The Rise of Underage Pornography Use and the Ways it is Harming Our Children
It is not an overstatement that children and adolescents now have more access to pornography than any generation in history.
Despite pornography being designated as “adult content,” in this new form of childhood our judicial system has gone out of its way to protect the rights of porn providers to distribute this material to kids (and adults) without constraint. That the pornography industry is afforded this deference—despite the overwhelming social science research that shows that underage pornography use is now the norm, rather than the exception, and that its availability has radical implications for healthy adolescent development in our society—is one of the crises of our time.
View the full report here:
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View the press release here:
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Portions of this report were published previously as an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court:
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About the Authors
Jason Carroll is the Director of the Marriage and Family Initiative at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. Dr. Carroll is a past recipient of the Berscheid-Hatfield Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievement given by the International Association for Relationship Research.
Brian Willoughby is a Professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University and a Fellow of the Wheatley Institute. Dr. Willoughby is considered an international expert in the fields of couple and marital relationships, sexuality, and emerging adult development. Dr. Willoughby currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Sex Research and serves as an assistant editor for the journal Emerging Adulthood.
Brad Wilcox is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Get Married Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
Michael Toscano is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. He previously was the executive director of the Institute for Family Studies and is a leader in efforts nationwide to adopt laws to make technology safer for kids. He has written on family policy, tech policy, the uses of technology to reshape work, and the effect of technological change on America’s republican form of government.