'Gateway' to porn: how social media warps sex for young Aussies

The now 19-year-olds studying at a regional university say, at the time, all the boys in their year watched it.

Adam says porn spreads the idea that a man was a "better man" if he has more sex with a woman.

"Porn is a bit of a taboo subject [at university], people joke about it but people don't talk about problematic issues because it is difficult to talk about," he says.

Matt sees people promote their sexual content via OnlyFans links on Instagram, and "full-on porn" on X, formerly Twitter.

"It is just a couple clicks away when you go to their bio, and that just happens in the algorithm."

Social media platforms are increasingly serving as a gateway to unrealistic or violent pornography via links to websites and pornified tropes and images, experts say.

According to a 2023 eSafety Commissioner report, 60 per cent of 15 to 18-year-olds surveyed had encountered pornography on social media.

Governments around the country are becoming increasingly focused on the impacts of porn spread by social media, and in August, the NSW government announced an inquiry into the impacts of harmful pornography.

The first time Canberra-based Megan Rollings heard discussions about unrealistic pornography was at university.

Growing up in Darwin, some of her peers were seeing porn online by the age of 11. By the time high school rolled around, boys were treating the consumption of it almost like a status symbol.

"Someone I know, she became sexually active quite young, the type of sex she would engage in was very reminiscent of the type of things she'd seen in porn," Ms Rollings says.

If a guy wanted to have sex without a condom or wanted to get a bit rough, the girl would think, 'it's fine, of course they do'.

"This started her on a very harmful trajectory of just accepting a very much male-dominated sexual life."

Now an Australian National University student and a co-director of the Stop Campaign, Ms Rollings doesn't want to villainise porn but she wants people to understand its potential harms.

Since her teen years, she says access to pornographic content has only grown alongside the social media boom.

On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, people get spam messages from explicit accounts while self-generated images get shared on Snapchat.

Working at a sexual health organisation, teenage girls have told Ms Rollings of having brothers with Instagram feeds full of sexual images.

Queensland University of Technology professor in the school of justice, Michael Flood says over the last decade there has been a "pornification" of social media.

"Children and young people using social media are much more likely to encounter typical pornographic representations than they used to and that line between porn and not porn is much blurrier," Dr Flood says.

Young people could come across profiles mimicking oral sex, references to anal sex and threesomes and women in other sexually-charged poses.

He says pornographic images on social media normalise the objectification of women and potentially prompt people to seek out mainstream websites like PornHub.

"It teaches us a view of girls and women as nothing more than three holes and two hands.

"The problem is that pornography is terrible sex education not only because it's highly unrealistic but also because it's deeply sexist."

A recent study of 3000 Australians between 18 to 28 from the Young Women's Alliance found that nine in 10 women view sexual assault as inevitable, while men broadly agreed that "sex is about power".

Maree Crabbe from the violence prevention project, It's Time We Talked, says social media could be a gateway for young people's exposure to mainstream, free pornography.

"There is a lot of content that slips through unmoderated, that's the business model," she says.

Ms Crabbe says one of the most concerning developments in pornography research was the impact of sexual strangulation amongst young people.

A 2024 study of 4702 Australians between 18 to 35 found 57 per cent had been strangled during sex at least once, with 60 per cent influenced by pornography and 30 per cent by social media.

"The narrative in porn can be that no doesn't mean no," Ms Crabbe says.

Newcastle-based sexologist Vanessa Thompson says sexualised content affects people's perceptions of sex and body image.

"Even when it's not extreme pornography, the early sexualisation of young people has an impact," Dr Thompson says.

"Young men, they're comparing their penis size, women are concerned that their breasts aren't perky."

Recent research by Women's Health Victoria revealed almost one-quarter of young Australian women feel anxious or unhappy about their labia, with almost half having considered labiaplasty because of porn or social media.

Giorgia Wilson, founder of the Newcastle-based advocacy group focused on sexual violence, WGG Australia, says some victims spoke of experiencing behaviours that mimicked what their sexual partner saw in pornography.

"They've had sexual experiences where the other party has not respected their withdrawal of consent and they've also exerted physical violence during sex," Ms Wilson says.

"A lot of times victims may be consenting to sexual intercourse but they're not consenting to being, like, strangled, slapped and hit."

As a final year law student working in family law, Ms Wilson saw a case where a child had committed sexual acts against his siblings, citing violent pornography videos he saw online.

She says while she is an advocate for adults who chose to do sex work it was problematic that Instagram recommends these users to people irrespective of age.

WGG Australia volunteer Abby Kelly says she is concerned about her young cousins stumbling on sexualised content on platforms like YouTube.

Her three-year-old cousin lives in Tamworth and had found thinly veiled sexual videos on YouTube, Ms Kelly says.

While the videos were not explicitly pornographic, she says suggestive poses and "aggressive cuddling" are confronting for a young child.

Lack of appropriate sexuality education was a common reason why young people seek out pornography, Dr Flood says.

"I believe it's particularly poor outside metropolitan areas in Australia where access is uneven and ad hoc."

For Dr Thompson, reducing the harm to young people is all about education from schools and parents having open discussions.

She says while there was no place for extreme, violent porn, if people have good sexual health education, appropriate porn literacy and adequate sexual experience, other types of porn could play a role in "enhancing their sexual life".

Dr Flood and Ms Crabbe suggest several strategies to tackle how young people consume pornography:

"We can't ignore this issue, it's uncomfortable, it's difficult, it's challenging but if we ignore it, we're effectively leaving young people's sexuality education to the porn industry," Ms Crabbe says.

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

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