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In 2016, in response to concern about the impact of pornography on adolescents, the Boston Public Health Commission partneredwith a universityresearcher to develop a nine-session media literacy curriculum on pornography for adolescents. The curriculum was pilot-tested with five small classes of adolescents between 2016 and 2019 (n = 31). Many adult teachers of sex education also expressed interest in being trained to use the curriculum, so our team has now trained 300 adults to use it. (Am J Public Health. 2020; 1 10:154-156. doi:10.2105/ AJPH.2019.305468)
Since 2016, US state legislatures have been passing resolutions declaring pornography a public health crisis. There is particular concern that the accessibility of Internet pornography may harm adolescents. The evidence regarding the impact of pornography on adolescents is mixed,1 although there is little doubt that media literacy skills help adolescents think critically about sexualized and nonsexualized media to which they are exposed.2 Therefore, we developed an educational program for adolescents about pornography. Here, we relay some information about the program to alert the public health community to its existence. Details about the development of the program and its possible impact are available elsewhere.3,4
INTERVENTION
We developed a nine-session curriculum called "The Truth About Pornography: A Pornography Literacy Curriculum for High School Students Designed to Reduce Sexual and Dating Violence." The theoretical underpinnings of the program are the Theory of Planned Behavior and the 3AM theory.5,6 The goals of the program are to improve knowledge about sexually explicit media and sexual behavior, to increase attitudes consistent with valuing sexual consent and nonaggression in dating relationships, and to increase awareness about media's power to promote social norms. The expectation is that by providing information; by encouraging critical thinking, self-reflection, and the reevaluation ofpeer beliefs and social norms; and by practicing new behaviors via role play, some adolescent knowledge, beliefs, and behavioral intentions will change. The nine topics covered in the class are as follows:
1. the rationale for the class;
2. the history of obscenity regulations;
3. social norms related to gender, sex, and violence;
4. the debate about pornography addiction and information about compulsive use;
5. different types of intimacy explained;
6. healthy flirting and setting boundaries;
7. commercial sexual exploitation;
8. the nonconsensual dissemination ofsexually explicit images and sexting...