A Longitudinal Study of Adolescents’ Pornography Use Frequency, Motivations, and Problematic Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

A Longitudinal Study of Adolescents’ Pornography Use Frequency, Motivations, and Problematic Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Beáta Bőthe, Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel, Jacinthe Dion, Marie-Michèle Paquette, Maude Massé-Pfister, István Tóth-Király & Sophie Bergeron. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jan 20 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02282-4

Abstract: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase in pornography use has been reported based on cross-sectional findings, raising concerns about associated adverse outcomes, such as problematic pornography use (PPU). The aims of the present study were to document potential changes in adolescents’ pornography use frequency, motivations, and PPU before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of an ongoing study on adolescents’ sexual health, we used a large sample (NTime 1 = 1771; 47.6% girls, Mage = 15.42 years, SD = 0.59) to examine changes from baseline (before the COVID-19 pandemic) to one year later (during the COVID-19 pandemic) in adolescents’ self-reported pornography use frequency, motivations, and PPU, using latent change models and examining potential gender differences. No significant changes were observed in adolescents’ pornography use frequency and pornography use motivations, and no gender differences were present in these trends. Although statistically significant, slight decrease was observed in boys’ PPU levels, and a statistically significant, slight increase was observed in girls’ PPU levels, these changes were very small, providing no practical or clinical relevance. In sum, despite previous propositions, concerns, and cross-sectional findings, longitudinal results suggest that adolescents’ pornography use characteristics were rather stable between November 2019 and June 2021, and the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns might not have led to general increases in adolescents’ pornography use as it was expected.

Discussion

Similar trends were observed in boys and girls’ pornography use characteristics when examining potential changes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite prior studies reporting a self-perceived increase in adolescents and young adults’ pornography use since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Li et al., 2020a, b; Nebot-Garcia et al., 2020; Nelson et al., 2020), our results suggest that adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic did not report using pornography more frequently and they did not engage more frequently in pornography use due to different motivations (e.g., using pornography to decrease boredom or suppress negative emotions). Moreover, in line with the findings of the only longitudinal study reporting temporal trends in PPU in adults (Grubbs et al., 2021), our results suggest that PPU slightly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic in boys, compared to pre-COVID-19 times. Although girls’ PPU levels were low before and during the COVID-19 pandemic as well, a statistically significant increase was observed in girls’ PPU levels. Yet, these changes were negligible and the overall score of girls is still considered low, providing no real practical relevance.

No Significant Changes in Adolescents’ Pre-COVID-19 and During COVID-19 Pornography Use Frequency and Motivations

Despite previously documented differences between adolescent boys and girls’ pornography use characteristics (Bőthe et al., 2019; 2021d; Bőthe et al., 2020b; Peter & Valkenburg, 2016), no gender differences were observed in the trends of changes in pornography use frequency and pornography use motivations. In contrast with our hypothesis and findings of prior studies among adolescents and young adults (Li et al., 2020a, b; Nelson et al., 2020), adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns did not show significant changes in their frequency of pornography use compared to the pre-COVID-19. On average, boys used pornography many times per week, while girls used it less than once a month both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One main difference between the present study and previous ones is that we used a longitudinal study design to compare adolescents’ pornography use characteristics before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas past studies used samples recruited during the pandemic and asked about participants’ perception concerning changes in their pornography use (e.g., whether they watched less, more, or the same amount of pornography since the pandemic; Li et al., 2020a, b; Nelson et al., 2020). Given potential recall biases in retrospective studies of online activities (Kahn et al., 2014), adolescents’ reports about their pornography use before the pandemic or changes in their pornography use during the pandemic may not be as accurate as comparing actual reports on pornography use characteristics before and during the pandemic.

