this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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At this point there are people in their forties who had access to online porn as minors. Have any actual studies been done to show that a significant portion of the many, many people who've grown up in the last 20-30 years have been harmed by having access to online porn while they were younger, or are these laws just something that's trendy at the moment?
There are many studies that indicate porn use can negatively affect your brain, sexual performance, and pro-social behaviour.
Porn linked to decreased grey matter
Porn addiction linked to lower executive functioning
Porn linked to negative social behaviour
Meta analysis on research into adolescents porn use discusses a range of negative outcomes such as anxiety, suicidal ideation, social isolation, and academic disengagement
I'm not really sure this law will "solve" the problem, or if it's a good solution to the problem. But there are real, negative outcomes of internet porn
There seems to be a lot of issues with the methodology used in those studies.
For example, "...reported hours of pornography consumption per week....". Hours seems excessive. What's the average duration for all visitors?
And, "Women were excluded from the research, because men more easily encounter such problems due to their frequent contact with pornographic materials.". That's an assumption. Women can also have "frequent contact " with porn, so they should have included women.
And one of them seemed to suggest that men who watched more porn had ED. But maybe men with ED first, have had to use porn to help? Chicken and egg situation.
I'm not defending porn, and I tend to make data driven choices.
But I'm acutely aware that methodology can have averse effects on the conclusion, and I tend to be highly skeptical of studies that appear to manipulate the outcome with their selection bias.
I agree some are problematic. The first one is based on brain scans, which is hard to refute. And there are many more like it
The porn industry has a vested interest in suppressing this, and billions of dollars to spend muddying the waters.
Yes, but the participant selection was dubious.
Also, while brain scans are used, it's impossible to form a conclusion based on it.
For instance, do men with less grey matter watch more porn? Or does watching more porn cause men to have less grey matter?
A similar study was done on vegetarians. I don't recall the details, but it went somewhere along the lines of "vegetarians have more brain activity associated with empathy". Does that mean vegetarianism improves empathy? Or do empathetic people naturally gravitate towards vegetarianism?
Behavioral studies are so much harder to do compared to health studies. I don't envy the study coordinators!
But more data can always bring us closer to answers, so I'm glad that at least some informational gaps are being filled.
There's also a huge spectrum of consumption between porn addiction and adolescant curiosity. These studies seem to reference several consumption quantities which go beyond the scope of the original question.