STUDYING EFFECTS OF SEXUAL MEDIA ON

STUDYING EFFECTS OF SEXUAL MEDIA ON

CHILDREN One empirical question we would like to know the answer to is almost

impossible to study for ethical reasons: What is the effect of sexual media on children? Who is going to approve their young child watching pornography, or even an R-rated movie, for research purposes? Nevertheless, we all know that children do see sexual media. One clever methodology to examine this problem involves the use of the retrospective method which entails questioning adults about their memories of watching sexual content as children. The researchers are not exposing the child to any questionable stimuli, merely asking them about material they have seen on their own. Cantor, Mares, & Hyde (2003) asked 196 college students to remember an exposure to sexual media between the ages of 5 and 12 or during the teen years, Almost 92% could do so, 39% remembering something seen between the ages of 5 and 12 and 61% age 13 and over. Most often (79%) the content was R or NC- rated movies, and 80% were viewed with someone else (only 17% with parents, however). Disgust, shock/surprise, interest, and embarrassment were the most common emotional responses remembered (21% to 25% each), with sexual arousal (17%) and avoidance (14%) the most common physical reactions. Memories from younger ages (5–12) tended to focus on salient sensory aspects like nudity, kissing, and sexual noises, while the older memories focused on dialogue or themes like rape or same- gender sex, Overall, men’s memories were more positive and more often focused on physical aspects. While there is no way to verify the accuracy of these students’ memories, the vividness of memories years after the exposure testifies in itself to the powerful effect of seeing this sexual content relatively early in life.

Explicit sexual materials have traditionally been designed by men and for men. As such, they have a distinctly macho and hypermasculinized orientation, Although all varieties of heterosexual intercourse are shown, there is typically little emphasis on associated foreplay, afterplay, cuddling, or general tenderness. Women are seen eagerly desiring and participating in sex, often with hysterical euphoria. There is little concern with the consequences of sex or the relational matrix within which most people find it. Quite recently, there has been some increase in sexual materials with more emphasis on relationship, pre- and postcoital behaviors, and the woman’s point of view generally, developed primarily to be marketed to women

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of the market worldwide. Although men are much more active seekers and users of sexual material than are women, this cannot necessarily be attributed to greater intrinsic male interest in sexual media; it may merely reflect the pornography industry’s extreme slant to the traditional male perspective.

Media are clearly major sources of information about sexual issues that we use to construct our reality of what sexuality and sexual behavior and values are all about (Dorr & Kunkel, 1990; Fabes & Strouse, 1984, 1987; Strouse & Fabes, 1985; Wartella, Heintz, Aidman, & Mazzarella, 1990). To better understand this perceived reality, let us examine some effects of viewing sex in the media. How do we change after exposure to such material?