The Science of Porn： Myths, Facts, and Overlooked Issues
Episode Stats
Summary
Porn is more prevalent and accessible than ever before, yet its effects on relationships, mental health, and human development aren t popularly understood. Discussions on the topic are often engaged in from an emotional or religious point of view. Less typical is a discussion of pornography from an empirical frame. My guest today, Dr. Brian Willoughby, a social scientist who has spent the past 15 years studying porn s impacts, will impact what the research actually says about how it affects personal well-being, relationship satisfaction, and sexual expectations.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Pornography is more prevalent and accessible than ever before, yet its effects on relationships,
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mental health, and human development aren't popularly well understood.
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Discussions on the topic are often engaged in from an emotional or religious point of view.
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Less typical is a discussion of pornography from an empirical frame.
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My guest today, Dr. Brian Willoughby, a social scientist who has spent the past 15 years
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studying porn's impacts, will impact what the research actually says about how it affects
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personal well-being, relationship satisfaction, and sexual expectations.
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We discuss the latest data on porn use across different demographics, how porn impacts religious
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versus non-religious populations differently, and how exposure affects kids.
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Brian shares whether using porn causes erectile dysfunction and depression, what parents should
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know about talking to their kids about porn, the main risk of porn that's typically under
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash porn.
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All right, Brian Willoughby, welcome to the show.
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So you are a social scientist who studies family life, and for the past, oh, almost, I think
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it's 15 years now, you've been doing a lot of research about porn use and how it affects
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Before we get into your research, let's start with definitions.
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In academic research, how do you define pornography?
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Because there's that famous, with Justice Stewart, Potter Stewart quote about obscenity.
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So academically, how do you define pornography?
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Yeah, it's interesting because that's actually a question that kind of got me into this research
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I came from a background of studying healthy relationships and dating during young adulthood,
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and the reason I started to turn my research into this area is because just so many young
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adults were mentioning 15, 20 years ago, like, hey, this is an issue I'm trying to navigate.
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I'm trying to figure out what it means for my life, what it means in my relationships.
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And so I kind of came over to the pornography research from that area.
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And one of the very first studies I published is I was looking at the research is 20 years
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ago to answer your question is we weren't defining it for anyone.
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We were just asking people, how often do you look at pornography?
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You know, what kind of just kind of these basic questions where we weren't defining the
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And so I published a study that showed that when you just ask people, do you look at porn?
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You have no idea what they're saying, because people have such varying definitions for one
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That's a hey, I was looking at the SI swimsuit issue, and I think that's porn for another
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It's like, well, unless it's like super explicit group sex, if it's just a couple having sex,
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even explicit hardcore sex, I don't really consider that porn.
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And so today, the field has gotten a lot better, where we do tend to define now that we haven't
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agreed completely on one clear definition, but probably the most common definition, at
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least in the research that we use, is that pornography is a form of sexual media where the media,
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so the video, the picture, whatever we're talking about, was produced and designed specifically
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And that's typically to differentiate it from, you know, Game of Thrones or a movie that might
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have some explicit sex scenes, but that wasn't the main reason to produce the show or the film
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or the picture, you know, whatever it might be.
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So that's usually the definition we'll give people when we do research to say, hey, this
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is media designed specifically or centrally to create sexual arousal.
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How prevalent is porn use amongst the general population in the United States?
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Yeah, well, I mean, the simple answer is very prevalent.
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Again, it's something that we kind of assume is happening.
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And the research suggests that it is, and that it's likely been growing in popularity
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We've got some good national data sets now that have looked at that question.
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And obviously, each data set is going to have slightly different numbers.
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But our best estimate is, I guess, the easiest way to answer that is more than half of all
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We still do see a little bit of a gender difference where men use porn more often than women.
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Most of the estimates have about 70% to 80% of men viewing pornography, at least somewhat
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frequently, meaning at least a couple times a year, about around 60% of women.
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Those are kind of the averages if you look across the different samples.
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So it's over half of both men and women with about a 10% to 20% difference between men and
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You've also done research about how porn use differs amongst religious people.
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Yeah, you get two really interesting things when it comes to religious people.
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For men, if you look at just kind of overall use of porn, like I said, usually a year span
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So if you look at the percent of religious men and non-religious men that have viewed porn
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in the last year, the numbers are actually not really different.
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There's not much difference between religious and non-religious men.
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Where the difference comes is in the frequency within that year.
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So religious men tend to use porn less frequently.
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They're more likely to be in kind of a monthly pattern where they might use a couple times
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a month or use for a month and then not use it for a couple months and then come back
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And then that's typically due to, you know, moral beliefs or disapproval of porn where
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they're trying to stop it or they don't want it to be a habit in their lives.
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Non-religious men tend to be much more kind of a weekly pattern if they're using porn.
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So it's a more kind of regular part of their sexual routine.
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Women have much more of a difference when it comes to religious and non-religious women.
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Non-religious women, like I said, typically have not as high frequently as men.
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And we actually have, I think, less clear data about frequency patterns for women because
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I think women are more varied in their patterns.
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But religious women are the one group that tend to be much lower, like 20, 30% of religious
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And so it's the one group that looks like they tend to actively avoid it, which in religious
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populations creates some interesting dating dynamics because then you often have men that
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And then a lot of religious women that have very little exposure and little use of porn.
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And so that creates some interesting dating dynamics around it.
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I thought you've done some interesting research on that.
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Oftentimes when people talk about porn use, they talk about it as an addiction.
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And I think that word addiction gets thrown around a lot, probably too easily.
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How many people actually have a bona fide porn addiction?
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This, I think, is a really important topic because like you said, is the addiction term gets thrown
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around a lot and oftentimes misused in a lot of cases.
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So we've come a long way, I think, in the last 10 years on the clinical research on pornography.
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And there was, and is still to a certain extent, some debate about how addictive porn is and
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how much potential there is to develop a full compulsive behavior around it.
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But I think there's a growing consensus that like gambling and like other kind of behaviors
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that have some reward attached to them, that they can be compulsive over time.
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The World Health Organization a couple of years ago designated pornography as an addictive
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But having said that, the percent of the population that uses porn that would qualify clinically
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for kind of true compulsive addictive behavior is relatively smaller.
