Teens Watch Porn Because It’s Safer Than Real Sex, Study Claims

Guy Bentley

A major reason teens watch porn is because it’s safer than having sex, according to a study titled “The Porn Phenomenon.”

Watching sex online is attractive to both teens and older Americans because it’s “less risky than actual sex,” and is a “higher motivation among both teens and older adults—for different reasons, presumably,” the report claims.

The study examines a range of attitudes towards porn and will be fully released in April.

The research project held 3,000 interviews covering a wide variety of topics, including reasons for watching porn and the morality of porn.

The Barna Group, which carried out the research said:

This study is sure to stir up a conversation about porn in our society and within the Christian community – and we hope it leads to healthy, meaningful change. Because a lot of what we have been doing to help address porn in a digital culture doesn’t seem to be working very well.

The research also found that sexting was enormously popular among teens, with more than 60 percent saying they have received a sexually explicit image. Two-fifths of teens surveyed said they had sent a sexual image.

Girls were far more likely than boys to send images of porn than boys at 51 and 33 percent respectively. Unsurprisingly, “younger adults and teens are more likely than older adults to use porn for boredom, curiosity, and fun.”

Older porn users were more interested in watching porn to learn what might for work for their partner in the real world. “Those 25- to 50-year-old tend to use for getting sex tips or to set a mood with a partner,” the study said.

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