Searching for sexually explicit materials on the Internet: An exploratory study of college students' behavior and attitudes

The convergence of sexuality messages with a computerized medium (specifica lly: the Internet) represents an unprecedented phenomenon with, as of yet, unknown outcomes. Despite the Internet's widespread use, little is known ab out users' behaviors and attitudes when searching for sexually explicit mat erials online. This study examined specific behaviors and outcome expectati ons and expectancies (or attitudes of a sample of 506 undergraduate student s at a public university in Texas. Data were collected through a self-admin istered questionnaire, designed and pretested by the authors. Main results revealed that most students in the sample were infrequent and relatively? n ew users of the Internet, Forty-three percent (43.5%) of students had somet ime accessed sexually explicit materials through the Internet, bur the prac tice was not very common, Only 2.9% said they accessed these materials "fre quently." Male students were significantly more likely to hal-e accessed th e Internet for viewing sexually explicit materials and to claim curiosity a bout sex as their motivation for this behavior, women were significantly mo re likely to have experienced sexual harassment while online, In terms of a ttitudes, this sample did not appear to value highly or exhibit strong beli efs about the potential outcomes associated M with accessing the Internet f or sexually explicit materials. Competing explanations as well as the limit ations of this study are discussed.