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Our best estimates are maybe somewhere between 7% to 15%, depending on the sample.
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So it's a pretty small group that has really developed compulsive patterns.
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If you want to kind of think about this like a continuum, you've got, you know, maybe 10% of
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your population that's truly addicted, another maybe, you know, 10 to 20% qualify for what
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what's oftentimes called PPU or problematic pornography use, which basically means like you're not
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fully dealing with a compulsive pattern of thinking and obsessive thinking.
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It's not that full addictive behavior, but it's something that's causing distress in your life.
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So maybe you've tried to stop a porn habit and haven't been able to.
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Maybe it's caused some issues in your relationship.
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So there's another kind of 10 to 20% we think of people that qualify for problematic use because
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And then you've got, you know, your other 60% of people that are somewhere on that continuum
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of I've experimented with porn and never really gotten into it to I've used porn on a regular
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basis, but it's never really become compulsive.
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It's something that, you know, I've been able to stop at different points in my life and
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So if you want to kind of put it in terms of what percent of the population has some level
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of distress in a bad habit slash compulsivity estimates are somewhere between maybe 30,
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And I thought that was interesting distinction between problematic porn use and addiction.
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Something I've noticed, and I think you've written about this too, is that people who are
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religious and they have, you know, moral qualms about pornography, they'll often label their
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porn use as an addiction, even though it might be more of a problematic porn use.
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It's not like they're using porn like multiple times a day.
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And I'm going to call this an addiction because I feel like I can't help myself.
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And a lot of the research on problematic porn use has been centered not on religious people
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in general, but trying to capture that group that does have distress.
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It's distracting and acknowledging that there can be a need for clinical resources for that
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people, but wanting to distinguish it from someone, like you said, that's truly dealing
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with a addictive behavioral pattern where this is every day, maybe hours a day.
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I can't hold a real relationship because of this, like those are two very different
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We want to make sure clinically in terms of resources and therapy that we distinguish
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But like you said, we do know that religious men in particular oftentimes will report what's
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called perceived addiction, which is they label themselves as addicts, even though they
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And there's been some good research that shows that that self labeling, that perceived addiction
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sometimes can be more harmful than the porn use itself, that both those things are at play.
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But when I label myself a certain way and I get kind of a defeatist attitude about things
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because I'm an addict, there's nothing I can do, that actually causes depression and
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causes some mental health issues above and beyond what the porn is doing.
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It makes breaking or stopping the habit harder.
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What's the percentage of the population that have like never seen porn?
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When we look at teenage adolescent use and especially exposure rates, like not just, you
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know, have you ever regularly used porn, but have you ever seen porn, intentional or
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We do have, you know, some teenagers that manage to navigate their adolescent years and
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And I would guess, you know, realistically, maybe you've got 5% of your population by 18,
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Now, again, that's intentional or unintentional.
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Obviously, the number of people that have never intentionally sought out porn, you know,
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other than, hey, I clicked on this link and it took me here.
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My friend sent me this or I saw this on social media.
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I did one study that showed that maybe 10 to 20% roughly of the population by 18, 19 has
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A lot of the pornography companies have gotten very good at hiding their links into other ads
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I think most people have had that experience where, you know, you're on the Internet, you're
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In fact, my teenage son, who's 17, just referenced this to us.
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He was clinking on LED lights advertisement on social media and took him to a porn site.
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So I think it's just a very common experience to get exposed to porn, even if you didn't
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And something you've written about is that because it's so prevalent, you kind of make
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Because I think when people hear, oh, normalize porn use, it means it's good.
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Yeah, I think it's important to distinguish, like you said, is normalizing something doesn't
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We have a lot of research that I'm sure we might talk about, about the harms and the
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risks of using pornography at really any age, any stage of life.
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But the normalization is just acknowledging that it is normal for most teenagers, for most
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Like I said earlier, we know the majority of our young adults and teenagers, especially as
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they get up to 17, 18, 19, have not just seen porn, but are actively using it on a regular
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And so if this is a normal behavior, meaning most people are doing it, then it's, I think,
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even more important for parents, for young adults, for really anyone to educate themselves
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about the potential risks of pornography and educate themselves about what this is, the
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effect it could have on your life, you know, how to navigate it individually and with couples,
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because there's a whole now new area that's opened up in the last 10 to 15 years where
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because most men and women have some history with pornography is when we date each other
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and particularly when we form long-term relationships, there's this whole new thing now that's opened
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up in relationships where we have to talk and navigate pornography together.
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There was a study that I did two years ago where one of the big findings we found in
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the national sample in the United States was that the majority now, particularly of dating
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couples, are using pornography together, which was kind of a new finding.
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We knew it was happening, but we didn't know that we had hit the majority point for couples
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So it's not just most people use porn on their own, most couples now use porn together as well.
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So it's just, it's something that has to be taught, it has to be talked about, and we
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You can't pretend like it's not happening, basically.
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Typically people are getting exposed to porn at a younger and younger age.
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What's the average age when people are first exposed to pornography?
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So average age right now in the United States is 10 to 13, which is a lot younger than a
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lot of people realize, but it very closely follows when most kids get their first smartphones.
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You know, that's right around the age, kind of those preteen years where parents are giving
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kids phones for the first time, or at least they're getting regular access to the internet.
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And as we talked about, you're on the internet long enough, you're on social media long enough,
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it's pretty common then to come across some sort of explicit sexual material.
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You do get people that don't come across porn, don't seek it out till later in adolescence.
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You get a smaller group that's exposed even earlier to that.
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That's kind of the norm right now in the United States, which is one of the reasons why I typically
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really try to urge parents to be aware of this, because most parents aren't really thinking
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about the sex talk, aren't thinking about porn, aren't thinking about these things till their
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kids really hit adolescence, you know, 13 plus.
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But by that time, a lot of kids have already been exposed to it.
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So you've done research on how the age of exposure influences porn use later in life.
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Yeah, so this is, when we talk about the risks of porn, this is one of the ones that I think
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is really most critically culturally to talk about, because we know the risk to kids is
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You know, there's a whole conversation you could be having about consenting adults and free
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speech and letting people, you know, access the pornography that they want as an adult.
