clients in processing messages and practices conveyed through their viewing of contemporary pornography (Giami et al., 2006). Again, while the definition of pornography will hold a different meaning to individual clients, it can be assumed that the majority of male adolescent clients have been exposed to sexually explicit contemporary pornography. Therefore, in answering clients’ questions about sexuality, counselors will also be combating the attitudes and beliefs that support violence against women found in much of contemporary pornography and contesting male adolescents’ distress resulting from the unrealistic nature of pornography (Giami et al., 2006).
Regarding the delivery of sexual education to male adolescent clients, it is recommended that such education match clients’ level of cognitive development (Wisnieski & Matzo, 2013). In practice, developmentally appropriate sexual education might involve teaching clients appropriate words for male and female anatomy and sexual practices that are free of demeaning and degrading associations. Similarly, counselors are encouraged to educate clients in a way that develops self-respect, involves parents, and informs them of social consequences (Bourdeau, Grube, Bersamin, & Fisher, 2011). Educating clients with regard to social consequences might entail a discussion about various kinds of contraceptives and the importance of using protection to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (Giami et al., 2006). This conversation about contraceptive use may also involve a discussion of what a typical sexual experience looks like in terms of what typically happens and does not happen, and for what duration. It is imperative that counselors also address the nature of consent to prevent active and passive sexual violence. Furthermore, due to the tendency of pornography to increase a viewer’s perception of women as sex objects, counselors are encouraged to humanize females by reminding male adolescent clients of other female identities, such as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. Also, in an effort to teach adolescents about normative sexual experiences, counselors are encouraged to educate clients about the importance of making a sexual act a cocreated experience with a partner. Given that one of the reasons male adolescents use pornography is for sexual education, the counselor’s primary role as an educator is to be open to the questions and concerns a male adolescent brings into a session. We believe that the primary role of a counselor should be to educate and prevent future harm. Through education, counselors can deconstruct messages conveyed through contemporary pornography and assist clients in establishing healthy sexual norms. In doing so, counselors simultaneously work to prevent male adolescents’ distress associated with viewing pornography and prevent further objectification of women.
Conclusion
In the United States, it is illegal for a minor to purchase or view pornographic media. In previous decades, one who wished to view pornography would have had to purchase it from a store using identification demonstrating that he was over 18 years of age. Currently, with the exception of computers with parental control installed and correctly operated, an individual of any age can view pornography by simply clicking on a website name or a linked image. Given the proliferation of adolescents’ use of technology (i.e., cell phones, video game systems, tablets) and unprecedented access to Internet pornography that surpasses pornography of the past decades in terms of intensity, explicitness, and portrayal of extreme acts of sexuality, it is imperative that counselors be aware of what their adolescent clients have been exposed to and how this exposure can lead to clinically relevant issues.
Several areas are ripe for future research. First, as noted earlier, the majority of data collected on adolescents' use of pornography has been outside of the United States. Therefore, further research on the practices and attitudes related to adolescent contemporary pornography use in the United States, and its associated consequences, is warranted. Similarly, while this article focused primarily on heterosexual male adolescents, further research needs to be performed on sexual minority clients as well as clients from different age groups and cultural backgrounds. Finally, little is known about adolescent females' experiences with contemporary pornography and how it impacts their beliefs and attitudes about sexuality.
To conclude, contemporary pornography use has been shown to negatively impact adolescent males in many ways by impacting their attitudes and behaviors. In addition to an acceptance of a wider array of dangerous sexual behavioral practices, pornography use has been associated with violent attitudes toward women, objectification of women, and a confusion of one’s sexual values and preferences. However, these phenomena are underreported in the counseling literature. Given that it can be assumed that most male adolescent clients have been exposed to pornography and that one of the prime motivations for its use is to gain sexual knowledge, it is the counselor’s duty to familiarize himself or herself with the subject of male adolescent pornography use and assist male adolescent clients in developing a realistic understanding of sex. Through education, a counselor can mitigate some of the negative effects associated with pornography use, and thus, prevent the objectification of, and potential future violence against, women.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.