“Rule 34: If It Exists, There is Porn of It…” Insights into the Content Choices, Viewing Reasons and Attitudinal Impact of Internet Pornography among Young Adults

ABSTRACT The viewing of Internet Pornography (IP) by young adults is a largely normative pastime but few studies have explored what type of IP they choose to view, why and how they make these choices and if this affects their sexual beliefs and behaviors. It is also unclear if there are specific emotional and sexual states associated with the decision to view IP and if any of these states, combined with individual factors predispose individuals toward using IP problematically. These factors are relevant, as some studies identify heterosexual IP as frequently depicting aggressive, degrading and sometimes violent sexual conduct by men against women. Despite this, there is limited research on whether IP narratives inform young people’s sexual fantasizing, expectations and offline sexual behavior. This cross-sectional study of undergraduate students (N = 195; 70.8% female, 28.2% male; 49.7% were 17-19 years, 24.1% were 20-22 years and 26.2% were 23-25 years) found IP viewing motivations linked to mood management or emotional avoidance were positively associated with problematic IP (PIP) viewing. Higher levels of sexual sensation seeking, adversarial sexual beliefs and moral disengagement were also associated with the tendency to adopt personal sexual behaviors consistent with those viewed in IP (IP-congruent behavior) and PIP viewing. Notably, sensation seeking, moral disengagement, IP-related fantasizing and the interaction between moral disengagement and PIP viewing were all significant predictors of IP-congruent behavior.