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But when we talk about kids, a lot of the risks in the research become much more straightforward,
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much more consistent, meaning that the risks that kids have from regular viewing of pornography
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are fairly straightforward in terms of what they do.
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And earlier exposure tends to elevate a lot of those risks.
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So for example, one of the most consistent risks we see is elevated risky sexual behavior,
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If you watch and view a lot of porn, particularly as a preteen, as an early adolescence, you're at
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So that, you know, sex with multiple partners, unprotected sex, things like that.
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In the earlier work, a child's exposed, we tend to see elevated risk for that.
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The other big one, circling back to what we were talking about before, is an elevated
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risk later in life of compulsive and addictive use.
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Just, you know, if you're exposed earlier, which also makes sense.
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If you're exposed earlier, you're more likely to be hiding it.
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You're more likely to be using it with, you know, less impulse control, underdeveloped
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There's a study that my grad student and I did also a couple years ago, one of the biggest
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risks of early exposure was an increased frequency of habitual use later in life.
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And so those are kind of the two main risks of earlier exposure is increased risk of developing
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that addictive pattern and an increased risk for risky sexual behavior later in adolescence.
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Okay, so that's important for parents to start talking to their kids as young as 10, even
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And I thought it was interesting, the research you saw about how porn use changes throughout
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I think what you've seen is like, it usually spikes around teenage years, young adulthood.
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And then for a lot of, I'm talking about men, I'm sure it applies to women as well.
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When you get into your 30s and your 40s, it kind of tapers off for a lot of people or
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Yeah, there's a study that I did looking at this specifically.
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And we saw three main groups as we kind of tracked it through adolescence and young adulthood.
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So like you said, we did see this group that had a very typical risk-taking pattern.
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So it's a similar pattern we see with binge drinking, with sexual behavior, where it kind
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of builds through teenage years, kind of peaks around 18, 19, 20, 21.
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And for a large group of people that use porn, that's the typical pattern.
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It's that kind of typical, you know, experimentation, I guess, pattern.
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We did see another group in that same study, though, that had this escalating pattern that
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And we think that was probably capturing kind of this problematic compulsive group where
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it also built and kind of increased during adolescence, young adulthood.
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It was something that the people were still dealing with or using at a high level throughout
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And then we saw a third group, which is kind of what we call the abstaining group, but we
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acknowledge that most people in the abstaining group still reported seeing porn infrequently
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throughout their adolescent to young adult years.
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And then the other 60% were kind of split between those two other groups.
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I think it's interesting because you see similar trends with other vices or other potentially
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addictive behaviors, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs.
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And people don't talk about this, but oftentimes what the research has found is people just
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They might have an addiction to alcohol or cigarettes in their 20s.
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And by the time they're 40, it wasn't like they tried to.
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I can hopefully find it and link to it in the show notes.
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But a huge amount of people just age out of problematic vice behavior.
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In fact, you know, sometimes I hear people throw around drug analogies with porn.
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And oftentimes I hear, you know, porn is like heroin.
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But for me, the one I always tend to use is alcohol.
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Alcohol is a really good comparison point for a lot of the research on porn.
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Because like you said, if you look at alcohol, you see this wide spectrum of how people engage
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And technically, every time you drink alcohol, you know, you're hurting your body a little
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bit, you know, your liver is processing it and things like that, at least most, you know,
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But you get a segment of people that that are able to utilize and use alcohol in ways that
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doesn't really have a huge negative effect on their life and use it responsibly and all
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And then you have a group, like you said, that kind of, you know, goes through their
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typical young adult years, and it spikes, and they go through college, and they're binge
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And, you know, it's certainly having a lot of risk during that time in their life, but
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And they come down and some people go through that and say, you know what, I think I'm done
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Some people say, no, I'm gonna at least bring it down and be more responsible with it.
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And then you've got that group that, you know, struggles with alcohol, and it develops
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into an addictive compulsive pattern, and then they have to deal with that for the rest
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I mean, it's not most people that drink alcohol.
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It's a small percent of people that drink alcohol.
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But I think pornography tends to follow that where there's these kind of distinct groups
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that, you know, technically, I think all have risk, but the risk profile is very different.
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Yeah, I bet pornography is similar to sports gambling or online gambling.
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I bet it's like a lot of young people who are primarily doing the online gambling and then
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And the only caveat sometimes I note to all these patterns we're talking about is there
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have been some in my field, including myself, that have at least noted that all the stuff
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we're talking about has been based on data over the last 10 to 15 years in the past.
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What we don't really know is we have, because right now, the current young adult cohort in
00:21:34.840
their 20s was kind of the first group that were digital natives to the smartphone, right?
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As they grew up, the smartphone was there when they were born.
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And now they spent their whole life with the version of the internet that we have now.
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And so although all the patterns we've talked about have been kind of true of the past 10
00:21:52.760
to 15, 20 years, we don't really know if that's going to hold there.
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There has been some discussion of because of how the porn industry has shifted, because
00:22:00.960
of how much exposure to online technology and smartphones this generation in their 20s
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There is the question of do we see a larger portion of our current young adult generation
00:22:12.040
that struggles with pornography into adulthood?
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In other words, is that group that has typically had a decrease into adulthood, is that group
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going to get smaller in the current generation?
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It's been a question that's been posed, but we don't have the data yet.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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So I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast, if they got a lecture from parents
00:22:34.340
or a pastor about porn use, they probably were told these scare things about how porn
00:22:43.820
It'll make you depressed or it'll turn you into a sexual deviant.
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You've seen a lot of that reporting in the popular press.
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And what's porn's connection with sexual violence and sexual crimes?
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So this is where understanding those kind of distinctions around patterns of use is really
00:23:04.380
important because the research shows very different effects based on if we want to kind
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of simplify and say, hey, we've got that compulsive group and that problematic use.
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If we kind of separate them out into people that are having clinical issues with pornography
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and then everyone else, the research suggests the risks and the effects of porn are fairly
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So if we go over and talk about the people that are struggling with an addiction, struggling
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with problematic use, that's typically where we see the mental health pieces.
