The Art of Manliness - February 25, 2025


The Science of Porn： Myths, Facts, and Overlooked Issues

Topics
problematic porn use age of exposure to porn porn use patterns throughout life alcohol analogy for porn porn disclosure and boundaries AI companions and porn dynamics
Hosted by
Brett McKay
Mentioned
Brian Willoughby Potter Stewart
The Power of the Notebook — The History and Practice of Thinking on Paper Enter the Matrix — The Science of Slowing Down Time

Episode Stats


Length

54 minutes

Words per minute

199.84

Word count

10,806

Sentence count

577

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

32

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:11.620 Pornography is more prevalent and accessible than ever before, yet its effects on relationships,
00:00:16.420 mental health, and human development aren't popularly well understood.
00:00:19.960 Discussions on the topic are often engaged in from an emotional or religious point of view.
00:00:24.220 Less typical is a discussion of pornography from an empirical frame.
00:00:27.320 My guest today, Dr. Brian Willoughby, a social scientist who has spent the past 15 years
00:00:32.260 studying porn's impacts, will impact what the research actually says about how it affects
00:00:36.100 personal well-being, relationship satisfaction, and sexual expectations.
00:00:40.440 We discuss the latest data on porn use across different demographics, how porn impacts religious
00:00:44.980 versus non-religious populations differently, and how exposure affects kids.
00:00:49.020 Brian shares whether using porn causes erectile dysfunction and depression, what parents should
00:00:53.240 know about talking to their kids about porn, the main risk of porn that's typically under
00:00:56.940 discussed, and more.
00:00:58.640 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash porn.
00:01:14.740 All right, Brian Willoughby, welcome to the show.
00:01:17.520 Hey, it's great to be here.
00:01:18.280 So you are a social scientist who studies family life, and for the past, oh, almost, I think
00:01:24.200 it's 15 years now, you've been doing a lot of research about porn use and how it affects
00:01:29.800 relationships.
00:01:30.880 Before we get into your research, let's start with definitions.
00:01:34.840 In academic research, how do you define pornography?
00:01:39.120 Because there's that famous, with Justice Stewart, Potter Stewart quote about obscenity.
00:01:44.120 I know it when I see it.
00:01:45.660 So academically, how do you define pornography?
00:01:48.740 Yeah, it's interesting because that's actually a question that kind of got me into this research
00:01:53.380 in some ways.
00:01:54.040 I came from a background of studying healthy relationships and dating during young adulthood,
00:01:58.120 and the reason I started to turn my research into this area is because just so many young
00:02:03.880 adults were mentioning 15, 20 years ago, like, hey, this is an issue I'm trying to navigate.
00:02:09.180 I'm trying to figure out what it means for my life, what it means in my relationships.
00:02:13.140 And so I kind of came over to the pornography research from that area.
00:02:17.380 And one of the very first studies I published is I was looking at the research is 20 years
00:02:21.480 ago to answer your question is we weren't defining it for anyone.
00:02:24.680 We were just asking people, how often do you look at pornography?
00:02:27.700 You know, what kind of just kind of these basic questions where we weren't defining the
00:02:31.520 term.
00:02:31.860 And so I published a study that showed that when you just ask people, do you look at porn?
00:02:37.000 You have no idea what they're saying, because people have such varying definitions for one
00:02:41.000 person.
00:02:41.580 That's a hey, I was looking at the SI swimsuit issue, and I think that's porn for another
00:02:46.140 person. 0.98
00:02:46.460 It's like, well, unless it's like super explicit group sex, if it's just a couple having sex, 0.87
00:02:51.900 even explicit hardcore sex, I don't really consider that porn. 0.70
00:02:54.660 So it was all over the map.
00:02:55.840 And so today, the field has gotten a lot better, where we do tend to define now that we haven't
00:03:01.460 agreed completely on one clear definition, but probably the most common definition, at
00:03:05.960 least in the research that we use, is that pornography is a form of sexual media where the media,
00:03:12.100 so the video, the picture, whatever we're talking about, was produced and designed specifically
00:03:17.180 or centrally to create sexual arousal.
00:03:20.180 And that's typically to differentiate it from, you know, Game of Thrones or a movie that might
00:03:25.260 have some explicit sex scenes, but that wasn't the main reason to produce the show or the film
00:03:30.060 or the picture, you know, whatever it might be.
