We’re here to tell you that porn is a highly edited, airbrushed, scripted fantasy, and it isn’t close to an accurate representation of healthy sexual relationships.
That statement may seem like common sense, but the reality is that millions of people watch porn in hopes of getting informed about sex and relationships. But here’s where we’re setting the record straight: checking out porn on the regular won’t actually benefit your brain or your love life, in the long run.
Let’s dive into why.
Avoid the lessons porn teaches
In case you didn’t know, porn doesn’t often tell the full story of sex, love, and relationships. It can be easy to assume real sex is often like what you see in porn, and think that perfectly reenacting what’s in a few choice porn videos can be a prime way to spark a physical connection within a relationship. After all, if the performers look like they’re enjoying it, why wouldn’t you?
Part of raising awareness that porn isn’t harmless sex education is bringing up the fact that whatever tips you think you can take away from porn are not applicable to real life. In porn, sex is often something done to a partner(s) as a means of control, domination, or punishment—not experienced with a committed partner as an expression of affection and intimacy.
But the answer to the problem isn’t avoiding physical relationships completely because part of being human is being sexual and building healthy relationships with real people.
But how can you have a positive, healthy perspective of sexuality when most people’s introduction to sex was graphic porn? The World Health Organization says having good sexual health “requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.” (Emphasis ours.)
Related: Millennial Sex Is The Worst, And Porn Is Partly To Blame
Clearly, this is not what’s shown most often in mainstream porn.
Porn is saturated with violence against men and women, capitalizes off of degradation and humiliation, and the industry is filled with drugs, abuse, and coercion. Also, too often, porn sexualizes incestuous relationships, non-consensual relationships, and promotes messed-up messages about what consent really is.
This is in contrast to a healthy respect for sex, which includes committed and loyal relationships, knowing yourself, having healthy communication with partners, as well as safe, consensual and mutually satisfying sexual experiences.
Sex is more than what porn shows
Part of learning how to have good sexual health can involve realizing that sex is more than just a single act. It’s more than the mechanical, robotic movement of body parts, it’s more than looking like and acting like a porn performer. Healthy sexual relationships are whole-person experiences within larger contexts. Sex and relationships involve emotions like attraction, excitement, closeness, trust, desire, and love. And they include experiences like dating, holding hands, cuddling, and kissing, all in addition to physical intimacy. And most important of all, healthy sex is based on mutual consent and mutual respect and equality.
A lot of the time, porn doesn’t do justice to any of those emotions or experiences, and the industry promotes ideas like that commitment is “boring,” mutual pleasure isn’t a priority, and respect and intimacy aren’t as important as looking and sounding sexy. How is that a healthy standard for our society to have as the go-to for sex tips?
Related: Sex Sells, But In Today’s Porn Culture, Objectification And Dehumanizing Violence Sell More
The bottom line is that real love is way better than porn, not to mention how it’s also so much healthier. Compared to real love, committed relationships, and sex as an expression of intimacy, porn sex is just a sad, exaggerated joke.
People Deserve More
Pornography often shows the most shallow and inaccurate version possible of sex and sexuality.
Sex is so much more complicated than what is shown on Pornhub, and porn just doesn’t compare to or convey that reality. The more people think of pornography as being realistic or helpful in learning about sex, or the more likely it is they’ll want to try out what they see in porn in their real experiences, the more likely it is that their perspective of what sex is may be warped.
Related: What You Won’t Read In Cosmo: Where To Go For The Best Sex Tips
Sex is not a commodity, and people are not products. People are more than their parts, and sexual relationships are so much more than what’s shown in porn. Don’t settle for what porn sells, and fight for your real love.
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 .
This is why Fight the New Drug exists—but we can’t do it without you.
Your donation directly fuels the creation of new educational resources, including our awareness-raising videos, podcasts, research-driven articles, engaging school presentations, and digital tools that reach youth where they are: online and in school. It equips individuals, parents, educators, and youth with trustworthy resources to start the conversation.
Will you join us? We’re grateful for whatever you can give—but a recurring donation makes the biggest difference. Every dollar directly supports our vital work, and every individual we reach decreases sexual exploitation. Let’s fight for real love: