Public opinion sometimes assumes that porn is bad for your sex life, your relationship and your mental health. It is even said to be addictive and that implies that the negative effects of porn will only increase if you watch more and more porn. Yet scientific research shows that this does not have to be true at all. In fact, people who watch the least porn indicate that they have more problems in this study. What’s up with that?
The study
The findings come from a recent German study published in the Journal of Sex Research. For the study, 4,177 people (44% female, age ranging from 18 to 75 years) were surveyed. It is a representative sample of the German population, and includes people who have ever watched porn.
The questionnaire was about porn use and the respondent’s sex life. The definition of ‘watching porn’ was broad and encompassed all media with sexual and erotic themes, such as photo, film, but also text, which were used to get sexually aroused. People could indicate how often they watched and whether they experienced a positive or negative effect on their sex life from porn, or both.
The effects of porn
The majority of respondents (62%) indicated that their porn use has no impact on their sex life. A quarter (25%) experience positive impact, 11% and mixed impact (positive and negative) and only 2.5% say it has a negative impact. The majority of the latter 2.5% is male (57.5%).
In other words: The vast majority (87%) experience no or a positive impact. Only a very small proportion experience negative effects on their sex life from watching porn.
Less porn = more problems
But another particularly interesting finding from the study is that people who watch porn substantially less often are more likely to report experiencing a negative impact than people who watch porn often. In other words, watching porn less often is more likely to cause problems than watching often.
This seems contradictory. How are you more likely to experience problems if you don’t watch porn at all?
The research shows that a possible explanation lies with religion. It is known that religious people are not only less likely to watch porn, but are also more likely to experience moral conflict when they do. This in turn could lead to experiencing a negative impact. The amount of porn doesn’t even matter. When you watch you experience a moral conflict and sometimes unrest. In fact, religious people tend to label their behavior as ‘addiction’, even if they hardly ever watch.
Unfortunately, what the research doesn’t show is whether the people reporting a negative impact might be looking at a specific genre.
Anyway, it’s interesting to see that watching porn a lot and often doesn’t lead to bigger sexual problems. In fact, the frequency with which a person watches says nothing at all about the effect of porn.
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