00:03:32.480 So that's usually the definition we'll give people when we do research to say, hey, this
00:03:36.120 is media designed specifically or centrally to create sexual arousal.
00:03:41.280 Well, let's talk about the research.
00:03:42.340 How prevalent is porn use amongst the general population in the United States?
00:03:47.620 Yeah, well, I mean, the simple answer is very prevalent.
00:03:51.280 Again, it's something that we kind of assume is happening.
00:03:53.840 And the research suggests that it is, and that it's likely been growing in popularity
00:03:59.080 in terms of frequency and how common it is.
00:04:01.340 We've got some good national data sets now that have looked at that question.
00:04:05.720 And obviously, each data set is going to have slightly different numbers.
00:04:08.480 But our best estimate is, I guess, the easiest way to answer that is more than half of all
00:04:13.700 people view pornography, men and women.
00:04:15.820 We still do see a little bit of a gender difference where men use porn more often than women.
00:04:20.080 Most of the estimates have about 70% to 80% of men viewing pornography, at least somewhat
00:04:26.420 frequently, meaning at least a couple times a year, about around 60% of women. 0.96
00:04:31.040 Those are kind of the averages if you look across the different samples.
00:04:33.740 So it's over half of both men and women with about a 10% to 20% difference between men and
00:04:39.160 women. 0.81
00:04:39.860 Okay.
00:04:39.900 You've also done research about how porn use differs amongst religious people.
00:04:44.580 What does the research say there?
00:04:46.560 Yeah, you get two really interesting things when it comes to religious people.
00:04:50.520 For men, if you look at just kind of overall use of porn, like I said, usually a year span
00:04:56.300 is a common one in research.
00:04:58.380 So if you look at the percent of religious men and non-religious men that have viewed porn
00:05:02.380 in the last year, the numbers are actually not really different.
00:05:05.540 There's not much difference between religious and non-religious men.
00:05:08.220 Where the difference comes is in the frequency within that year. 0.92
00:05:11.920 So religious men tend to use porn less frequently.
00:05:15.180 They're more likely to be in kind of a monthly pattern where they might use a couple times
00:05:19.020 a month or use for a month and then not use it for a couple months and then come back
00:05:23.380 to it.
00:05:23.840 And then that's typically due to, you know, moral beliefs or disapproval of porn where
00:05:28.440 they're trying to stop it or they don't want it to be a habit in their lives.
00:05:32.580 Non-religious men tend to be much more kind of a weekly pattern if they're using porn. 0.99
00:05:37.000 So it's a more kind of regular part of their sexual routine.
00:05:40.840 Women have much more of a difference when it comes to religious and non-religious women. 0.99
00:05:44.960 Non-religious women, like I said, typically have not as high frequently as men.
00:05:48.700 And we actually have, I think, less clear data about frequency patterns for women because
00:05:53.040 I think women are more varied in their patterns. 1.00
00:05:55.420 But religious women are the one group that tend to be much lower, like 20, 30% of religious 0.95
00:06:01.360 women report using porn.
00:06:03.700 And so it's the one group that looks like they tend to actively avoid it, which in religious
00:06:07.600 populations creates some interesting dating dynamics because then you often have men that
00:06:12.420 have some history and use of porn.
00:06:14.320 And then a lot of religious women that have very little exposure and little use of porn. 1.00
00:06:18.980 And so that creates some interesting dating dynamics around it.
00:06:22.060 Yeah.
00:06:22.080 Hopefully we can talk about that later on.
00:06:23.220 I thought you've done some interesting research on that.
00:06:25.300 Oftentimes when people talk about porn use, they talk about it as an addiction.
00:06:29.960 And I think that word addiction gets thrown around a lot, probably too easily.
00:06:34.320 How many people actually have a bona fide porn addiction?
00:06:38.940 Yeah.
00:06:39.100 This, I think, is a really important topic because like you said, is the addiction term gets thrown
00:06:42.740 around a lot and oftentimes misused in a lot of cases.
00:06:46.260 So we've come a long way, I think, in the last 10 years on the clinical research on pornography.
00:06:51.040 And there was, and is still to a certain extent, some debate about how addictive porn is and
00:06:57.540 how much potential there is to develop a full compulsive behavior around it.