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Now, I guess I want to step back for a second and address something you said, which is the
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erectile dysfunction, kind of arousal dysfunctional stuff that's out there.
00:23:41.200
Very little to no research that suggests that's the case.
00:23:44.460
In fact, most of the research suggests that watching porn increases your arousal.
00:23:50.160
And actually that increased arousal can cause issues for people, but we don't see a lot
00:23:57.020
So this is depression, loneliness, lower self-worth and lower body image.
00:24:04.120
And particularly for that group that has kind of a high frequency problematic to compulsive
00:24:09.260
use pattern, that's usually where we kind of see the majority of that research.
00:24:13.820
And so pornography carries a mental health risk, particularly once it gets to that really
00:24:18.080
high frequency compulsive pattern, that's typically where we start to see that kind of
00:24:23.380
For the majority of people that fall into that kind of occasional use, you know, maybe it's
00:24:29.080
a regular pattern, but it's not, you know, becoming a bad habit.
00:24:34.500
Where we see the risk there is largely relational.
00:24:37.540
And so we have several meta-analyses now that have shown that any kind of porn use or the
00:24:43.580
more porn that you use, relationship satisfaction and particularly relationship stability tends
00:24:49.260
And we think that's about is pretty straightforward.
00:24:51.660
It comes down to expectations and what we call sexual scripts, which are kind of when
00:24:55.380
you go into a sexual situation, what do you think is going to happen?
00:25:02.480
And what we see is that people that use porn tend to carry with them unhealthy scripts and
00:25:10.060
And part of this is often because pornography starts in adolescence.
00:25:13.380
And so when you don't have a lot of sexual experience and porn becomes kind of the primary
00:25:18.200
way that you think about sex and how you expect sex to look like when you become an adult or when you
00:25:23.740
start to engage in your own sexual relationships.
00:25:25.960
And the reality, I think most adults understand, is pornography is not showing a fairly normative
00:25:36.900
They're engaging in a lot of sexual behavior that a lot of people in their real relationships
00:25:41.600
So that is the main negative outcome and risk that we see for pornography is just making real
00:25:47.900
relationships just generally and also specifically with sexual intimacy more difficult.
00:25:52.940
Now, there is also the other consistent thing we've seen in research with a couple of meta
00:25:57.280
analyses, which are kind of studies of studies, is the violence piece.
00:26:01.480
And it's not quite as straightforward as the satisfaction and stability research, but there
00:26:05.400
is research that suggests that more frequent porn use is linked to more aggressive and violent
00:26:10.880
attitudes, particularly about men towards women.
00:26:13.680
There's some research out there that suggests that it does increase the risk of aggressive
00:26:22.080
We know there's a lot of pornography that depicts aggression and violence towards women
00:26:26.960
with women oftentimes enjoying or being depicted as enjoying that violence.
00:26:32.040
And so that media use, just like any form of media use, has an influence on people.
00:26:36.780
And it tends to make, again, healthy relationship formation more difficult.
00:26:40.640
And that's where most of the research has been for most people is the main risk of porn is just
00:26:47.340
making your actual human relationships a lot more challenging.
00:26:50.540
Yeah, there's been articles about this in the popular press about how the scripts you pick
00:26:56.020
up in pornography, you carry that over into your relationship and it just, people don't
00:27:00.780
You know, you're a young guy and you watch, oh, you know, anal sex is normal.
00:27:04.120
And you try that and like your girlfriend or wife's like, I don't like that.
00:27:10.020
And there was a study that was done, I think it said that two thirds of female college students
00:27:20.520
And that can obviously be a really scary thing for them.
00:27:23.940
But guys think, oh yeah, well, that's what you do during sex.
00:27:26.660
But I've also seen articles where the men themselves who do these things actually don't even like
00:27:35.020
But yeah, they feel like they're supposed to because that's what you do when you have
00:27:44.840
We did a survey two years ago where one of the questions we were asking couples, these
00:27:51.600
And we asked them, you know, when you're having sex with your partner, are you thinking about
00:27:57.380
And what clearly came out is there was a significant group of people that were in a committed relationship
00:28:04.760
Like when we're having sex, I'm worried that my partner's thinking about porn.
00:28:08.560
I feel pressure that they want me to perform a certain way or engage in behavior that they've
00:28:14.740
And that's what I was referencing before about modern couples having to navigate something
00:28:18.900
completely new that previous generations haven't had to navigate.
00:28:23.120
It's knowing that both partners have history watching porn and oftentimes a male partner
00:28:27.820
who has maybe an extensive history throughout their life of watching porn.
00:28:32.680
Even if you're not talking about it, both partners kind of know that it's there.
00:28:37.100
You might be able to pick up on it and what your partner's kind of asking for or kind of
00:28:41.840
And so it creates a whole nother dynamic, particularly like you said, when we know that a lot of people
00:28:47.200
might be feeling pressure because of porn to act a certain way with their partner.
00:28:51.040
That's not either a what they want to do or be what is creating actual connection between
00:28:57.220
the two of them, because we know that sexual intimacy is meant to be and can be this very
00:29:01.740
bonding, connecting, positive thing in a relationship.
00:29:04.600
But when it starts to be this pressure filled, anxiety filled interaction, because we haven't
00:29:11.380
really openly talked about how porn is influencing that, but we know that it is.
00:29:15.420
We think that's where some of the satisfaction, stability, you know, communication stuff we see in
00:29:22.260
So that's another thing you got to talk about with your kids.
00:29:26.480
It's designed for a specific purpose and they're going to do things.
00:29:29.420
It's like the analogy that I use, like porn is like a fight scene in a movie.
00:29:32.480
Like no one really fights like people fight in movies.
00:29:36.920
Like no one really has sex the way you see in porn.
00:29:41.440
In fact, a common question I'll get from parents is when should I have the porn talk?
00:29:45.480
And I always try to quickly correct them and say, well, I don't think you should have
00:29:51.520
It's part of the sex talk that hopefully, you know, earlier than you think, like we talked
00:29:55.980
about, like nine, 10, you should be talking to your kids about sex.
