The Terrifying Science of Porn
The bare facts
Science is so much fun, I just love it. To run experiments, to look forward to the outcomes, hoping for the best, to have those hopes crushed, having to reluctantly return to the drawing board, all for that one “Eureka!” moment that is so satisfying.
Back in my PhD days, I used to run experiments on a Super Mario AI that was supposed to learn to play the game by itself. I never had as much fun running experiments as when I was watching Super Mario go from being a complete idiot to flying through levels stomping Goombas like an expert.
But it’s not just scientists like me who run experiments. We all do. Collectively, we run massive societal experiments, and we are currently living through one of these. Its central question is this:
What happens when you give hundreds of millions of people unfettered access to every genre of pornography imaginable?
The experiment has been running for several decades, and today, the results are in. It’s not pretty.
In the early days of the tobacco industry, cigarettes were praised “for digestion’s sake” and as giving “immediate relief in cases of asthma, cough and bronchitis.” Needless to say, they sold well.
Similarly today, the porn industry is engaged in a massive effort to promote porn’s harmlessness, even its supposed benefits for you. And as we all know, porn also sells well: it’s a whopping 97$ billion industry worldwide.
Just like with cigarettes though, science has caught up with porn. The verdict: porn kills love, leads to violence, and fuels sex-trafficking.
Here are a few excerpts that summarize the science (follow the citations for the full list of relevant research papers):
Porn kills love
Research shows that porn users report less love and trust in their relationships, are more prone to separation and divorce, and often see marriage as a “constraint.” [11] Overall, they are less committed to their partners, [12] less satisfied in their relationships, [13] and more cynical about love and relationships in general. [14]
Porn leads to violence
Research has confirmed that those who consume porn (even if it’s nonviolent) are more likely to support statements that promote abuse and sexual aggression toward women and girls. [6]
But porn doesn’t just change attitudes; it can also shape actions. Study after study has shown that consumers of violent and nonviolent porn are more likely to use verbal coercion, drugs, and alcohol to coerce individuals into sex. [7] And multiple studies have found that exposure to both violent and nonviolent porn increases aggressive behavior, including both having violent fantasies and actually committing violent assaults. [8]
Porn fuels sex-trafficking
There are incidental connections, like the fact that exposure to pornography has been shown to make viewers less compassionate toward victims of sexual violence and exploitation.[18]
There are “supply-and-demand” connections: the simple fact that pornography — especially when viewing habits and fantasies involve violence or other fetishes — increases the demand for sex trafficking, as more and more viewers want to act out what they see.
There is the “training manual” connection: the well-documented fact that porn directly informs what goes on in trafficking. Traffickers and sex buyers get ideas from porn, and then make their victims watch as a way of showing them what they’ll be expected to do, so that the violent fantasy concocted by some porn director and his or her actors becomes the reality for some trafficking victim. [19]
And then there is the risk factor connection: the fact that, along with poverty and substance abuse, a child growing up in a home where pornography is regularly consumed is far more likely to be trafficked at some point in his or her life. [20]
Scientific research overwhelmingly indicates that porn is far from innocent.
I hear many thinking: okay, yeah, but that stuff won’t happen to me. That’s one way of dealing with the research. Incidentally, that’s also what smokers do when they convince themselves that lung cancer won’t happen to them, so that they don’t need to stop their destructive behaviour.
But of course, the drama is that by watching porn we’re not only slowly destroying ourselves, but also those around us, and people across the world, those who supply the demand that we create with a few simple clicks on the internet.
Jesus’ two thousand year old analysis of the problem perhaps wasn’t that backwards after all:
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
That is, what happens in the privacy of our minds or bedrooms is not innocent as it does not stay there.
With great hyperbole, Jesus went on to suggest that “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.” In today’s terms: if your smartphone is the problem, get a dumb phone, if your computer is the problem, install porn blocking software, if it’s your TV, cancel your subscription to those channels. And so on.
There is hope, and the steps are simple. If we or others we know need to take those steps, today is a good day to start talking about it.
