Pornography: Addiction or Harmless Fun?

Few habits are so commonly discouraged yet so widely practiced as pornography. According to international studies cited in The APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology, the rate of pornography use varies from 50 to 99 percent among men and from 30 to 86 percent among women.

Even among conservative religious people who are likely to believe that pornography is at best a perversion and at worst a form of cheating, pornography use is widespread. According to the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, survey data show that:

• At least 45 percent of Christians admit that pornography is a major problem in their home,
• 54 percent of pastors admit to watching pornography in the previous year.
• 34 percent of female readers of Today’s Christian Woman admit to intentionally accessing Internet pornography.
• 17 percent of female readers of Today’s Christian Womansay they struggle with an addiction to pornography.

Why Is Pornography Use So Common?

Until fairly recently, people had to go to adult stores — often in disreputable parts of town — to buy magazines or rent videos. That alone placed limits on people’s access to erotic fixes.

Now that most American households have high-speed Internet, however, people can privately and anonymously view a vast array of pornography. Today, there are virtually no limits on people’s online access to triple-X movies except for legal proscriptions against the downloading of child pornography.

Access is free to many of the estimated 420 million adult online Web pages. According to Gizmodo, a company that tracks Internet usage, 25 percent of all search engine requests are pornography-related, which equates to an astonishing 68 million searches a day for pornographic material.

Although men and women of all ages seem to enjoy pornography, younger men may be its most avid proponents. According to comScore, another company that tracks Internet usage, 66 percent of men ages 18 to 34 view Internet pornography at least once a month.

Is Pornography an Addiction?

When experts drafted the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), they considered adding a diagnostic addiction called hypersexual disorder, including a pornography subtype. But they decided there was insufficient evidence to include hypersexual disorder or any of its subtypes. For now, the consensus opinion is that pornography use is not an addiction, mental health problem or even a minor health hazard.

Despite the absence of any formal diagnostic criteria, some psychologists insist that pornography addiction is a behavioral addiction that can seriously impair an individual’s physical and mental health, and damage personal and professional relationships. They cite anecdotal reports of couples who have split up over pornography use, workers who have been fired because they viewed pornography on the job, and people who have gone bankrupt from overuse of paid pornography services.

Other psychologists take the controversial view that pornography use is similar to substance-use addictions because it can be “dose dependent.” They argue that porn addicts need to spend increasing amounts of time on adult web sites and view increasingly extreme forms of pornography to get the same erotic “high” they once got from relatively mild types of pornography.

Some research suggests that “dose” does matter. The late Alvin Cooper of the Silicon Valley Psychotherapy Center studied the effects of online sexual activities such as viewing pornographic movies and participating in chat rooms. He found that people who spent 11 or more hours per week engaged in any form of online sexual activity said it had a negative effect on their self-image and their feelings about their partners. By contrast, those who spent one hour or less per week on such activity said it had almost no effect on their lives.

What the Science Says

In a British study, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brain patterns of compulsive pornography users who were exposed to erotic images. They observed the same patterns in pornography users as those seen in substance abusers who are exposed to images of alcoholic beverages or drug paraphernalia.

A U.S. study, however, found no such connection. When researchers used EGG to measure a brain response called P300 that occurs about 300 milliseconds after exposure to a stimulus, they found that no clear change in the P300 value among compulsive pornography users. But they observed a clear spike in this value among drug addicts who viewed drug-related images.

The biggest problem with pornography studies is that they tend to be small and of poor quality. A recent study in the journal Current Sexual Health faults such studies as “hindered by poor experimental designs, limited methodological rigor, and lack of model specification.” According to the study’s author in an interview, another recent study which reviewed 40,000 articles of almost all research on pornography found that less than 1 percent of them were scientifically or empirically useful.

Until funding is available for more rigorous studies, determining whether or not pornography is a true addiction will be next to impossible. Another British study of pornography use among 226 men suggests that the truth may be somewhere in the middle.

After the researchers found that high pornography use was associated with personality traits such as neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and obsessional checking behaviors, they suggested that pornography use may be more compulsion than addiction. They concluded that people who can’t resist pornography may have dispositions that predispose them to compulsive problems in general.

How Does Pornography Use Affect Relationships?

There’s no question that pornography is a double-edged sword. It can play a destructive role, especially in couples who already have sexual difficulties or trust issues. Yet it can play a constructive role in other couples.

Women are more likely than men to feel betrayed by their partner’s pornography use. In some cases, even intensive couples’ therapy is unlikely to dispel the notion that pornography is a form of cheating.

In general, though, society has become more accepting of pornography use. A 2002 survey by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction found that 86 percent of respondents agreed that pornography can educate people while 72 percent agreed that it provides a harmless outlet for fantasies. Although 80 percent of pornography users said they “felt fine” about it, 9 percent admitted that they had tried unsuccessfully to stop.

A 2013 study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior showed that 70 percent of men and nearly 50 percent of women agreed that there circumstances when pornography is acceptable in a relationship. A 2013 survey of 617 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples published in the Journal of Sex Research showed that female use of pornography was associated with improved female sexual quality, possibly because it was more likely to be a shared experience. Male use of pornography, however, was associated with lower male and female sexual quality, possibly because it was more likely to be a solo experience.

A 2014 study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy assessed the attitudes of 341 women ages 18 to 41 in a committed heterosexual relationship with a pornography user. Among women whose partners were honest about their pornography use, the study revealed higher levels of relationship satisfaction and lower levels of distress than those see in women whose partners were deceitful about their use. It also found that couples who mutually agreed on acceptable uses of pornography and/or watched pornography together were more likely to have a thriving relationship.

Treatment for Pornography Use 

Since pornography addiction isn’t an accepted diagnosis, some psychologists warn against labeling pornography users as “addicts.” They urge clinicians to consider pornography use as just one variable in a spectrum of issues that may include mismatched sexual disorders and poor communication. Since pornography may not be the real cause a person’s problems, simply removing it may not be helpful.

In cases where pornography use is determined to be problematic, psychologists recommend cognitive-behavioral interventions. Some psychologists hope to develop couples-based treatments to foster mutually acceptable agreements between partners over the use or non-use of pornography.

Other clinicians and support organizations recommend high-tech solutions to manage online pornography use. These include the voluntary use of Internet content-control software, Internet monitoring, or both, by the pornography user.

The key word is voluntary. If one partner spies on the other partner and attempts to police his or her pornography use, experts agree that the results are likely to be counterproductive.

By Rick Ansorge