Teenage boys watching more porn (Sweden, 2013)

Porn consumption among teenage boys has increased, according to a new survey. Of nearly 500 16-year-old high school boys one in ten is looking at porn every day. Ten years ago, it was about once a week.

– It’s the magnitude of porn consumption that has increased, not the number who watch porn, says midwife Magdalena Mattebo, who is behind the study as a graduate student at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health at Uppsala University.

– When compared to research ten years ago, almost every guy who has at some point consumed pornography. High consumption ten years ago was defined by our research team defined as looking at it every week. Now the amount [of guys] who are watching it every day has become so numerous that you could use it as a separate group, says Magdalena Mattebo.

One in ten high school boys who participated in Magdalena Mattebos survey in Västmanland was looking at porn every day. On the computer, in magazines or on film.

477 boys participated in the study, and nearly all, 96 percent, say they consume porn to a varying extent. There are as many as ten years ago, when the same research group did a similar study.

The big difference is that the boys look so much more often at porn today that the groups had to be reorganized: Yesterday’s high-consumers, who looked at porn once a week, have become the average consumers today. Today’s high-consumers watch porn as often as once a day.

The study also reveals that amongst the high-consumers more than a third say they watch more porn than they really want. Magdalena Mattebo says they have given much thought as to what this might mean:

– One wonders if shame and guilt about looking at pornography are involved or if the boys have developed some kind of addiction that they are already aware and that they themselves define as an addiction. We can only speculate. We have not asked them about it. We would like to proceed with detailed studies of the cause for this, she said.

While 400 girls participated in the survey, the results are not yet available.

Original post – Teenage boys watching more porn

Sveriges Radio/Swedish Radio

Wednesday 14 August