Sunday, September 04, 2016

Is porn really turning us into craven sexless zombies?

America's war on porn has really picked up steam this year. In March, the State of Utah became the first to formally declare pornography a "public-health hazard." Over the summer, the Republican National Committee used its party platform to amp up the rhetoric by declaring porn a "menace" and a "public-health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions."

The Wall Street Journal echoed these claims this week in an editorial warning against the "addictive dangers of pornography." This editorial, co-authored by rabbi Shmuley Boteach and, interestingly, former Playboy model Pamela Anderson, argues that porn is tearing apart Americans' marriages and families and that we must therefore give it up altogether. But is porn really as damaging as they claim?

As the director of the social psychology program at Ball State University, I study the science of sex for a living, and I can assure you that it's not. Research has consistently shown that porn actually has far more positive than negative effects and, further, that it's only problematic for a minority of users. If the anti-porn advocates were serious about helping this minority, they'd stop pretending that porn is the boogeyman and start paying attention to the very limited circumstances under which porn can be problematic.

Anti-porn activists have argued that pornography is responsible for a wide range of ill health effects. Among other things, they claim that it has created an epidemic of erectile dysfunction among young men and that it's causing them to commit rape and sexual assault. Full story...

Related posts:
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  3. 'I wish I'd never seen it': The woman who's been a porn addict since she was 8...
  4. The woman whose addiction to porn has cost her job, friends and ...
  5. Why more and more women are using internet porn...
  6. How having too much sex almost destroyed my life...
  7. Online porn boom: Liberating minds or damaging brains?
  8. Porn sex and real sex: the differances explained...
  9. The science of pornography addiction...

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