Another difference between previous studies (Li et al., 2020a, b; Nelson et al., 2020) and the present one is related to samples’ characteristics. Our study included a diverse sample of adolescents aged between 14 and 18 years (with a mean age of 15.4 years at baseline), including all genders and sexual orientations. However, two of the prior studies included both adolescents and young adults (i.e., 967 participants were aged between 15 and 35 with a mean age of 26.6 years in Li et al., 2020a, b; and 134 participants were aged between 16 and 20 with a mean age of 19.2 in Nebort-Garcia et al., 2020), while the other study focused on a more specific population of 151 adolescents, namely sexual minority boys aged between 15 and 17 years (Nelson et al., 2020). These differences in sample characteristics might have yielded different results. For example, as our sample only included adolescents, most lived with their parents. As many parents also followed COVID-19-related regulations (e.g., social distancing, closure of workplaces) and experienced shutdowns, adolescents were more likely at home with their parents, and thus, might not have more opportunities to view pornography than before, while young adults might have lived alone and worked from home during the pandemic, providing more opportunities for pornography use.

Moreover, adolescents aged between 13 and 18 years also vary in their level of engagement in social distancing, with only 30.5% of them engaging in pure social distancing (no in-person contact with those outside their household; Oosterhoff & Palmer, 2020; Oosterhoff et al., 2020). Therefore, it is possible that adolescents spent more time with their friends in offline settings, leaving less time for engaging in online activities, including pornography use, resulting in no changes in their pornography use frequency.

Lastly, adolescents returned to a hybrid model of education (i.e., half in-class and half online) in the province of Quebec (Canada) between the fall of 2020 and summer of 2021 (i.e., when the follow-up survey was administered), which might have provided them with the opportunity to return to part of their pre-COVID-19 academic routine, resulting in the no significant changes in their long-term pornography use frequency. Still, temporary increases in pornography use might have been present among adolescents in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., spring and summer of 2020). One of the largest pornography websites reported higher traffic on their website in Canada between March and July 2020 compared to pre-COVID-19 rates, with a peak of a 21.5% increase in pornography use on March 25, 2020 (Pornhub.com, 2020a, 2020b). These reports of increases in pornography use were also supported by a global analysis of Google search trends (Zattoni et al., 2020). Yet, in line with our findings, when a longer-term trend in pornography use frequency was examined before and during the COVID-19 pandemic among adults, individuals’ use had returned to similar or even lower levels of use as reported before the pandemic by August to October 2020 (Grubbs et al., 2021). In sum, findings suggest that although a temporary increase might have been present in individuals’ pornography use frequency in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, these changes were likely transient.

Although it was proposed in the literature that pornography may be used as a potential distraction from negative emotions and stress that accompany the COVID-19 pandemic (Mestre-Bach et al., 2020), adolescents did not report significantly higher levels of emotional distraction and suppression, boredom avoidance, and stress reduction pornography use motivations during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the pre-COVID-19 levels. Still, it is important to note that adolescents during COVID-19 may have experienced varying levels of stress and negative emotions due to the pandemic and related restrictions (Duan et al., 2020; Ellis et al., 2020; Fegert et al., 2020; Racine et al., 2020) and may choose other activities to cope with these difficulties. Studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic documented that adolescents engaged in more online activities, including schoolwork, monitoring the latest news about the pandemic and used social media to stay in touch with friends and peers (Ellis et al., 2020; Munasinghe et al., 2020). This suggests that adolescents may engage in these activities instead of pornography use, and that these may help them cope with COVID-19-related stress. Concerning other pornography use motivations that were assessed in the present study (i.e., sexual pleasure, sexual curiosity, fantasy, lack of sexual satisfaction, and self-exploration), adolescents did not report significantly different levels of these motivations pre- vs. during COVID-19.

In sum, these results suggest that adolescents’ pornography use characteristics, in general, might not have changed as significantly as it was suggested by previous findings (Li et al., 2020a, b; Nelson et al., 2020) or predicted in popular media outlets (Döring, 2020). Prior studies also suggest that adolescents may use pornography out of curiosity or as an aid for masturbation, rather than a means to cope with negative emotions and stress (Arrington-Sanders et al., 2015; Bőthe et al., 2019; Romito & Beltramini, 2011; Ševčíková & Daneback, 2014), and these motivations may not be impacted as profoundly by the pandemic as the coping-related motivations. Yet, substantial inter-individual variability was observed in both the initial levels and changes of pornography use frequency and motivations in boys and girls as well, suggesting that some adolescents might have had higher, whereas others might have had lower, initial pornography use frequency and motivations levels than the average, and individual changes were likely to be heterogeneous (i.e., different levels of increase, decrease, or stability might have been present for some adolescents), reinforcing the need to better understand the factors involved in adolescents’ pornography use.

