Are adolescents who consume pornography different from those who engaged in online sexual activities?

Research has indicated several differences between those who solely engaged in online pornography use and those who mainly engaged in partnered sexual activities. We examined whether the distinction between solo and partnered sexual activities might be extrapolated to the virtual arena, while studying the psychological differences between adolescents who engaged in each activity. Israeli adolescents (N = 2112; 788 boys and 1,324 girls), age 14–18 (M = 16.52, SD = 1.63), participated in an online study. Each participant completed a randomly ordered battery of self-report questionnaires on frequency of pornography use, sexually related online activities, personality traits, narcissism, emotion regulation strategies, social intimacy and socio-demographic factors. Adolescents who consumed pornography (i.e., solo online activity) are mostly boys, introvert, neurotic, less agreeable, and with less conscientious judgement. In addition, they are more overt narcissist, use more suppression and less reappraisal to regulate emotions, and are low on social intimacy. Adolescents who engaged in online partnered sexual activities are mostly girls, extrovert, open to experience, neurotic, less agreeable, and with less conscientious judgement. In addition, they are more narcissist and high on social intimacy. We discuss the distinctiveness of the differences and their place in the virtual era.

In their study, Efrati and Amichai-Hamburger (2020) found that teenagers who consume pornography would be mostly boys, but those who consume online sexual activities would be mostly girls. we predicted that adolescents who consume pornography would be more neurotic, less extrovert (i.e., more introvert) and agreeable and with lower conscientious judgement than those who do not consume pornography. RESULTS indicated that these individuals are also more neurotic, open to experience, less agreeable and with lower conscientious judgement. In addition, they found that adolescents who engaged in online partnered sexual activities are higher on both overt and covert narcissism. That is, they show heightened exhibitionism, exaggerated sense of self-importance, grandiosity and desire for attention, alongside hypersensitivity to criticism, a lack of self-confidence, and being socially withdrawn. Adolescents who consumed pornography (i.e., individualized online activity) would employ suppression more often than those who do not, and reappraisal less often. Finally, adolescents who engage in online partnered sexual activities found to be higher on social intimacy than those who do not.