00:29:59.880
And hopefully part of the message to your kids, you know, whether you're religious or
00:30:03.500
not, or what your personal values are about sexual intimacy, I'm assuming most people would
00:30:08.040
agree that sex between adults is a powerful and can be very positive thing in a relationship.
00:30:15.200
And that should be part of the message your kids is getting.
00:30:17.920
And then if, if you have a desire, like most parents do that, Hey, I someday I want you
00:30:22.300
to grow up and have this healthy, long-term committed relationship with another person.
00:30:29.680
And let's talk about how porn is showing you things and might make some of the things you
00:30:34.440
think about sex in contrast to this positive, you know, message about connection and bonding
00:30:40.240
It might make that more challenging so that you can talk to your kids about the risks of
00:30:44.420
sex in the context of some of the more positive and hopeful messages you're giving them about
00:30:50.940
So, so that that way the message they're getting, isn't just porn is bad because sex is bad.
00:30:56.660
And so really what I'm learning is that if I have any sexual desire or sexual arousal,
00:31:01.520
I probably shouldn't talk to my parents because everything about that is bad.
00:31:05.520
So porn use negatively impacts all relationships.
00:31:09.060
Does the degree of harm differ between religious and non-religious people?
00:31:14.040
We don't see that typically in the, in the relationship outcomes.
00:31:17.920
So like the stability satisfaction is oftentimes, in fact, a lot of the research just controls
00:31:22.380
for religion or religiosity and shows that same effect, uh, regardless.
00:31:26.780
Now, having said that, like we said before is, is what you can get in religious populations
00:31:31.600
with couples is someone that might be in that occasional use, you know, Hey, I'm, I'm using
00:31:36.960
porn a couple of times a year pattern that can now, in addition to the relationship stuff,
00:31:44.100
One is like we said before, it could have some element of perceived addiction, you know,
00:31:49.140
where I kind of exaggerate how bad and how negative this use is.
00:31:52.920
And that causes personal distress and depression and stuff that, that wouldn't happen in a non-religious
00:31:58.480
The other thing you get in religious couples because you get, so, so there's another term
00:32:02.480
we haven't mentioned, another academic term called moral incongruence, which is basically
00:32:06.720
when you do something that is in opposition to a moral belief you have, and that, that
00:32:11.800
becomes relevant in religious couples because what can happen then in addition to all the
00:32:15.540
stuff we've talked about is that if we both hold these moral beliefs that porn is wrong
00:32:20.420
morally, and I find out, you know, if we go, you know, stereotypically gendered here, if
00:32:26.660
I'm a wife and I find out that my husband's been looking at porn three times in the last
00:32:31.100
year, you can certainly get a much more exaggerated, what we sometimes call behavioral trauma effect,
00:32:36.700
which means I feel violated in this relationship because you're looking at porn.
00:32:41.460
And in many cases in religious couples for religious women, I feel like you have cheated
00:32:46.300
on me that, you know, they perceive it as a form of infidelity.
00:32:49.060
And so now that perception, kind of like perceived addiction, that perception is going to increase
00:32:54.600
the distress in our relationship because, not necessarily because of what the porn's doing,
00:32:59.580
but because I perceive this as this moral violation of our relationship or our marital covenant or
00:33:05.700
however, you know, they're perceiving it that has that exaggeration effect.
00:33:09.520
That's oftentimes how I talk about this with religious populations is that there's an exaggeration
00:33:17.020
Yeah, I've seen just anecdotally marriages end because of that very thing.
00:33:21.180
Like the wife finds out, oh, my husband looked at porn two times in the past year, divorce,
00:33:25.160
or like engagements called off because the lady found out that her fiance had seen porn before.
00:33:31.660
You see that typically only in religious couples.
00:33:34.260
And again, that's often due to this kind of moral incongruence, this moral boundary violation
00:33:39.180
that religious couples have where they have a more expansive view of what the boundary of
00:33:46.660
And in many religious couples, particularly a lot of religious women do perceive pornography
00:33:51.780
as, hey, you're looking at another woman, you're masturbating to another woman.
00:33:57.760
And then oftentimes it has the same effect psychologically and in the relationship as you actually cheated
00:34:04.460
And it's a hard thing sometimes to navigate clinically because from an outsider's perspective
00:34:08.960
or a therapist, you know, you can be tempted to say, hey, your husband looked at porn
00:34:12.900
twice, that's not cheating, stop acting like it is.
00:34:15.420
But if the woman perceives it to be that and it feels like that to her, it's going to feel
00:34:21.720
And so oftentimes you have to work that couple through that as if it was infidelity because
00:34:31.580
I know you're looking at this from a descriptive point of view, you're trying to describe the
00:34:36.980
So there's this discrepancy between porn use, between men and women or attitudes toward
00:34:40.820
porn, women typically view it less, especially if you're religious, religious men are viewing
00:34:45.840
it about the same percentage of non-religious men.
00:34:50.580
How do you have that conversation when there's such differing expectations?
00:34:55.500
Yeah, I think first off, you need to have the conversation because that's what the descriptive
00:34:59.500
research tells us is most people when they're dating or married, just don't talk about this
00:35:06.360
And I think there's two clear things to start talking about when you're dating and to be
00:35:10.700
clear, you know, this isn't necessarily a first date type of topic, but you know, once
00:35:14.560
you're committed and you're kind of moving forward with the relationship, there's two
00:35:19.600
One is disclosure, which just means that you should be talking about your history and your
00:35:25.260
And again, I'm always clear, kind of like I talked about with parents is this isn't this
00:35:28.880
high pressure porn talk where you kind of awkwardly approach each other and say, okay, let's
00:35:33.980
You know, do you have a porn history when you're dating someone, you know, over the
00:35:37.740
course of several months to several years, there's this natural disclosure that happens.
00:35:42.280
You start telling them about your family and you know, this hard thing that happened when
00:35:45.980
I was a teenager and mental health struggles that you've had, you naturally do that in
00:35:51.720
So it's simply adding porn to the list of things that you disclose to each other naturally.
00:35:57.200
Hey, you know, we kind of assume both of us probably have had some history with porn.
00:36:01.020
And as we get more committed, we should be talking openly about that so that we're not
00:36:05.940
Then the other thing that I think is really important to talk about is boundaries.
00:36:11.680
And I think this goes for all couples now, religious or not, it's important to have a
00:36:16.000
conversation openly with each other about boundaries.
00:36:19.500
You know, if I'm dating someone again, I might be even a non-religious person, but I might in
00:36:24.020
my head say, I don't think it's appropriate for you to be watching porn four times a week when
00:36:28.380
you're dating me that doesn't make me feel good.
00:36:30.440
Well, if you feel like that, you should talk about that and negotiate the boundaries in
00:36:34.580
your relationship around porn, just like you would other boundaries.
00:36:37.340
Like, Hey, I, you know, I'm not comfortable with you hanging out with your coworker at night
00:36:43.840
You need to talk about that with porn about individual use, couple use.
00:36:48.580
Those are the two conversations that couples need to be having.
00:36:51.200
And I think all couples need to be having now is disclosure of what's been happening in your
00:36:55.040
history and then discussion and negotiation and agreement about what the boundaries in
00:37:02.140
That's not going to necessarily alleviate all the stress and all the issues tied to porn,
00:37:06.440
but doing those two things will alleviate a lot of the stress on this topic for most couples.
00:37:13.160
So we've been talking about, you know, you should start the porn discussion early with your kids
00:37:16.320
and put it in the context of like, Hey, look, I want you to have a satisfying long-term
00:37:21.060
relationship in the future. Sex is a part of that. It can be a really great part of your
00:37:25.500
relationship and how you connect to your spouse and then porn use can harm that. I think that's
00:37:29.280
a great way to frame the conversation. I'm more, I'm curious to, particularly if you're
00:37:33.960
religious, you, we mentioned there's that discrepancy between men and women where women
00:37:37.820
view it less and have negative attitudes towards it. And there's that exaggeration effect
00:37:42.340
should part of the conversation as a parent, let's say this is kind of very gender, but let's
00:37:46.140
say you have, you know, if you have a son, you're gonna be like, don't look at porn because
00:37:49.140
it's going to hurt your relationship, right? Try to avoid it with your daughters. And if
00:37:52.500
you're religious, should you tell your daughters, like, look, Hey, you're going to be dating
00:37:59.120
Yeah. I, well, first off, I do think with your daughters is still have the porn conversation
00:38:04.220
because I will say that being a religious woman who has a regular pattern of using pornography
00:38:10.340
can be very isolating. A lot of religious women feel very isolated. They feel they, they recognize
00:38:15.760
that they're kind of outside the norm. And because of that, they feel very anxious about
00:38:20.800
talking to people about their porn use, you know, whether that's going to a religious leader
00:38:24.820
or their family or dating partners, it can be a very stigmatized, isolating experience.
00:38:29.880
So I do think it's important to talk to daughters about that, just like you would with men and
00:38:33.980
boys. But yes, I do think part of the message for religious families talking to daughters is
00:38:40.500
again, back to normalization, helping them understand that the vast majority of guys they
00:38:45.800
date in our potential marriage partners down the line are very likely to have viewed porn at some
00:38:51.560
point in their life or very likely to have had some pattern of porn years in their life and teaching
00:38:56.860
them that doesn't necessarily, and probably shouldn't be this automatic no to a dating or a marriage
00:39:03.180
partner, because immediately you shrink your, your, your dating pool down to a very small group of
00:39:08.260
guys if that's what you're looking for. And that it's more about, like we said before, talking
00:39:13.820
openly about it, talking about the potential impact it could have on your relationship, understand the
00:39:18.380
difference between a guy that, you know, had a year when he was 16, that looked at porn, and that's been
00:39:24.040
the only thing in his life versus a guy who's been looking at porn and struggling with it for eight
00:39:29.040
years of his life. Those are two different things that you need to approach differently in a
00:39:32.760
relationship. I think having those nuanced conversations, uh, with, with your daughters and
00:39:38.600
helping them understand it's something they're going to have to navigate is a really important part of
00:39:43.140
parenting, particularly for religious families. Yeah. I think the openness, just the, the honesty,
00:39:48.060
whenever you, of course, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm going to approve of form, but like if you
00:39:52.140
stigmatize it so much, what ends up happening, you did some research on this, like guys just lie,
00:39:57.240
uh, particularly religious guys, because they know, cause I think you did research on, they know
00:40:02.100
how much their value will go down in the, the dating market, uh, or the marriage market if they
00:40:07.920
admit to porn use. And so they just lie about it. Yep. Or they either outright lied to about it,
00:40:13.680
or they do what I call toe dipping disclosure, you know, where you're like going to stick your toe in
00:40:17.320
the pool to see what the temperature before you jump in. So what a lot of religious guys will do
00:40:21.840
as, as teens and young adults and even adults is they'll say, okay, I, I know the porn question is
00:40:26.800
going to come up. So when it comes up, I'm going to tell you this little thing that happened,
00:40:31.380
you know, so a lot of times, like what a guy in his twenties might do when he gets asked about this
00:40:35.880
in, in a religious dating context is say, well, yeah, I, I looked at porn a little bit when I was
00:40:40.480
like 15 and then they'll wait to see what the reaction is. And if the reaction is, okay, we just
00:40:45.840
had this very stressful conversation. You almost broke up with me because of that. Okay. Well now I'm
00:40:51.560
definitely not going to tell you what I did last week. And so sometimes it's not just outright
00:40:55.700
lying, but it is that kind of partial reveal and then holding everything else back, which in some
00:41:01.580
cases ends up being worse because then down the line, when this inevitably oftentimes comes back
00:41:06.420
out, it felt almost worse. You didn't just lie to me, but you, you kind of half told the truth and
00:41:11.580
then you withheld all this other stuff. And now I feel like I'm constantly peeling the onion back to
00:41:15.680
get to different levels of the truth. And so, yeah, just being open is a really important part of
00:41:21.900
that. Do you have any advice on, I mean, you're, you're a parent of a teenager, any advice on helping
00:41:28.580
our kids avoid pornography? Yeah. I mean, again, to be clear, completely avoiding it is likely not
00:41:35.660
going to happen, but I do think there can be things parents can do that can really reduce one, the risk
00:41:40.860
of early exposure. So at least kind of push that age out into the life course a little bit into
00:41:45.260
adolescence and then just generally reduce the frequency or likely engagement. And part of that goes
00:41:51.760
back to just what we call digital literacy, which is understanding the current digital and
00:41:56.400
technological environment that kids are in. Honestly, the easiest and best thing parents can
00:42:01.480
do to help their kids avoid porn is delay giving them a smartphone and delay giving them access to
00:42:06.920
social media. And those are two things that a lot of media and other scholars in my field that have
00:42:13.020
looked at adolescent development in the context of technology have been saying for a decade now.
