A Brief Overview of Texas’ Completely false, forced “science” claims concerning pornography
UPDATE: March 8, 2024 the Texas courts struck down the requirement that adult websites post this fake public health warning.
Texas recently passed a law that would require some websites to display a lengthy claim concerning the supposed scientifically-based harms of pornography. Government forcing others to make scientific claims should, minimally, reflect current scientific knowledge. I study the effects of pornography on humans. I was unable to find any truthful scientific statement in this state-forced speech.
TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function. TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: Exposure to this content is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses. TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: Pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.”
The first claim that pornography is “potentially biologically addictive” has been repeatedly debunked by multiple, well-replicated scientific studies, including my own. When clients report struggling with their pornography viewing, it could reflect many different concerns, including depression, shame about sexuality, or something else. “Addiction” has been consistently rejected by both every diagnostic nomenclature nationally and internationally, because it fails to meet multiple requirements to classify a behavioral concern as an addiction.
The next claims are causal. They state pornography “is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function”. To demonstrate this, you would need to expose someone to sex films and demonstrate that these changes occured and, ideally, that they were sustained outside the laboratory context. This has never been published anywhere. For example, “desensitized brain circuits” we have proven does not occur; in fact, those who view more pornography respond with stronger sexual arousal anticipating intimacy with a real partner than those who view less pornography. We are the only lab with real partner data so far. This myth that sexual behavior will “blow out” your dopamine, and similar neurobabble, is squarely in the realm of religious, not scientific, claims.
Texas drones on to make a weaker claim of association, that “Exposure to this content is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses.”. While highly humorous that Texas does not want to mention that masturbation is the reason the overwhelming majority of pornography viewing occurs by referring to the euphemism “exposure”, they like to leave out that these association consistently fail to replicate or are better explained by confounds. Put another way, pornography has not been shown to cause these effects. For example, viewing “real” vulvas has been shown to improve body image.
Texas literature also is outdated by about 40 years. When large pornography studios screened performers for particular looks, performers were more white, thin, and so on, mimicking non-sexual visual media. The democratization of sexual images to platforms like OnlyFans and sites like Make Love Not Porn shows a wide variety of bodies and acts, which participants now often reportedly find reassuring. In particular, LGBT youth report erotic videos are sometimes their first reassurance that their gender preferences exist for others. Ideally, LGBT youth would get such reassurance from Texas or trusted adult sources, but that appears unlikely.
Texas finally grossly overplays their hand by claiming “pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.” This has never been demonstrated and, in fact, the claims themselves cause such harms. For example, the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers posted a statement trying to stop these harmful conflations here. If I may summarize, those who sexually offend and those who claim to struggle with problem sexual behaviors are not remotely the same population. Treating them in the same programs is likely to increase subsequent harm to youth, because such treatments would fail to address the unique problems of those who criminally offend. Further, viewing legal adult pornography has never been demonstrated to “escalate” longitudinally to viewing illegal images of youths.
Texas has created a completely false statement by misrepresenting the science of myself and other scholars. If they want to continue to make such outlandish, false claims, I and other scientists will continue to accurately describe the actual state of the science. As a Texas native myself, you can go for the bluebonnets, but I would ignore their “science” on this claim.
