Introduction <p>Social media continues to permeate 2023Chinese people’s daily lives, and people who were once ashamed to discuss sex are viewing or posting sex-related information on social media. Despite this significant sociocultural shift, there remains a scarcity of research examining the association between media use and sexual attitudes in the Chinese context. Accordingly, the present study aims to examine the relationship between social media use and attitudes toward premarital sex in China.</p> Methods <p>This study conducts an ordered-logistic model to quantify the relationship between social media use and attitudes toward premarital sex by using Chinese General Social Survey data from 2018. This paper further adopts a substitution variable method to conduct the robustness check and utilizes instrument variables to address the potential endogeneity in the regressions.</p> Results <p>The results indicate that social media use is significantly associated with adults’ attitudes toward premarital sex in China, a relationship that is serially mediated first by exposure to Japanese and Korean cultures, and subsequently by gender equality consciousness.</p> Policy Implications <p>This study could encourage the government to pay attention to the change in sexual attitudes and behaviors in China in the digital era, known for its conservatism, and inspire platforms to guide the spread of a healthy and diverse gender culture and sex education.</p>