00:42:17.100
I think the voices on that are getting stronger. There's just not a lot of positives that come in
00:42:23.520
the research from giving a preteen or even an early adolescent access to a smartphone into social
00:42:30.340
media. There's just so much research that's come out on cell phone addiction, on social media addiction,
00:42:35.580
on the negative mental health effects that social media brings. And then when you bring in the porn
00:42:40.000
stuff, where those two aspects of technology are oftentimes the gateway to porn for a lot of young
00:42:46.220
kids. That's a really easy thing to do is just limit access and delay access. And it's hard. Again,
00:42:52.360
I'm a parent. I've had now four teenagers. We've got two kids in their twenties now. And it's hard to be
00:42:58.500
the parent that, that your kids are coming to you and saying, Hey, every one of my friends has a
00:43:03.180
smartphone. Every one of my friends has access to TikTok. Every one of my friends has access to
00:43:07.960
Instagram, but helping kids understand that, you know, one, you're not barring them for life,
00:43:13.380
that you have a plan with them about how they're going to slowly get access to these technologies
00:43:18.520
and, and how it's, it's not an all or nothing. I think that's a common approach parents give as
00:43:23.920
they set this age, you know, whether it's 10, 11, 12, 13 and say, okay, that's the age where we give
00:43:29.480
you this device. And then it's just kind of go, you know, maybe we put some filters on your phone
00:43:33.620
that kids can get around really easily instead of, I think a more nuanced and appropriate
00:43:38.320
plan for helping kids slowly manage that say, okay, you know, we'll give you a cell phone early
00:43:44.740
on. And it's not going to be a smartphone, but we'll give you a cell phone. So you can start
00:43:47.760
messaging and start getting access. And then we'll get you a smartphone here. So you kind of lay it out
00:43:51.860
to kids that, Hey, there's this plan from 10 to 18, where we're going to slowly help you manage
00:43:57.040
and learn how to use technology in an appropriate way. Just doing that will really help on the porn side,
00:44:04.200
especially if you're pairing that with the conversations that we've had. I think that's
00:44:09.180
kind of the magic formula oftentimes for parents is you have good digital literacy and you have a good
00:44:15.320
clear plan for slowly helping your kids navigate technology with a regular ongoing conversation
00:44:21.840
about pornography itself. I don't know if you have any advice. I'm sure there's guys listening to this.
00:44:27.120
They're in their twenties, thirties, forties. I mean, they're married, they use porn. They're not,
00:44:32.280
it's not compulsive. They're not addicted. If you are addicted, you need to go get professional
00:44:36.660
help to help you with that. But let's say you just have that problematic porn. He's like,
00:44:39.520
you're not happy with it. Any advice there based on your research and just talking to people in your
00:44:45.040
field about what you can do about that? Yeah. I think there's two good resources to turn to.
00:44:51.180
One is, and this feels simple, but again, back to the fact that so many guys don't openly talk
00:44:56.240
about this with other people is social resources really help. Again, so we talked about the
00:45:02.040
drug analogies earlier, but there's another analogy for most guys when it comes to porn,
00:45:06.520
because again, for most guys, if they want to stop porn, it's more of a bad habit when it comes
00:45:11.700
to eating. So if you think about like diet and exercise, like I want to exercise more,
00:45:16.140
I want to stop eating so many donuts or drinking so much soda. And you think about what we know and
00:45:20.740
what has worked for a lot of people about getting healthier. It's not going to the gym by myself.
00:45:26.440
It's not buying all the home gym stuff like that. Some people can be super dedicated and do that.
00:45:30.360
As soon as I get a group and I go to the gym with someone and I'm online and in an environment where
00:45:36.740
we're doing a fitness challenge, people tend to be much better at breaking bad habits when it comes
00:45:42.240
to eating and getting better habits when it comes to fitness, when they turn to other people and
00:45:46.760
porn's the same way. Talk to your wife, talk to your friends, talk to someone. If you want to kick a
00:45:53.220
habit, talk to someone about it and say, Hey, I'm trying to kick this habit. I want someone that's
00:45:59.560
checking in with me or setting goals with me. That in and of itself, oftentimes is all people
00:46:05.640
need to really move in the right direction or move in a positive direction when it comes to porn.
00:46:10.680
They're often just not willing because porn is kind of a taboo topic to utilize those social
00:46:16.240
resources. And again, it could be a spouse. It could be a religious leader. It could be friends,
00:46:19.940
family members, just using other people to help support you through that is oftentimes all someone
00:46:26.320
needs to kick a habit. That's, you know, maybe a very infrequent or maybe an occasional use type
00:46:32.040
of pattern. That's one thing. The other thing is there are apps and websites out there that are
00:46:37.120
specifically designed to help people avoid porn. And they range from services that will basically
00:46:43.520
lock your phone down for you that are more meant for people struggling with compulsive use. But there's
00:46:48.340
other programs out there that are more kind of coaching based that are more kind of geared towards
00:46:53.300
the occasional use that again, I think when paired with social resources can really help people because
00:46:57.900
oftentimes people just need to regularly remind themselves about avoiding porn. They need to
00:47:02.880
recognize triggers in their life like, oh, I'm stressed today. Or I, you know, saw something on
00:47:07.720
Instagram that kind of made me start thinking sexual thoughts. Usually just recognizing those triggers,
00:47:12.860
having something that has me reflect on them is again, often enough to help someone kick a habit if
00:47:19.180
it's something that's just a couple times a month to a couple times a year.