00:07:02.100 But I think there's a growing consensus that like gambling and like other kind of behaviors
00:07:07.020 that have some reward attached to them, that they can be compulsive over time.
00:07:11.660 The World Health Organization a couple of years ago designated pornography as an addictive
00:07:15.740 potential behavior.
00:07:16.780 But having said that, the percent of the population that uses porn that would qualify clinically
00:07:23.240 for kind of true compulsive addictive behavior is relatively smaller.
00:07:27.640 Our best estimates are maybe somewhere between 7% to 15%, depending on the sample.
00:07:33.060 So it's a pretty small group that has really developed compulsive patterns.
00:07:37.480 Now there's a larger group next to that.
00:07:39.560 If you want to kind of think about this like a continuum, you've got, you know, maybe 10% of
00:07:43.780 your population that's truly addicted, another maybe, you know, 10 to 20% qualify for what
00:07:49.580 what's oftentimes called PPU or problematic pornography use, which basically means like you're not
00:07:55.160 fully dealing with a compulsive pattern of thinking and obsessive thinking.
00:08:00.520 It's not that full addictive behavior, but it's something that's causing distress in your life.
00:08:06.920 So maybe you've tried to stop a porn habit and haven't been able to.
00:08:10.320 Maybe it's caused some issues in your relationship.
00:08:12.360 It's caused personal distress in your life.
00:08:14.780 So there's another kind of 10 to 20% we think of people that qualify for problematic use because
00:08:21.380 of that distress.
00:08:22.540 And then you've got, you know, your other 60% of people that are somewhere on that continuum
00:08:26.840 of I've experimented with porn and never really gotten into it to I've used porn on a regular
00:08:32.180 basis, but it's never really become compulsive.
00:08:34.360 It's never really become a problem.
00:08:35.940 It's something that, you know, I've been able to stop at different points in my life and
00:08:39.740 not really had any distress around.
00:08:41.400 So if you want to kind of put it in terms of what percent of the population has some level
00:08:45.720 of distress in a bad habit slash compulsivity estimates are somewhere between maybe 30,
00:08:52.820 35%, somewhere in that range.
00:08:54.680 Okay.
00:08:55.120 And I thought that was interesting distinction between problematic porn use and addiction.
00:08:58.880 Something I've noticed, and I think you've written about this too, is that people who are
00:09:02.980 religious and they have, you know, moral qualms about pornography, they'll often label their
00:09:09.120 porn use as an addiction, even though it might be more of a problematic porn use.
00:09:13.940 It's not like they're using porn like multiple times a day.
00:09:16.800 It's just like, well, I use it once a month.
00:09:19.040 I don't want to.
00:09:20.320 And I'm going to call this an addiction because I feel like I can't help myself.
00:09:24.080 Yeah.
00:09:24.460 Yeah.
00:09:24.820 And a lot of the research on problematic porn use has been centered not on religious people
00:09:29.120 in general, but trying to capture that group that does have distress.
00:09:33.020 It's causing some mental health issues.
00:09:34.940 It's causing relationship issues.
00:09:36.540 It's distracting and acknowledging that there can be a need for clinical resources for that
00:09:42.860 people, but wanting to distinguish it from someone, like you said, that's truly dealing
00:09:46.760 with a addictive behavioral pattern where this is every day, maybe hours a day.
00:09:51.300 I'm not sleeping.
00:09:52.640 I'm having trouble going to work or school.
00:09:54.840 I can't hold a real relationship because of this, like those are two very different
00:09:59.360 things.
00:09:59.840 We want to make sure clinically in terms of resources and therapy that we distinguish
00:10:04.120 those.
00:10:04.460 But like you said, we do know that religious men in particular oftentimes will report what's
00:10:10.000 called perceived addiction, which is they label themselves as addicts, even though they
00:10:13.940 aren't.
00:10:14.760 And there's been some good research that shows that that self labeling, that perceived addiction
00:10:18.700 sometimes can be more harmful than the porn use itself, that both those things are at play.
00:10:24.140 But when I label myself a certain way and I get kind of a defeatist attitude about things
00:10:29.260 because I'm an addict, there's nothing I can do, that actually causes depression and
00:10:33.620 causes some mental health issues above and beyond what the porn is doing.
