My opinion: Porn is the new drug. Our daughters are the dealers and our sons are the users. Sex addiction fueled by free internet porn has ruined countless lives.
At least OnlyFans is behind a paywall, keeping it out of view of children.
At least OnlyFans is behind a paywall, keeping it out of view of children.
I would like to see a citation on this.
Moral panics around sexuality are at least a couple centuries old, and technologies that are said to have contributed to or created them include the printing press, radio, the bicycle, the car, TV, movies, magazines, and now the Internet. For many of the earlier technologies, Gay Talese's book Thy Neighbor's Wife has a serviceable overview of the moral panics.
One write-up here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-the-er...
(She has unfortunately become a target of certain right-wing elements, so if you Google her, you will find a lot of non-scientific attacks. You should read her publications directly and form your own opinion.)
See https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...
I think that the recent scientific articles cited on https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/ and the countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth.
Also, see: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...
Your Brain on Porn is written by a non-scientist with an axe to grind.
> countless of self-reports by men in various "NoFap" communities make a pretty good case the porn-addiction is not a myth.
Self-reports and anecdotes are not controlled, blinded studies. They're not scientific. They tell us nothing.
If that kind of data were scientific, then we'd all be 100% certain that drinking certain herbal teas cures 50% of the flu, or that marijuana use has a causal relationship with using cocaine.
Sex and porn addiction may or may not be a myth, but the thing that Prause debunks in her various research is that the availability of porn and sex causes those addictions.
What researchers have found is that excessive, obsessive, and/or life-damaging usage of porn and sex are due to existing mental health issues. You don't have a healthy, happy man in a relationship suddenly see extreme porn for the first time and then stop going to work.
This is plainly ad-hominem and argument from authority. There are also plenty of scientists who publish junk papers, with poor methodology and/or statistics.
> What researchers have found is that excessive, obsessive, and/or life-damaging usage of porn and sex are due to existing mental health issues. You don't have a healthy, happy man in a relationship suddenly see extreme porn for the first time and then stop going to work.
This is nonsense, and it is quite clear that you have not read much about this. These issues are mainly affecting men who have been watching porn since an early age. Plenty of stories here: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/rebooting-accounts/
> Self-reports and anecdotes are not controlled, blinded studies. They're not scientific. They tell us nothing.
This is dogmatic and silly. There are various fields where the science is lagging behind and it takes quite a while to catch up. Let me post a quote from Gary Wilson's book (which I highly recommend, despite him not being a scientist):
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> Quitting internet porn is the equivalent of removing refined sugar or trans-fats from your diet. It is simply the elimination of a form of entertainment that no one had until recently, and everyone got along without. As one porn user said,
> Here is the schema:
> 1. Exciting, but bad-in-long-term behaviour is introduced for money.
> 2. People get hooked.
> 3. Precise, scientifically backed-up research takes decades to kick-in.
> 4. Hooked people start to get educated.
> 5. They start behaviour-elimination.
> > Problem is that this whole cycle is so damaging. Cigarettes were (widely) introduced in the early 20th century and took decades to regulate. We now know that certain types of foods are harmful. Yet, with food we are still in phase 2-3. Guess where we are with pornography? The useful scientific research is not even a few years old.
> A consensus about the risks of high-speed internet porn could be decades off despite the efforts of urologists such as Cornell Medical School professor and author Harry Fisch, MD, who warns that too much porn use can make it ‘significantly more difficult’ to get aroused and stay aroused during real sex.[181] Most of society will need a lot longer to get up to speed.
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> If that kind of data were scientific, then we'd all be 100% certain that drinking certain herbal teas cures 50% of the flu, or that marijuana use has a causal relationship with using cocaine.
The difference is that stopping using porn and waiting for your symptoms to improve is different from taking supplements. You just eliminate a single variable and watch the results.
> Sex and porn addiction may or may not be a myth, but the thing that Prause debunks in her various research is that the availability of porn and sex causes those addictions.
Sorry, but once again, she did not debunk anything with that 2015 study of hers, in fact its results suggests that porn does affect the brain. I've already linked to criticism of her research, and you have clearly not addressed any of it.
P.S. I'm an atheist and don't have any moral issues with porn, so I have no axe to grind here.
As far as name-calling, it was not my intention at all. If you aren't familiar, the creator of YourBrainOnPorn is literally not a scientist (he neither studies nor practices a science) and doesn't claim to be a scientist.
In describing him as I did, I didn't see any distinction from the descriptions on HN about anti-vaxxers or climate-change deniers.
That actually means absolutely nothing lmao.
I'd say pornography has been normalized over time, but I'm not convinced it's inoffensive.
I won't polarize it and say it's bad. It is what it is, but I don't know if it can be categorized as healthy either.
The current scientific consensus[1] is the following:
- porn addiction and sex addiction may be real; the issue is still up for debate, although there wasn't enough evidence to consider porn addiction its own disorder yet
- excessive porn or sex are devastatingly harmful to some people, regardless of whether they're technically an addiction or not
- there are different causes for excessive uses of porn, some of which look like compulsive disorders, while others look like "hypersexuality" (abnormally high sex drive)
- there is no evidence that the increase in porn quality or availability are responsible for destructive porn usage