Consumption of Sexually Explicit Media and Sexual Conduct of greater Exposure to HIV/AIDS in Brazilians

We aimed to analyze the association between the consumption of sexually explicit media (SEM) in the sexual practices of Brazilians and the exposure to HIV infection.

This is an analytical, cross-sectional national study, conducted with 854 participants. Data were collected from September 2021 to January 2022 and analyzed in SPSS.26 software using the Logistic Regression model, with a robust estimator for the covariance matrix.

In the results we observed that 558 (65.3%) participants revealed the habit of watching SEM; of these, 58.2% saw up to two scenes per day. The increased chances for involvement in sexual practice of greater exposure to HIV were identified in: being male (ORa=1.36 times); having a homosexual, bisexual, asexual, or pansexual sexual orientation (ORa=1.44); habit of watching SEM or erotic art (ORa=1.47); and being under the age of 12 at the first contact with SEM (ORa=2.74). As such, we can observe that the consumption of sexually explicit media is associated with sexual practices of greater exposure to HIV among Brazilians.

Therefore, the development of public policies and strategies to prevent practices aimed at the consumption of sexually explicit media becomes relevant, starting with the demonstration of HIV prevention strategies during the sex scenes.