00:10:37.400 Yeah.
00:10:37.500 And I think I've seen research too.
00:10:38.820 It makes breaking or stopping the habit harder.
00:10:42.420 Yeah.
00:10:42.960 What's the percentage of the population that have like never seen porn?
00:10:46.720 A very small dwindling population.
00:10:50.000 When we look at teenage adolescent use and especially exposure rates, like not just, you
00:10:55.260 know, have you ever regularly used porn, but have you ever seen porn, intentional or
00:10:58.320 unintentional?
00:10:59.060 That exposure right now is just about 100%.
00:11:01.960 It's not 100%.
00:11:03.320 We do have, you know, some teenagers that manage to navigate their adolescent years and
00:11:08.040 completely avoid pornography.
00:11:09.340 But that number is dwindling.
00:11:10.960 And I would guess, you know, realistically, maybe you've got 5% of your population by 18,
00:11:16.560 19 that's never seen porn.
00:11:18.560 Now, again, that's intentional or unintentional.
00:11:21.380 Obviously, the number of people that have never intentionally sought out porn, you know,
00:11:24.980 other than, hey, I clicked on this link and it took me here.
00:11:27.480 My friend sent me this or I saw this on social media.
00:11:30.160 But that's the extent of my porn use.
00:11:32.880 Then you might be able to get up.
00:11:33.900 I did one study that showed that maybe 10 to 20% roughly of the population by 18, 19 has
00:11:40.000 kind of avoided intentional porn use.
00:11:43.380 But it is certainly the minority.
00:11:45.220 It's just it's so prevalent on social media.
00:11:47.880 A lot of the pornography companies have gotten very good at hiding their links into other ads
00:11:52.460 and other things you might click on.
00:11:54.200 I think most people have had that experience where, you know, you're on the Internet, you're
00:11:57.620 on social media.
00:11:58.580 Yeah.
00:11:59.160 In fact, my teenage son, who's 17, just referenced this to us.
00:12:03.460 He was clinking on LED lights advertisement on social media and took him to a porn site.
00:12:09.040 So I think it's just a very common experience to get exposed to porn, even if you didn't
00:12:14.100 intentionally mean to seek it out.
00:12:16.120 And something you've written about is that because it's so prevalent, you kind of make
00:12:20.680 the case that we need to normalize porn use.
00:12:23.040 What do you mean by that?
00:12:23.820 Because I think when people hear, oh, normalize porn use, it means it's good.
00:12:27.020 What do you mean by normalizing porn use?
00:12:29.400 Yeah, I think it's important to distinguish, like you said, is normalizing something doesn't
00:12:33.440 mean to say that it's healthy.
00:12:34.640 We have a lot of research that I'm sure we might talk about, about the harms and the
00:12:39.260 risks of using pornography at really any age, any stage of life.
00:12:43.400 But the normalization is just acknowledging that it is normal for most teenagers, for most
00:12:49.300 young adults to have exposure for pornography.
00:12:51.200 Like I said earlier, we know the majority of our young adults and teenagers, especially as
00:12:57.840 they get up to 17, 18, 19, have not just seen porn, but are actively using it on a regular
00:13:03.560 basis and masturbating to it. 0.71
00:13:05.900 And so if this is a normal behavior, meaning most people are doing it, then it's, I think, 0.87
00:13:11.320 even more important for parents, for young adults, for really anyone to educate themselves
00:13:17.640 about the potential risks of pornography and educate themselves about what this is, the
00:13:23.380 effect it could have on your life, you know, how to navigate it individually and with couples,
00:13:27.960 because there's a whole now new area that's opened up in the last 10 to 15 years where
00:13:32.300 because most men and women have some history with pornography is when we date each other
00:13:36.920 and particularly when we form long-term relationships, there's this whole new thing now that's opened
00:13:41.420 up in relationships where we have to talk and navigate pornography together.
00:13:44.720 There was a study that I did two years ago where one of the big findings we found in
00:13:49.160 the national sample in the United States was that the majority now, particularly of dating
00:13:53.840 couples, are using pornography together, which was kind of a new finding.
00:13:57.860 We knew it was happening, but we didn't know that we had hit the majority point for couples
00:14:01.280 now too.
