The Correlation Between Adolescent Experiences of Violence and Parental Attachment With Adolescent Desire to Use Online Pornography

Abstract

The increasing curiosity and various hormones (partic­u­lar­­ly sexual hormones) are problems for adolescents, which fre­quent­ly cause them to become unstable. Another factor that con­tri­butes to the complexity of adolescent problems is technological advances. Apart from being a useful means of information tech­nology that is generally beneficial to human life, the internet may also become a threat to adolescents by facilitating access to explicit sexual content, namely online pornography. Besides the above factors, this research exam­ined other factors associated with adoles­cents’ inclination to con­sume online porno­graphy. The purpose of this study is to discover whether there is a correlation between past experiences of vio­lence and parental attachment to the desire to use online por­no­gra­phy. The research method is quantitative and the research subjects were adolescents (N=167, male=70.1%, female=29.9%, M=15–19 years). The findings revealed two things: first, there was no correlation between the past experiences of violence and the desire to use online porno­graphy (r=0.102; p>0.05); and second, parental attachment had a negative cor­relation with the desire to use online pornography (r=–0.157; p<0.05). The contribution of this research is to reaffirm the significance of quality adolescent-parent attachment in fostering a whole­some emotional sense of security and developing a healthy sexu­al identity.