One of the effects of overuse of pornography is that it can have a serious negative effect on relationships. A case study was conducted on a couple struggling with pornography addiction, and they discussed the couple’s experience with structural family therapy and how it helped them overcome these issues. John and Mary, a married couple, explained that they were struggling with this. John was a compulsive pornography user and found himself feeling like he had to use it multiple times a day. It eventually got to the point where Mary felt like she was being cheated on. This was because John had been doing things that made it seem like he was having an affair, such as “coming home late, cheating, [and] lying” (Ford et al, 2012).
John was constantly acting “secretive” and “stashing pornography around the house” (Ford et al, 2012). The more pornography that his wife found, the more stress John felt he was under to keep it hidden from her. Pornography acted as a third party in John and Mary’s relationship and caused distress on both of them. With months of therapy, they were able to restructure their relationship without the presence of pornography. However, this still shows the significant effect that compulsory pornography use can have on relationships.
Pornography can cause people to have trouble with real life sexual interactions. Surveys show that people who watch pornography on a daily basis have “trained their brains to associate their sexualities with pixels on their computer screens, rather than sexual activity” (Rhodes, 2016). Because of these developed fantasies, people often have difficulty orgasming when pornography is not involved. Pornography can also negatively affect the mental health and psychological development of children. With easy access to the internet, children can find and watch pornography with the click of a button. This is an issue because many children are using this as their primary source of sex education.
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Research shows that this is causing them to have a very skewed and unrealistic picture of what sex is actually like. Because a lot of these types of media are labeled as “hardcore” and are extremely violent or aggressive, there is the potential for an increase of violence in the bedroom. A lot of pornography also portrays women as inferior to men, which shows viewers that men should be the more dominant ones in sexual relationships. These are the ideas we are putting into our children’s minds about sex, relationships, consent, gender roles, etc. Young children are also in critical developmental years, so watching pornogrpahy during this time can be particularly harmful.
At age seven, Brett Butcher watched hardcore pornography for the first time. He did not come in contact with it again until middle school. During these years, he had some trouble. But because he had already been exposed to pornography, he used it as a coping mechanism. To him, it was “something good in the midst of something bad” (Butcher, n.d.). From an early age, he had latched onto pornography as an outlet for stress and developed an unhealthy relationship with it. Research shows that all of these concerns raise a public health issue because they are disrupting childhood development and eventually communities on a larger scale.
Although pornography is responsible for many issues, they are only made worse by society. We have developed a stigma around pornography and do not talk about it because many people think it is immoral. Those who watch it are often looked down on. Research shows that the majority of people who think their use of pornography is a problem don’t actually have a problem. In reality, they feel that what they are doing is immoral. This is known as PPMI (Pornography Problems due to Moral Incongruence). People perceive their use of pornography as an issue simply because it conflicts with their beliefs. A study shows that searches with keywords “pornography” had the words “problem” or “addiction” or “moral” as well (Grubbs et al, 2018).
Pornography isn’t usually the problem; instead it is our moral and religious views and our internal belief that we are doing something that isn’t right. Research shows that men who used pornography consistently over a six year period (and didn’t think it was morally wrong) did not suffer any psychological distress. However, those who viewed pornography and felt that what they were doing was immoral, were “more likely to experience increases in depression…than other users of pornogrpahy who did not experience such incongruence.” Religion makes up a huge part of one’s moral beliefs, so it plays a large role when thinking about pornography.
Therefore, studies regarding religious views produced nearly parallel results, showing that “religious individuals who use pornography (implying moral incongruence) often experience greater levels of distress such as lower levels of subjective happiness, diminished quality or well-being in family relationships, and lower levels of sexual satisfaction” (Grubbs et al, 2018). There is evidence of a connection between one’s use of pornography and “perceived problems” (Grubbs et al, 2018).
There is no doubt that pornography is responsible for many issues in our society. It can negatively affect relationships, the development of children, and create unrealistic expectations for real life sexual interactions. However, research shows that “moral incongruence may represent a threat to well-being” (Grubbs et al, 2018). While many people have unhealthy relationships with pornography, they do not realize that it is because their behaviors does not align with their moral beliefs.