00:14:01.780 So it's not just most people use porn on their own, most couples now use porn together as well.
00:14:06.760 So it's just, it's something that has to be taught, it has to be talked about, and we
00:14:11.740 need just more resources.
00:14:13.040 Yeah.
00:14:13.420 You can't pretend like it's not happening, basically.
00:14:15.760 Let's talk about age.
00:14:17.120 You've kind of been mentioning this.
00:14:18.400 Typically people are getting exposed to porn at a younger and younger age.
00:14:23.300 What's the average age when people are first exposed to pornography?
00:14:28.180 Yeah.
00:14:28.600 So average age right now in the United States is 10 to 13, which is a lot younger than a
00:14:32.980 lot of people realize, but it very closely follows when most kids get their first smartphones.
00:14:38.400 You know, that's right around the age, kind of those preteen years where parents are giving
00:14:42.760 kids phones for the first time, or at least they're getting regular access to the internet.
00:14:47.180 And as we talked about, you're on the internet long enough, you're on social media long enough,
00:14:51.140 it's pretty common then to come across some sort of explicit sexual material.
00:14:55.620 And so that's, again, that's the average.
00:14:57.800 You do get people that don't come across porn, don't seek it out till later in adolescence.
00:15:01.660 You get a smaller group that's exposed even earlier to that.
00:15:05.660 But right now, 10 to 13 is pretty common.
00:15:08.440 That's kind of the norm right now in the United States, which is one of the reasons why I typically
00:15:13.120 really try to urge parents to be aware of this, because most parents aren't really thinking
00:15:17.560 about the sex talk, aren't thinking about porn, aren't thinking about these things till their
00:15:21.960 kids really hit adolescence, you know, 13 plus.
00:15:24.940 But by that time, a lot of kids have already been exposed to it.
00:15:27.320 So you've done research on how the age of exposure influences porn use later in life.
00:15:33.040 Can you walk us through that?
00:15:34.980 Yeah, so this is, when we talk about the risks of porn, this is one of the ones that I think
00:15:40.100 is really most critically culturally to talk about, because we know the risk to kids is
00:15:45.500 a lot higher to adults.
00:15:46.700 You know, there's a whole conversation you could be having about consenting adults and free
00:15:50.760 speech and letting people, you know, access the pornography that they want as an adult.
00:15:55.040 But when we talk about kids, a lot of the risks in the research become much more straightforward,
00:16:00.260 much more consistent, meaning that the risks that kids have from regular viewing of pornography
00:16:06.000 are fairly straightforward in terms of what they do.
00:16:09.500 And earlier exposure tends to elevate a lot of those risks.
00:16:13.460 So for example, one of the most consistent risks we see is elevated risky sexual behavior,
00:16:17.820 which makes sense.
00:16:18.540 If you watch and view a lot of porn, particularly as a preteen, as an early adolescence, you're at
00:16:23.120 higher risk for sexual risk taking.
00:16:25.680 So that, you know, sex with multiple partners, unprotected sex, things like that.
00:16:30.380 In the earlier work, a child's exposed, we tend to see elevated risk for that.
00:16:34.920 The other big one, circling back to what we were talking about before, is an elevated
00:16:38.600 risk later in life of compulsive and addictive use.
00:16:41.940 Just, you know, if you're exposed earlier, which also makes sense.
00:16:45.220 If you're exposed earlier, you're more likely to be hiding it.
00:16:47.400 You're more likely to be using it with, you know, less impulse control, underdeveloped
00:16:51.200 brain, all that stuff.
00:16:53.280 There's a study that my grad student and I did also a couple years ago, one of the biggest
00:16:57.440 risks of early exposure was an increased frequency of habitual use later in life.
00:17:03.340 And so those are kind of the two main risks of earlier exposure is increased risk of developing
00:17:09.120 that addictive pattern and an increased risk for risky sexual behavior later in adolescence.
00:17:13.360 Okay, so that's important for parents to start talking to their kids as young as 10, even
00:17:17.960 to start having that conversation.
00:17:19.520 And I thought it was interesting, the research you saw about how porn use changes throughout
00:17:24.220 the lifetime.
00:17:25.540 I think what you've seen is like, it usually spikes around teenage years, young adulthood.
00:17:30.140 And then for a lot of, I'm talking about men, I'm sure it applies to women as well.
