Pornography, Consent and Sexual Grey Areas among Youth in Sweden

Digitalization has made pornography and its potential harms a concern of renewed relevance, as today anyone with an internet connection can access a vast flora of pornographic content. The young age at which many are exposed to pornography – sometimes of a violent kind – has spurred debate about the consequences of this new digital pornographic landscape. The issue is particularly pertinent to Sweden given indications that youth here consume more pornography than in many other European countries.

This project investigates how youth in Sweden experience and reason about the new digital pornographic landscape with respect to sexual consent and, particularly, grey areas between consensual and nonconsensual sex. This addresses the general deficit of research on pornography and consent, but the project also breaks ground through its non-binary framing of consent, which allows for capturing experiences that destabilize the boundary between voluntary and involuntary sex. Hypothesizing that many sexual experiences influenced by pornographic scripts are located in a grey area between chosen and coerced, the project will not only advance knowledge about the impact of the growing pornography use among youth, but also contribute conceptual resources for elucidating why the boundary between consensual and nonconsensual sex is not always clear.