Is porn addiction “real”?
If you believe scientific evidence and the stories of millions of men and women, then the answer is: for sure, YES! (If you’ve heard otherwise – about how porn addiction is “controversial” – then the propagandists for the porn industry are doing a great job, aren’t they?)
We’re not joking. Seriously, check this out:
- 38 neuroscience-based studiesdocument patterns of addiction in the brain.
- Over 55 studies link pornography use to lower relationship or sexual satisfaction.
- 24 studies linking porn use/sex addiction to sexual problems and lower arousalto sexual stimuli
- At least 21 studies report findings consistent with escalation of porn use (tolerance), habituation to porn, and even withdrawal symptoms
- Over 45 studies link porn use to poorer mental-emotional health & poorer cognitive outcomes
- Over 25 studies link porn use to “un-egalitarian attitudes” toward women
- A full 13 literature reviews conclude that significant risks are involved in pornography consumption
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28409565
Why is it that some people say porn addiction is a controversial idea?
Because something called propaganda exists. Sorry, we just have to be honest about this.
While it’s true that there are really legitimate scientific disagreements that exist, this isn’t one of them. It’s precisely because scientific disagreement often exists, however, that major industries have found ways to take advantage of that.
It was the Tobacco Industry that first successfully manipulated false controversy. A 1969 Tobacco Industry Memo said, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”
As David Michaels from George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services puts it, “Industry has skillfully turned what should be a debate over policy into a debate over science….fueled by the product defense experts who specialize in manufacturing uncertainty and creating not sound science, as they disingenuously claim, but something that sounds like science in order to allow toxic exposures to go unregulated and victims of these chemicals to go uncompensated.”
That argument turned out to be so effective (aka, profitable), that many industries have since have picked it up, including Big Food, Big Agriculture, and yes…Big Porn.
And by the way, the public is not as divided on this question either. National surveys of Americans confirm that a majority of Americans (75%) see “compulsive pornography use” as a problem.