00:17:34.520 When you get into your 30s and your 40s, it kind of tapers off for a lot of people or
00:17:38.080 they just stop it.
00:17:39.820 Yeah, there's a study that I did looking at this specifically.
00:17:42.660 And we saw three main groups as we kind of tracked it through adolescence and young adulthood.
00:17:47.420 So like you said, we did see this group that had a very typical risk-taking pattern.
00:17:52.880 So it's a similar pattern we see with binge drinking, with sexual behavior, where it kind
00:17:56.560 of builds through teenage years, kind of peaks around 18, 19, 20, 21.
00:18:02.680 And then it starts to come down after that.
00:18:04.620 And for a large group of people that use porn, that's the typical pattern.
00:18:09.020 It's that kind of typical, you know, experimentation, I guess, pattern.
00:18:13.700 We did see another group in that same study, though, that had this escalating pattern that
00:18:18.020 never really went away.
00:18:18.880 And we think that was probably capturing kind of this problematic compulsive group where
00:18:23.020 it also built and kind of increased during adolescence, young adulthood.
00:18:26.660 But it never really came down.
00:18:28.500 It was something that the people were still dealing with or using at a high level throughout
00:18:32.920 their 20s and 30s.
00:18:33.960 And then we saw a third group, which is kind of what we call the abstaining group, but we
00:18:37.620 acknowledge that most people in the abstaining group still reported seeing porn infrequently
00:18:42.860 throughout their adolescent to young adult years.
00:18:44.740 It just never became a regular pattern.
00:18:47.200 And that was actually the biggest group.
00:18:49.020 It was under 50%, about 40% in the study.
00:18:52.060 And then the other 60% were kind of split between those two other groups.
00:18:56.380 I think it's interesting because you see similar trends with other vices or other potentially
00:19:02.080 addictive behaviors, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs.
00:19:06.040 And people don't talk about this, but oftentimes what the research has found is people just
00:19:10.340 grow out or they age out of their addictions.
00:19:12.920 They might have an addiction to alcohol or cigarettes in their 20s.
00:19:16.560 And by the time they're 40, it wasn't like they tried to.
00:19:20.240 It was just they stopped for some reason.
00:19:22.100 And I remember reading a research article.
00:19:24.360 I can hopefully find it and link to it in the show notes.
00:19:26.420 But a huge amount of people just age out of problematic vice behavior.
00:19:29.860 Yeah, yeah.
00:19:31.560 In fact, you know, sometimes I hear people throw around drug analogies with porn.
00:19:36.080 And oftentimes I hear, you know, porn is like heroin. 0.88
00:19:39.040 Porn is like cocaine. 0.97
00:19:40.120 And those are really poor analogies.
00:19:42.780 But for me, the one I always tend to use is alcohol.
00:19:45.960 Alcohol is a really good comparison point for a lot of the research on porn.
00:19:49.820 Because like you said, if you look at alcohol, you see this wide spectrum of how people engage
00:19:55.440 in alcohol.
00:19:55.920 And technically, every time you drink alcohol, you know, you're hurting your body a little
00:20:00.460 bit, you know, your liver is processing it and things like that, at least most, you know,
00:20:04.800 hard liquors and stuff.
00:20:05.980 But you get a segment of people that that are able to utilize and use alcohol in ways that
00:20:12.000 doesn't really have a huge negative effect on their life and use it responsibly and all
00:20:15.780 those things.
00:20:16.220 And then you have a group, like you said, that kind of, you know, goes through their
00:20:19.240 typical young adult years, and it spikes, and they go through college, and they're binge
00:20:24.080 drinking and passing out.
00:20:25.520 And, you know, it's certainly having a lot of risk during that time in their life, but
00:20:29.440 they kind of age out of it.
00:20:30.500 And they come down and some people go through that and say, you know what, I think I'm done
00:20:33.760 with alcohol in my life.
00:20:34.760 Some people say, no, I'm gonna at least bring it down and be more responsible with it.
00:20:38.400 And then you've got that group that, you know, struggles with alcohol, and it develops
00:20:42.680 into an addictive compulsive pattern, and then they have to deal with that for the rest
00:20:46.320 of their life.
00:20:47.280 I mean, it's not most people that drink alcohol.
