“My mom caught me watching porn!”: YouTube videos as performative risk biography and cautionary sex ed

Abstract

This article investigates the presentation and public self-disclosure of sexual content by young people on YouTube’s #storytime genre. Applying Beck’s concept of the “risk biography,” we explore the way these digital narratives recount encounters with pornography in a setting intended to reach other young people. The analysis combines computational text analysis with manual analyses to characterize how young people tell their own stories. Findings suggest that while content creators critically address sexual norms, they also reinforce the Internet’s potential for harm. Yet, the greatest risk identified is not pornography itself, but parents—namely, the threat of punishment, including physical punishment.