Sexuality on the Internet: Sexual Exploration, Cybersex, and Pornography

Abstract

Sexuality as a developmental issue is present throughout the life cycle, but becomes especially salient during adolescence. Adolescents have to adjust to their developing sexuality, in particular their increased sexual drive and interest in sex and have the task of constructing their sexual selves. Sexual content and topics feature prominently in adolescents’ online lives from chat rooms, to bulletin boards, and in adolescents’ online conversations, including well-publicized instances of sexting. In this chapter, we show how young people use the Internet to deal with their developing sexuality. We begin by highlighting important aspects of this adolescent developmental issue and then examine the characteristics of online environments that support sexual activities more generally. The rest of the chapter will describe adolescents’ online sexual exploration, from the construction of their sexual self to their access of sexually explicit content. Because most of the research on adolescents’ online sexual exploration is silent on the issue of gay and lesbian youth, we consider the potential role of the Internet for sexual minority youth separately. Even though age and gender trends in adolescents’ online explorations parallel offline ones, we will show that online behaviors are not identical to offline ones, as they adapt their behaviors to the characteristic of online environments.