00:20:49.680 It's a small percent of people that drink alcohol.
00:20:52.000 But I think pornography tends to follow that where there's these kind of distinct groups
00:20:56.000 that, you know, technically, I think all have risk, but the risk profile is very different.
00:21:00.500 Yeah, I bet pornography is similar to sports gambling or online gambling.
00:21:05.440 Same sort of thing.
00:21:06.140 I bet it's like a lot of young people who are primarily doing the online gambling and then
00:21:11.180 fewer older people.
00:21:13.200 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:21:14.480 And the only caveat sometimes I note to all these patterns we're talking about is there
00:21:19.040 have been some in my field, including myself, that have at least noted that all the stuff
00:21:24.800 we're talking about has been based on data over the last 10 to 15 years in the past.
00:21:30.020 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?
00:21:39.500 As they grew up, the smartphone was there when they were born.
00:21:42.680 And now they spent their whole life with the version of the internet that we have now.
00:21:47.340 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.
00:21:56.240 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
00:22:07.140 is now.
00:22:07.900 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?
00:22:14.520 In other words, is that group that has typically had a decrease into adulthood, is that group
00:22:19.120 going to get smaller in the current generation?
00:22:21.540 It's been a question that's been posed, but we don't have the data yet.
00:22:24.760 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:22:27.800 And now back to the show.
00:22:29.740 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
00:22:40.240 will give you ED, erectile dysfunction. 0.99
00:22:43.820 It'll make you depressed or it'll turn you into a sexual deviant.
00:22:47.260 What does the research say about those things? 0.86
00:22:48.980 Does porn use cause depression?
00:22:50.580 Does it cause erectile dysfunction?
00:22:52.260 You've seen a lot of that reporting in the popular press.
00:22:55.280 And what's porn's connection with sexual violence and sexual crimes?
00:22:59.240 Yeah.
00:22:59.600 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
00:23:09.860 of simplify and say, hey, we've got that compulsive group and that problematic use.
00:23:13.580 If we kind of separate them out into people that are having clinical issues with pornography
00:23:17.600 and then everyone else, the research suggests the risks and the effects of porn are fairly
00:23:23.400 different in those two groups.
00:23:24.540 So if we go over and talk about the people that are struggling with an addiction, struggling
00:23:28.780 with problematic use, that's typically where we see the mental health pieces.
00:23:33.160 Now, I guess I want to step back for a second and address something you said, which is the
00:23:36.820 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.
00:23:48.540 It doesn't decrease it.
00:23:50.160 And actually that increased arousal can cause issues for people, but we don't see a lot
00:23:53.780 of compelling evidence.
00:23:55.060 We do see links to the mental health stuff.
00:23:57.020 So this is depression, loneliness, lower self-worth and lower body image.
00:24:01.880 Those kinds of things are in the research.
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
00:24:22.460 outcome emerge.
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.
00:24:32.720 It's not causing distress in my life.
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
00:24:48.120 to decrease.
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?
00:24:58.660 What are your expectations?
00:25:00.120 How do you behave based on those expectations?
00:25:02.480 And what we see is that people that use porn tend to carry with them unhealthy scripts and
00:25:08.140 expectations into their real relationships.
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
00:25:32.600 view of sexual intimacy.
00:25:34.300 You know, people don't look like that.
00:25:35.560 They don't act like that.
00:25:36.900 They're engaging in a lot of sexual behavior that a lot of people in their real relationships
00:25:40.340 don't even enjoy.
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
00:26:17.560 behaviors towards women.
00:26:19.700 And again, that just ties back to the content.
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. 0.96
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
00:26:59.900 like it, right? 0.99
00:27:00.780 You know, you're a young guy and you watch, oh, you know, anal sex is normal. 1.00
00:27:04.120 And you try that and like your girlfriend or wife's like, I don't like that. 1.00
00:27:07.960 Or choking.
00:27:08.840 That's a violent thing.
00:27:10.020 And there was a study that was done, I think it said that two thirds of female college students 0.83
00:27:16.880 have been choked by their partner during sex.
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
00:27:34.440 doing it.
00:27:35.020 But yeah, they feel like they're supposed to because that's what you do when you have 0.98
00:27:38.920 sex because, well, that's what I saw in porn. 0.98
00:27:42.680 Yeah. 0.99
00:27:43.260 Yeah.