00:47:21.960
And I think the other thing too, is just like, don't beat yourself up too much if you backslide
00:47:26.720
because that's just going to put you in that defeatist attitude. You're going to get depressed,
00:47:30.300
which is going to want to make you look at porn again. So just creates this vicious cycle and it's
00:47:34.980
just, it's going to make it worse for you. Yeah, definitely. I'm curious, is there any lines of
00:47:39.700
research that you're curious about exploring to understand pornography's impact on relationships and
00:47:44.560
emerging adulthood development? Yeah. I mean, I think two areas. One is just better understanding the
00:47:50.680
relationship dynamics. Again, we've got all this research now about the risks of porn to
00:47:55.460
relationships like we talked about, but we don't know a lot yet about how modern young adults and
00:48:01.080
even teenagers are actively or not actively discussing or navigating it in the relationship.
00:48:07.480
Again, we're kind of assuming that couples are probably having some version of these conversations,
00:48:12.960
but we're not really clear right now in the research about how those conversations are going.
00:48:18.080
Like I said earlier, we know that most couples are using porn together, but we don't know how
00:48:22.440
they got there. Like, how did that happen? Like, did the guy introduce it? Did you have a conversation
00:48:26.920
about it? How do you navigate like what porn you look at together and what porn you don't?
00:48:31.660
So there's a lot of questions about just kind of the couple dynamic stuff that's happening that I
00:48:36.680
think we need more research that I want to do in the future. The other big thing, and this is actually
00:48:40.460
where I'm putting most of my energy in, like most things it feels like when it comes to technology
00:48:44.740
is artificial intelligence. I think artificial intelligence is about to change the game when it
00:48:51.040
comes to sexual media. I've actually got a report that's coming out through the Wheatley
00:48:55.640
Institute, which is a group I'm affiliated with at my university, that's going to be showing some
00:49:00.400
national US data when it comes to AI companion apps and AI generated images on social media that are
00:49:06.120
oftentimes sexualized and AI porn. That's showing that particularly among people in their 20s,
00:49:11.820
this is actually a very common behavior. It's not more than half, but we're finding one in four,
00:49:18.200
one in three young adult men are using AI companion girlfriend apps at some level now. And I think
00:49:24.860
that's really going to change some of the dynamics around pornography and sexual media in the next,
00:49:30.560
I think it already is, but particularly in the next five years is that technology becomes more and
00:49:34.280
more popular. That's another area that we really need to start having some more public discourse
00:49:39.660
about because I think it's really potentially going to impact relationships in some unique ways.
00:49:44.920
Yeah, I think so too. I've been reading some articles about that. I think Esquire did one,
00:49:48.760
New York Times did one about the AI companions. And what's interesting with the guys, of course,
00:49:53.580
they're using the AI to create explicit images, but what they've found is that the guys really just
00:49:59.540
like the companionship. It's an emotional thing. And so when they talk to the chat bot,
00:50:03.940
they just get this great dose of affirmation, like, Oh, she just loves everything I say. And
00:50:09.140
it just, it just feels good. And that's probably not good for forming human to human relationships.
00:50:17.440
That's my, my big concern from the early research that's coming out is that pornography is common as
00:50:22.840
it's become has never really threatened to replace a real relationship. It's just kind of there.
00:50:28.780
People are still, you know, dating and having sex with real people and getting married. And pornography
00:50:34.560
doesn't seem like it's having a huge impact on that. It's just impacting the trajectory and the
00:50:38.680
dynamics. I think the AI stuff has the potential to really impact just baseline desire to engage in a
00:50:45.460
real relationship. Because like you said, now, if I have this companion app, and most of these AI
00:50:50.720
platforms are allowing me to now emotionally engage with someone that seems very real, that I can call on
00:50:57.720
the phone and hear a real, you know, a real human voice that does not sound like a robot anymore,
00:51:02.400
that can send me images and eventually videos that are explicit. So I can tie the porn piece that we've
00:51:09.140
been talking about, to now someone who is perfectly validating perfectly emotionally connecting that
00:51:14.520
always cares about what I have to say, that never fights with me, it starts to very quickly create
00:51:19.920
an environment in an ecosystem that says, why would I engage in a real relationship if I can get
00:51:25.880
almost everything I need over here instead? And also, I think it complicates the infidelity
00:51:31.180
aspects of porn. So, you know, a lot of men and women, they might think, well, if my spouse looks
00:51:36.940
at porn, it's not, he's not cheating on me. I don't like it, but it's not cheating. The AI thing's
00:51:41.960
weird. He's like, oh my gosh, I found these text messages my husband's having with his AI girlfriend.
00:51:46.940
This feels like it's infidelity. He's cheating on me with a chat bot.
00:51:50.020
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I'll give you just two fun, not fun, but scary scenarios that they're tied to
00:51:55.160
that, that just how complex this can get, because a lot of these companions also have deep fake
00:51:59.620
technology where I can feed an image in and use that to kind of generate the avatar. And so what
00:52:05.080
happens when, you know, I feed our next door neighbor's wife into that. And so I'm now engaging
00:52:11.520
in a relationship with an AI companion, but it looks like our neighbor, or here's another just crazy
00:52:17.740
scenario that I think will happen. I can feed my spouse's picture into it. And so an idealized,
00:52:25.180
perfectly sexual, perfectly, you know, shaped version of my spouse. Can you cheat on your
00:52:31.200
spouse with your spouse is going to be a question people are going to ask themselves in the next five
00:52:35.060
years. And she doesn't nag me. She just affirms me. Wow. Crazy world we live in. Well, Brian,
00:52:40.580
this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?
00:52:43.800
Uh, yeah. So, so you can go to my faculty website at Brigham Young University. Uh, it's usually where
00:52:49.480
I've got my latest research published. Uh, like I said, I'm a fellow at the Wheatley Institute
00:52:53.680
at BYU as well. We're regularly publishing public reports on a variety of topics. Like I said,
00:52:59.020
we've got the AI one coming out in the next couple of days. So those are two of the best places.
00:53:03.640
Fantastic. Well, Brian Willoughby, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:53:07.520
My guest today was Dr. Brian Willoughby. He's a social scientist at Brigham Young University.
00:53:11.860
Check out our show notes at aom.is slash porn. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this
00:53:23.920
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:53:27.860
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