Youth and Porn Resource KitIf porn’s just fantasy – what’s the harm in watching it?
Porn is frequently described by adults as ‘fantasy’, however some young people tell us that even though they know it’s ‘fantasy’, porn can still shape their ideas, attitudes, and expectations in real-life sexual relationships.
Despite porn being ‘fantasy’, research with young people in Aotearoa has indicated 48% of all young people look at porn ‘for information and ideas about sex’, 73% of regular youth-users ‘use porn as a learning tool’, and one in five recent users ‘have tried something they have seen in porn’ (41).
Academic research on porn as a sexual script also suggests some consumers use porn scripts to navigate real-world sexual experiences and guide sexual expectations. In these cases, porn is not simply fantasy, but an easily accessible template for actual sexual behaviour (58).
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“I feel when people are unexperienced with sexual things and they first open porn and they’re seeing things that is quite nonconsensual, they may feel like that is what they need to do. And it’s hard, differentiating fantasy and reality… And somebody who has no experience would not be able to do that”
Female, 17 years