00:27:43.500 It sets up that expectation.
00:27:44.840 We did a survey two years ago where one of the questions we were asking couples, these
00:27:49.080 were largely young adult and adult couples.
00:27:51.600 And we asked them, you know, when you're having sex with your partner, are you thinking about 0.95
00:27:55.900 porn? 0.99
00:27:56.280 Are you worried about porn?
00:27:57.380 And what clearly came out is there was a significant group of people that were in a committed relationship
00:28:03.140 that said, yeah, I'm worried.
00:28:04.760 Like when we're having sex, I'm worried that my partner's thinking about porn. 0.60
00:28:07.680 I'm worried.
00:28:08.560 I feel pressure that they want me to perform a certain way or engage in behavior that they've
00:28:13.640 seen in porn.
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.
00:28:22.440 And it's this.
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.
00:28:31.840 It's just there.
00:28:32.680 Even if you're not talking about it, both partners kind of know that it's there.
00:28:36.240 It's subtle.
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
00:28:41.020 hinting at.
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
00:29:20.400 the research starts to come in.
00:29:22.260 So that's another thing you got to talk about with your kids. 0.54
00:29:24.540 Like porn is not real sex.
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.
00:29:35.860 It's the same sort of thing. 0.76
00:29:36.920 Like no one really has sex the way you see in porn. 0.93
00:29:40.680 Yeah. 0.98
00:29:41.100 Yeah.
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
00:29:48.960 the porn talk.
00:29:49.800 This is about the sex talk. 0.86
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.
00:30:27.100 Now let's talk about porn in that context.
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
00:30:39.580 and commitment.
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
00:30:49.820 intimacy as an adult. 0.97
00:30:50.940 So, so that that way the message they're getting, isn't just porn is bad because sex is bad. 0.95
00:30:56.660 And so really what I'm learning is that if I have any sexual desire or sexual arousal, 0.94
00:31:01.520 I probably shouldn't talk to my parents because everything about that is bad.
00:31:04.500 Okay.
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,
00:31:42.120 do two additional things in religious couples.
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 1.00
00:31:58.100 couple.
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 0.98
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
00:33:14.640 effect of all the other outcomes that we see.
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.
00:33:30.980 Yeah, yeah.
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
00:33:45.100 fidelity is in a marriage.
00:33:46.660 And in many religious couples, particularly a lot of religious women do perceive pornography 0.98
00:33:51.780 as, hey, you're looking at another woman, you're masturbating to another woman. 0.95
00:33:55.960 I view that as infidelity.
00:33:57.760 And then oftentimes it has the same effect psychologically and in the relationship as you actually cheated
00:34:03.840 on me.
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
00:34:20.320 very real.
00:34:21.720 And so oftentimes you have to work that couple through that as if it was infidelity because
00:34:26.460 it feels that way to one partner.
00:34:29.220 So is there any advice that you have?
00:34:31.580 I know you're looking at this from a descriptive point of view, you're trying to describe the
00:34:35.020 situation, but let's say someone's dating.
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.
00:34:49.000 How do you navigate that?
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
00:35:04.120 very openly.
00:35:05.200 And that's obviously an issue.
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
00:35:18.300 big things to talk about.
00:35:19.600 One is disclosure, which just means that you should be talking about your history and your
00:35:24.220 use of porn.
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
00:35:33.620 hear it.
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 0.91
00:35:50.780 a committed relationship.
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
00:36:05.140 hiding it.
00:36:05.940 Then the other thing that I think is really important to talk about is boundaries.
00:36:09.760 What are the boundaries in our relationship?
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
00:36:41.860 alone, or I'm not comfortable with this.
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
00:37:00.200 the relationship are moving forward.
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 1.00
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
00:37:55.160 guys. And most of them probably seen porn. 0.99
00:37:59.120 Yeah. I, well, first off, I do think with your daughters is still have the porn conversation 0.98
00:38:04.220 because I will say that being a religious woman who has a regular pattern of using pornography 0.96
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, 0.99
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 0.99
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. 0.97
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 0.98
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.
00:53:06.040 Thank you.
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
00:53:16.040 topic.
00:53:23.920 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
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00:53:49.180 it's Brett McKay. Remind our time to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.
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