Media health
Media health for children and young people: Have you spoken to your teenager today?
The challenge
Has your teenager received a dick pic or is he/she watching porn at recess?
There are many topics that children and young people don't talk to their parents about and one of them is porn. In the report The2021 report - Media health for children and young people, focuses on young people's views on exposure to and use of porn and the consequences of watching (online) porn.
But how do you uncover young people's views on porn when they don't usually talk to anyone about it and porn is not a topic in sex education in schools?
The methodology
The qualitative part of the survey
You uncover young people's views on the matter by listening to them. Analyse Danmark conducted the qualitative part of the survey, which forms the basis of the report.
We chose a set-up with triads, i.e. mini-groups with three participants who already knew each other; girlfriends/friends or schoolmates, to create safety and confidentiality in the sensitive interviews, while at the same time we wanted to create a space for articulating the topic among the young people. In this way, we were able to shed light on the young people's personal stories and attitudes and discuss these based on the social contexts in which they move around, for example, what they experience with a boyfriend or sex partner, at school, at parties and not least on porn sites and in social media.
Talking about sensitive topics can be difficult, so we used different interview techniques to open up the conversation about porn, approach the topic from different angles and create dynamics among the young people. For example, the interview technique laddering was used, where the next question is formed based on a respondent's most recent answer, thus building a hierarchy of meaning based on the young people's own language use. In addition, cases were shown for discussion of what the young people perceive as porn and various qualitative exercises were used such as association exercises, narrative storytelling, psycho-drawing and pornometer exercises to uncover the unspoken and thus put into words what the young people are otherwise not used to talking to others about.
Example of pornometer exercise from the qualitative part of the study.
Examples from Realdania's themes, here Sustainable Building and Harbour and Sea Bathing
The exercise
Here, the young people discussed different genres of porn and ranked them on a scale from mild to hardcore porn. The exercise was used to put into perspective the young people's boundaries for what they wanted to see or not see and the consequences of the fact that in Denmark there is free access to all forms of online porn (apart from pay sites) also for children and young people.
The qualitative survey in this case is not a ’stand alone’ survey, but an initial exploratory survey to open up the field of enquiry among the target group and get young people on board to ensure that young people have been heard before designing the subsequent quantitative survey.
Young people see online porn as a service in the ’Hollywood’ entertainment industry and therefore realise that it is not real. However, the consequences of using online porn are underexposed and young people lack knowledge in this area.
Even though porn is a taboo topic, young people actually want to be heard and have a public debate about what constitutes responsible use of online porn and the consequences of using porn for children and young people. Similarly, young people are calling for a focus on porn in sex education in schools and secondary education programmes.
The learning game
Sex talk on the school timetable
The learning game ”SEXSNAK” is based on knowledge from the study and is the first learning game about boundaries, consent, body, sex and porn targeted at Danish high schools and secondary schools. The gamification of the topic is groundbreaking and a completely new way of working with sex education. You can see more about the game here SEXSNAK
If you are curious about what qualitative analysis can be used for in practice, we recommend the book: Bjørner, T. (ed.) Qualitative Methods for Consumer Research: The value of the qualitative approach in theory and practice. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel, 2015.
You are of course also welcome to contact Marianne Hjelm Parastatis at mhp@analysedanmark.dk
