Watching porn is often the first step towards «adult» sexuality. How does this affect the perception of sex and relationships in the future?
“I came across the first porn in my life when I was ten years old when I was looking for some kind of children’s game like “grow a kitten” on the Internet,” says 18-year-old Yana. — Suddenly, in the middle of pictures with kittens, a video popped up, on which a close-up of female and male genitals moved. I closed my eyes, tried to remove “it”, but the more I clicked on the picture, the more of them — different ones — became on the screen.
Modern teenagers, active Internet users, are exposed to porn long before the first sexual experience. 27% of our readers saw a porn image when they were under ten years old, 46% between the ages of 10 and 141. And almost half of them then looked for an opportunity to watch it again. 62% of Europeans aged 14 to 18 regularly visit porn sites, watch movies on DVD, photos, anime or comics2. 87% of girls and boys admit that they have experience of virtual sex (via webcams, ICQ or by phone)3. How do encounters with (video)sexuality affect teenagers, and is there really cause for concern?
Experience of initiation
“Watching porn and erotica seems to have become a kind of initiation, a rite of passage into adulthood,” says psychotherapist Ekaterina Kadieva. “A rigid image of sexual intercourse, like the sight of a naked woman or man, starts the process of awareness of one’s own sexuality: one’s fantasies, sensations, desires.” In addition, young people who are overprotected by their parents remain teenagers for longer. Even among 30-year-olds, only 46% of women (and 31% of men) consider themselves adults.
Active aggressive behavior (which seems to be a manifestation of independence) and “forbidden” sexuality help them feel older, adds psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron. Pornography is just at the intersection of both. Viewing adult-only footage makes teens feel «big».
Models of behavior of actors often become a kind of visual aid, the standard of sex.
The risk of believing
Sometimes acquaintance with porn is limited to watching a movie of the XXX category. “An erotic spectacle acts like a safety valve on adolescents: it allows you to defuse suppressed desires and thereby reduces the likelihood that socially unacceptable desires are realized,” said sexologist Igor Kon. Porn becomes dangerous when a girl begins to believe that sex life happens exactly as they show in these films.
“Actors’ behavior patterns often become a kind of visual aid, a sex standard,” says developmental psychologist Natalia Avdeeva. “Having started her own intimate life, the girl focuses on the screen image and experiences painful disappointment.”
When expectations (inevitably) diverge from reality, both partners feel discouraging confusion, dissatisfaction. These experiences can be so strong that the natural process of the birth of sensual-erotic ideas and sensations is disrupted in a young woman. 23-year-old Irina had a similar experience in her early youth:
“It seemed to me that I could, as long as the actors on the screen, have sex with someone I love. When my boyfriend invited me home and showed me a couple of “favorite” episodes, I tried very hard to match … He behaved like these, in porn — the same movements, words. And I was almost hysterical: I was ashamed of him that he had no imagination, and of myself, because I could not stand the monotonous swotting for so long! There was no question of pleasure.»
“Porn screenwriters do not take into account the feelings and desires of their characters,” comments sexologist Naida Dobaeva. “Porn, erotica is always a mechanistic approach to intimate relationships, this is an exclusively technical and genital perception of sexuality.”
cherish the imagination
“From porn, I learned about what a man’s body is, but most importantly, some scenes had a very strong effect on me, aroused me,” admits 20-year-old Oksana. “Teenagers look for such images primarily in order to feel sexual arousal,” confirms Naida Dobaeva. Pornography expands their «video library» of sexual fantasies: movies are a shortcut to immediately experiencing maximum sexual pleasure without building a real relationship with a specific person. “Pornography destroys the imagination of teenagers because it reduces the scenarios of intimate life to stereotypical pictures and plots that supposedly exhaust everything that happens between partners,” the sexologist continues. “Meanwhile, it is imagination, fantasies that make a woman’s pleasure intense.”
If there is no adult nearby whom a teenager trusts and with whom he can discuss what worries him, porn can injure his psyche
Later, most women are gradually freed from stereotypes. They learn something from books, something from conversations with their parents or from discussions with friends of what they saw on the sites. To believe or not to believe in what they see in films of the XXX category depends largely on whether they have the opportunity to talk about it, our experts believe. If teenagers cannot compare their views with the opinions of friends or adults, they risk being trapped in their own prejudices.
Cinema only
17-year-old Ksenia has not yet entered into a sexual relationship, but has already come across links to porn sites. “It’s just a movie where everyone follows the director’s commands,” she says. Some of her peers also doubt the plausibility of such films: their own experience of creating images using a mobile, digital photo or video camera helps them better understand how cinema is “made”.
But there are also many who take what they see literally. “There was a feeling of horror, disgust,” recalls 22-year-old Yana. — Of course, I already knew where children come from, but so big, like some kind of meat … And there was also something like a feeling of guilt: I’m bad, I watched disgusting, disgusting spoiled me. These pictures, as Nabokov’s Lolita says, «stunned» rather than awakened the woman in me. And it seems that I still have not freed myself from this feeling.
“If there is no adult nearby whom a teenager trusts and with whom he can discuss what worries him, porn can really injure his psyche, slow down (or over-activate) his sexual development for a long time,” says Natalya Avdeeva. Indeed, in sexual maturation, dialogue is the only defense against misconceptions and dangerous interpretations.
1 The surveys were conducted on the site psuchologies.ru in October 2007 and in April-May 2012.
2 According to the National Institute of Health and Medical Research of France.
3 According to sociologists at the University of Michigan.
4 According to the Internet Filter Review, an Internet portal that publishes ratings of the best software to protect your home computer from pornography.