The ageless debate begins.
Ah yes… the word that has become the world’s fastest attention grabber. Pornography. Adults watch it, middle schoolers whisper and giggle at the mention of it in the halls, and nearly every person on the planet has an opinion about it.
PornHub is at it Again
The taboo dispute has resurfaced once more as porn viewership and consumption skyrockets during this 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. PornHub, the leading global site of adult entertainment, made PornHub premium free of charge to the entire world in an effort to “encourage the importance of staying home and practicing social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
CBN News, The Federalist, and the National Catholic Register are some of the many media outlets who have released articles that claim research has proven that porn is destructive and addicting to people, calling it the “demonic deal”. Their claims saying that this rise in porn consumption facilitates “sexual dysfunction”, “breaking lasting relationships” and “desensitizes people to sexual violence.”
On the other side of the spectrum, their opponents like The Conversation, Fast Company, and Reason counter: the COVID outbreak and quarantine have caused high-stress levels, depression, and anxiety, porn provides temporary relief.
Porn through the Ages
Although it may have resurfaced recently, the debate about whether pornography consumption is good or bad for human health has been ongoing for decades.
Basically, since the legalization of hardcore porn in the 1970’s psychologists and scientists alike have been studying the effects of porn on human behavior and in the brain. But due to the fact that it is so difficult to determine if the results achieved are from the porn consumption itself or if it is from people’s unchanging idea that porn is either a good thing or a bad thing.
What is Porn?
The first thing to take into consideration when determining whether one of these studies is accurate is the overarching question; what counts as porn? According to experts at InsideHook, the biggest barrier to porn research is its chronic disagreement about what actually qualifies as porn.
Some people say that it is sexual content that is intended for the pleasure of the viewer and others may say that it is any form of pictures or videos containing nudity and explicit sexual acts. But to be honest, there is no definitive answer and that is the real problem among these studies, the definition is subjective, thus the results are going to be too.
The Porn Studies
Eric Sprankle is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Co-Director of the Sexuality Studies program at Minnesota State University. He expresses that researchers “treat porn and its consumers as monolithic groups.” Looking at the entirety of porn itself doesn’t take into account that content that features racial stereotypes, violence, and lack of consent has different effects on different viewers.
Looking at consumers themselves doesn’t take into account that people with opposing worldly perspectives and processes of information will see things differently. For example, religious people will be more likely to worry about porn addiction than people who aren’t religious, even if they watch less extreme content.
The cherry on top of this slippery slope of opinions is the fact that most of the studies conducted about this topic were derived from bad research. Researchers tried to match author’s views on porn, running tests until they found the results they were looking for and discarded the data that didn’t fit with their hypothesis. Their conclusions were wild and over reaching, based on small minor findings.
Even the good studies, clear of bias, large test groups, and that respected the law of protocols, mostly relied on the answers of surveys. This data was self-reported porn consumption habits. But as someone conducting a scientific experiment, they must take into account the human tendency to lie. People lie on surveys, even anonymous ones, to protect their sense of identity and morality.
Ignoring the misreports, connecting porn viewing to human trends and behaviors reported in a survey just shows that correlation is not causation. Just because studies say that there is a correlation in the rise in porn viewing and relationship issues or psychological distress does not mean that it caused those issues. People may have other reasons as to why they suffer from these things and resort to porn as a form of release.
When scientists are performing direct studies there is no agreement as to how to interpret their findings. Even when performing a brain scan while watching the subject’s reactions to the stimulus provided, one can’t assume that it is the effects of the porn, it could be the effects of that specific person’s idea of porn. Plus those studies can’t determine the long-lasting effects before or after on human behavior.
In conclusion, scientists don’t know whether porn consumption is good or bad for you. Their methods of research are inconclusive, not allowing us to make firm scientific claims. They can’t monitor long-lasting effects on behavior to tell if you really are more likely to be violent after you watch a BDSM video.
All we can do for now is to be conscious about our actions as people and be respectful of other’s individual preferences. Hopefully one day we will have some more concrete answers, but for now, we are in the void.
If you want to learn more about the spike in adult entertainment then click here.