Negligible Changes in Adolescents’ Pre-COVID-19 and During COVID-19 Problematic Pornography Use

Corroborating the findings of the only longitudinal study reporting temporal trends in PPU in adults (Grubbs et al., 2021), our results also suggested that PPU slightly decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic in boys, compared to pre-COVID-19 times. Although the latent changes models suggested that this general decrease in boys’ PPU levels were significant, this change was very small on a descriptive level (i.e., when observing boys’ pre-COVID-19 and during COVID-19 mean scores, the change was -0.03 on a scale from one to seven). Concerning girls, the latent changes models suggested that their PPU levels significantly increased over the one-year period of the study. However, again, it needs to be noted that this change was very small on the descriptive level (i.e., when observing girls’ pre-COVID-19 and during COVID-19 mean scores, the change was + 0.03 on a scale from one to seven). These significant changes might derive from the large sample size (i.e., with large sample sizes, even small differences turn out to be significant differences), and thus, we do not consider them as meaningful changes.

Yet, it needs to be noted that as in the case of pornography use frequency and pornography use motivations, substantial inter-individual variability was observed in both the initial levels and changes of PPU in boys and girls as well. These findings suggest that some adolescents might have had higher or lower initial PPU levels than the average. Also, individual changes were likely to be heterogeneous, suggesting that some adolescents might have experienced steeper increases or decreases in their PPU than the mean PPU changes. Thus, it may be plausible that some adolescents who might already have had problems with their pornography use before the COVID-19 pandemic might experience an increase in their PPU under such an unprecedented situation as a pandemic (Király et al., 2020; Mestre-Bach et al., 2020).

Limitations and Future Directions

The results of the present study provide preliminary answers to current concerns about whether adolescents’ pornography use characteristics, including pornography use frequency, motivations, and PPU, might have changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions (e.g., social distancing). Nevertheless, some limitations of this study need to be noted. We used data from a self-selected sample of adolescents, who completed self-report measures. Thus, the findings may include some biases (e.g., recall bias, under- or over-reporting, or selective loss of participants; Štulhofer et al., 2021). Although moral incongruence toward pornography use may be associated with self-perceived PPU (Grubbs & Perry, 2019; Grubbs et al., 2019a, b, c), it was not assessed in this study. The present study only assessed intentional pornography use; unwanted exposure was not examined. We used a diverse sample in terms of gender and sexual orientation, but it was not representative of all adolescents in the country, limiting the findings’ generalizability. The fact that our sample included adolescents from a Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) country also limits the generalizability of the findings. Future studies are needed to replicate and extend the present study’s findings, preferably in pre-registered study designs, including non-WEIRD samples (Klein et al., 2021).

As is usually the case in large-scale and longitudinal studies among adolescents (Kohut et al., 2021; Vandenbosch & Peter, 2016; Vandenbosch et al., 2015), we had to reduce the number of items per construct. Therefore, although we assessed a diverse set of pornography use characteristics, each motivation (Bőthe et al., 2021a) and pornography use frequency were measured by one item that may bias findings. Moreover, the use of self-report measures to assess motivations may introduce biases (e.g., it is not possible to differentiate between reports of actual motivations and posterior attributions concerning the reasons of given behaviors). Thus, study designs focusing on real-time data collection when a behavior occurs (e.g., ecological momentary assessment, EMA) might provide a more accurate and nuanced understanding of motivations underlying pornography use. Given the presence of substantial inter-individual variability in the latent change models, future studies would do well in relying on an analytic approach that is able to identify subpopulations of adolescents characterized by different change scores. Lastly, while no differences were observed in the results concerning boys’ pornography use with and without the included control variables, most of the minimal increases in girls’ pornography use disappeared when control variables were added. These results highlight the importance of considering potential confounding variables when examining pornography use, though the selection of these potential control variables requires careful consideration and justification (Wright, 2021), and results should be preferably reported with and without the control variables for full transparency.