Decades of studies from respected academic institutions, have demonstrated significant impacts of porn consumption for individuals, relationships, and society. "What’s the Research" aims to shed light on the expanding field of academic resources that showcase porn’s harms in a variety of ways. Below are selected excerpts from published studies on this issue.
The full study can be accessed here.
Associations between Fluctuating Shame, Self-Esteem, and Sexual Desire: Comparing Frequent Porn Users and a General Population Sample
Authors: Piet van Tuijl, Peter Verboon, and Jacques J. D. M. van Lankveld
Published: January 2022
Peer-Reviewed Journal: Sexes
Background
In the present study, we explore the proposed cyclic models for problematic hypersexuality (PH) that involve shame, self-esteem, and sexual desire.
These cyclic models are characterized by temporal associations but have not been investigated previously with intensive longitudinal designs. In this study, we collected up to 70 measurements per participant within a period of seven consecutive days, which allowed us to investigate associations between fluctuations of shame, self-esteem, and sexual desire.
Methods
For 7 consecutive days and 10 moments per day participants were asked to complete a brief questionnaire.
Participants received a wristwatch and seven diary booklets, with each booklet having 10 copies of the same questionnaire. For both samples ten time-windows of 90 min between 7:30 and 22:30 were constructed and at random timepoints within each window, a beep signal sounded to prompt completion of the questionnaire.
The questionnaire consisted of 38 (first sample) or 31 (second sample) short questions measuring, among other aspects, the participant’s self-esteem, sexual desire, and sexual activity.
Results
This study showed that for individuals who do not experience PH, momentary sexual desire is related to feeling good about oneself, while for men with PH this positive association is not found.
Furthermore, our results implicated that among the men with PH, shame forecasted an increase in sexual desire one to two hours later, while individuals without PH showed no associations between shame and sexual desire… We propose that the difference in emotion regulation between PH and no PH is characterized by a split.
On the one side we find people afflicted by PH who experience less sex-positive effects and who use sexual desire to downregulate feelings of shame; on the other side we find people not afflicted by PH, who will generally experience that an increase in sexual desire coincides with feeling good about oneself and for whom sexual desire is not related to shame.
The full study can be accessed here.
Your Support Matters Now More Than Ever
Most kids today are exposed to porn by the age of 12. By the time they’re teenagers, 75% of boys and 70% of girls have already viewed itRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy —often before they’ve had a single healthy conversation about it.
Even more concerning: over half of boys and nearly 40% of girls believe porn is a realistic depiction of sexMartellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.Copy . And among teens who have seen porn, more than 79% of teens use it to learn how to have sexRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy . That means millions of young people are getting sex ed from violent, degrading content, which becomes their baseline understanding of intimacy. Out of the most popular porn, 33%-88% of videos contain physical aggression and nonconsensual violence-related themesFritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.Copy .
From increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and self-doubt, to distorted views of sex, reduced relationship satisfaction, and riskier sexual behavior among teens, porn is impacting individuals, relationships, and society worldwideFight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.Copy .
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