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Reports

We’ve created a wide range of  detailed, scientific reports on the harms of pornography and porn culture, specifically to kids and adolescents.

Reports

Sexualization, Social Media, and Video Gaming

Sexualization is not the same as sexual development or sexuality. The latter are healthy aspects of individual identity, expression, and experience. Sexualization, by contrast, refers to cultural norms that value persons on the basis of their physical attractiveness. While the variation and plasticity of human sexuality is expansive, moreover, sexualization imposes on people a narrow range of stereotypical and largely illusory ideas about visual appeal. In this way, sexualization opposes individual sexual freedom by seeking to control and monetize sexuality.

Women And Girls’ Use Of Pornography: Myths, Facts, & Controversies

Though porn consumption is repeatedly framed in the scientific literature as a decidedly male enterprise, there is, as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (2022) points out, an unsettling truth about women that warrants equal attention: “[W]omen – and even young girls – now make up a sizeable block of pornography consumers,” and there has been a major increase in women’s use of porn over the past five decades (p. 1). What do we know and what don’t we know about women’s and girls’ porn consumption? The main objective of this white paper is to answer these two important questions.”

Pornography in the Incelosphere

Some research suggests a strong association between violence against women, pornography, and incel misogyny. The main objective of this white paper is to review the extant social scientific literature on this connection. Prior to doing so, it is first necessary to supply a brief history of the incel movement, also known as the incelosphere (Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2022).

Age assurance and online pornography: A safe and sensible way to protect children

In the physical, face-to-face world, many commercial enterprises are required to verify the age of customers to protect children from certain products and activities. Globally, minors are widely barred from buying age-inappropriate items such as tobacco, alcohol, and certain pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and weapons. Most countries do not allow children to purchase property, sign legal contracts, vote, consent to medical treatment, file lawsuits, drive automobiles, or enter casinos and betting shops. These laws demonstrate a collective commitment to protecting the health and wellbeing of children.

The Social Media and Video Games Used to Spread Pornography: A Guide for Parents

Parents and other caregivers are in a key position to protect young people from hypersexualized media and pornographic images, and to ensure that their children are safe from online predators. Our research team has interviewed 50 front-line health care workers whose jobs bring them in contact with children suspected of being sexually abused. In our interviews, we learned of the many ways the internet in general, and social media and video games in particular, may be vehicles for exposing children to pornographic content and/or to potential child predators.

OnlyFans Is Only Porn: The Online Ecosystem of Webcamming and OnlyFans

In the early days of the internet, it was often said that cyberspace would emancipate humanity from old stereotypes and prejudices. But the proliferation of online pornography proved this view naïve by solidifying the age-old sexist norm that a woman is worth her appeal to men. This is especially true for OnlyFans and webcamming.

Both OnlyFans and webcamming are mainly used by women to sell online sex to men. OnlyFans is essentially a marketplace for photos and videos; webcamming is a live streamed sexual performance. Both are marketed as new, fun, and lucrative alternatives to the drudgery of low-wage jobs. Both are said to empower women to manage their own finances, careers, and lives. In reality, however, OnlyFans and webcamming are little more than old-fashioned sexism—putting naked women on display for male approval— repackaged as technological freedom.

Secret Connections: Male Collegial and Professional Contact Sports, Pornography, and Violence Against Women

Prepared for Culture Reframed
by
Walter S. DeKeseredy, PhD
Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology
West Virginia University walter.dekeseredy@mail.wvu.edu

Domestic Violence: The Contribution of Contemporary Pornography

Prepared for Culture Reframed
by
Walter S. DeKeseredy, PhD
Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology
West Virginia University

Understanding a Context of Risk: Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse

Now publicly available here through the SocArXiv open archive of the Social Sciences.

 

Dr. Jennifer A. Johnson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Dr. Ana Bridges, University of Arkansas
Dr. Matthew Ezzell, James Madison University
Dr. Chyng-Feng Sun, New York University
Sarah Aadahl, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Gianna Amabile, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Callen Leahy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The Harms of Sexting: Scholarly Literature Review

A Literature Review by Eric Silveman

A Review of the Vulnerabilities of Specific Groups of Adolescents to Internet Pornography

A Literature Review by Dr. Tamasine Preece

Understanding the Harms of Pornography: The Contributions of Social Scientific Knowledge (2020)

Primary author: Walter S. DeKeseredy, PhD, Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University

Critical Media Literacy and Cultural Autonomy in a Mediated World (2020)

Authors: Bill Yousman, PhD, and Lori Bindig Yousman, PhD

The Sexualization of Girls: An Update (2019)

Primary authors: Sharon Lamb, EdD, PhD, and Julie Koven, MSEd, MPhilEd, with assistance from University of Massachusetts Lamb Research Group: Charlotte Brown, Melanie Dusseault, Cara Forlizzi, and Lindsey White