Structural Factors Underlying Pornography Consumption among Youth in Tehran: A Qualitative Study

Widespread and increasing access to the internet among young people and their inevitable exposure to unconventional sexual content from an earlier age has raised great concerns because of its adverse cognitive, psychological, behavioral and social influences on youth. The study is to explore structural factors in viewpoint of adolescents which underlie pornography consumption in internet and cyberspace among youth. Hence, a qualitative study with interpretive approach and content analysis method was conducted and in-depth interviews was performed with 54 adolescent's males and females aged 15-18 years in Tehran in 2016 employing a purposeful sampling method. Emerging structural factors in the macro and medium level underlie pornography consumption among adolescents comprised of: 1. Paradoxical sexual values in the society, 2. Inconsistency between the soft cultural attack and the efforts of national mass media  in enhancing media literacy, 3. A purposeful  and smart structure of cyberspace and internet for absorbing audiences to access to sexually explicit materials in internet and cyberspace and finally, 4. Inefficiency of school system in enabling youth in media and media literacy particularly in the field of sexual vulnerability.Therefore, policymakers and authorities of youth affairs need to be aware of value changes and its role in youth vulnerability in exposure to sexually explicit material in internet and cyberspace and some appropriate intervention in media and schools needs to be introduced consistent with such changes, particularly against social and sexual harms in cyber space.