Introduction
This entry reviews scientific research into the role of internet pornography in sexual socialization. The term “sexual socialization” refers to the range of communicative processes by which messages about sex in our environment affect our sexual beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Wright, 2011). Sources of sexual socialization may deliver their messages intentionally (i.e., through verbalized statements or instructions about sex to message recipients) or unintentionally (i.e., by modeling particular sexual behaviors that are then adopted in full or in varying degrees by observers). The term “pornography” refers to the range of explicit, sexual arousal oriented messages in our environment delivered via various mass mediums (Ward, Lippman, Erickson, & Giaccardi, 2016).
Over the past 20 years, the internet has increasingly become the primary delivery mechanism for pornography (Cooper, 1998; Sun, Bridges, Johnson, & Ezzell, 2016). Today, the terms “pornography” and “internet...
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Wright, P.J. (2019). Sexual Socialization and Internet Pornography. In: Lykins, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sexuality and Gender. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59531-3_13-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59531-3_13-1
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