Porn on the Brain Documentary

A documentary called Porn on the Brain aired in the UK, but you can watch it on YouTube for a limited time. I recommend it, but there are some intense images and subject matter, so keep that in mind before watching. Like all documentaries, there is an agenda. However, I think this documentary’s agenda is more than reasonable. To me it seems that they have highlighted what a lot of folks know to be true: Internet pornography is not the same as the pornography from "back in the day" and use of it in adolescence is pervasive. Yet, no one is talking about it. 

Topics such as how pornography has changed since the advent of the internet, how internet pornography is addictive, how adolescents are affected by pornography differently than adults (due to lack of a pre-frontal cortex), and how sexuality education can include pornography education are all covered. What’s great, is that it is all put together and narrated by the former editor of Loaded magazine, Martin Daubney, who was never anti-porn, and who used to actually like porn. His perspective is very similar to mine, although arrived at very differently. He describes growing up with pornography, but ultimately realizes that pornography today is vastly different than it was in the 80s and 90s, and therefore we need a vastly different approach to addressing it. What I argue in my lectures, is that it is no longer adequate to only analyze pornography from a limited pro vs. anti moralistic perspective. Pornography needs to be discussed from a neurological, physiological and behavioral perspective.  I am a social and developmental scientist, so I typically rely on statistics and peer reviewed research to trust information in order to understand something. Yet, there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made for us to fully understand sexuality and pornography use in adolescence, or even adulthood, through the scientific study of it for two reasons:

1. There are ethical considerations to be made when you conduct research on sensitive topics. In order to conduct a scientific study, one needs to get approval from their IRB, which is a bureau that approves a study as ethical before data collection can begin. Thus, topics such as violent pornography use, masturbation, exposure to incest, exposure to group sex, experienced fantasies, etc. are often off limits in the U.S. because reporting on these topics can potentially be traumatizing to participants. However, some European countries have produced informative studies, most likely due to their more realistic and integrated views of sexuality. 
 
2. If we do get IRB approval to ask participants about their experiences with pornography in the U.S., we are limited in what we know, by what we measure. For example, this is a popular item used in a multiple-item scale to measure pornography use:

 “How often do you view pornography?”  CIRCLE ONE
1-Never   2-Rarely   3-Sometimes  4-Often  5-Always 

Do you think that question paints a real picture of someone’s pornography use? Do you think that questions changes what we know about pornography use? Yeah, me neither. Therefore, because we have a limited understanding of internet pornography use, simply asking people what their experience is contributes to our ability to understand what we need to measure in order to analyze those data statistically. This is why I think the work featured in this documentary as well as studies conducted in Europe, have done what social and developmental scientists in the U.S. haven’t yet. They simply asks adolescents how they experience pornography. 
 
Although the documentary does interview addiction experts and features a groundbreaking study on pornography addiction that used fMRI measurement, there is quite a bit of research on the topic of pornography that this documentary doesn’t reference.  They say that there is only speculation on the affects from pornography use so far, but no real evidence. This really isn’t true. I would normally overlook such a thing, but I'm endorsing this documentary, so I want to be clear: Although there is still a lot of work to be done, there has been research on the affects of pornography use for decades and internet pornography more recently. In the documentary, a young man is featured who is preoccupied with sex, who is unsatisfied with the relationships he currently has with women, and whose pornography use is negatively affecting other aspects of his life. This is only one case, yet studies with larger samples have found similar findings.

For example, adolescents who use pornography consistently are less satisfied with their sex life in emerging adulthood (1,2), pornography use in early adolescence is longitudinally associated with an increased sexual preoccupancy a year later (3), and young men who are dependent on pornography have similarly destructive life patterns as substance abusers (4, 5). Further, there is some evidence that pornography addiction is successfully treated with the drug naltrexone (6), which is a drug used to treat substance use dependency. Finally, a study of Greek adolescents found that infrequent and frequent internet pornography use is associated with social maladjustment such as conduct problems and antisocial tendencies (7). Despite the documentary’s flaw of not recognizing at least some of the hundreds of studies that have been conducted, I think the message of this film is clear: We need to draw even more attention to the scientific study and evidence based education of internet pornography use. 
 
Given the research that has been done and the reality this documentary highlights, we need pornography education in addition to sexuality education, and we need it yesterday! It is clear that our cyber-reality is having a profound effect on how we form relationships, interact with people and live our lives.  Every person deserves to know how they can live, parent, teach and grow in such a way to insure that they are contributing to the positive development of romantic relationships and sexuality in themselves and the individuals around them. I think this documentary represents a shift in perspective that I have been arguing for the past five years. The old perspective regarding pornography from the 1950s-1990s mostly revolved around these questions: “Should we allow pornography to be produced, sold and consumed by adults?” or “How does pornography use affect someone’s perception of women?” The new perspective should evolve (and maybe has evolved) to include: “What are we going to do about our kids having unlimited access to rape, incest, sexual abuse and sexual humiliation on the internet?" And, “what kind of impact will this brand new cyber-reality have on their brains and consequently, their lives?” 
 
(1)  Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2009). Adolescents’ exposure to sexually explicit internet material and sexual satisfaction: A longitudinal study. Human Communication Research, 35(2), 171-194.
(2)  Štulhofer, A., Buško, V., & Landripet, I. (2010). Pornography, sexual socialization, and satisfaction among young men. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(1), 168-178.
(3)  Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2008). Adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit internet material and sexual preoccupancy: A three-wave panel study. Media Psychology, 11(2), 207-234.
(4)  Cavaglion, G. (2009). Cyber-porn dependence: Voices of distress in an Italian internet self-help community. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 7(2), 295-310.
(5)  Cavaglion, G. (2008). Narratives of self-help of cyberporn dependents. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 15(3), 195-216.
(6)  Bostwick, J. M., & Bucci, J. A. (2008). Internet sex addiction treated with naltrexone. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 83(2), 226-230.
(7)  Tsitsika, A., Critselis, E., Kormas, G., Konstantoulaki, E., Constantopoulos, A., & Kafetzis, D. (2009). Adolescent pornographic internet site use: A multivariate regression analysis of the predictive factors of use and psychosocial implications. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(5), 545-550.