dc.description.abstract | Social media and social networking sites are rapidly evolving sources of sex-related
information and education among young people. Online Social platforms have also
provided opportunities for creation and distribution of sexual content among online
friends thus creating a ‘porn culture’ of not only sexualized content consumers but also
generators. This has created concerns among sexual health professionals especially in
addressing the impact of the consumption of sexualized content and risk sexual behavior
and attitudes. In this project report we present and discuss the findings of a descriptive
survey of college students in Nairobi Kenya about the use of social media and Social
Networking Sites for sex-related information.
A mixed method research design was adopted for this study as it allowed the researcher
to obtain rich both quantitative and qualitative data. Data from the questionnaires was
collected from a sample of 350 college students age 19 -24 years in a college in Nairobi
Kenya. Exposure and consumption of sexual content in the social media (including
sexual talk, images and/or videos, online and offline sexual behaviors, memberships and
participation in erotic online groups) were the media influence measures. Sex-related
knowledge, sexual permissiveness and sexual behaviors were the main outcome
measures. The impact of exposure and consumption to sexual content on social
networking sites on sexual related knowledge, attitude and behaviors were measured
using statistical analysis of correlations between media variables and variables assessing
respondents’ sex-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.
The results this study indicated that college students were active users of the available
social networking tools. The findings also indicated that social networking sites contains
explicit sexual content displaying images and/or videos of sexualized nature including
exposed men and women genitals, oral sex, sexual intercourse, homosexuality and
lesbianism sexual contact, sexual talk and sexuality activities. The findings further
revealed that some of the young people were actively seeking sexual content and some
were actively generating such sexualized materials. Significant association was found
between variables measuring exposure to sexual content on social networking sites and
sexual permissiveness and sexual behaviors. | en_US |