What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research? (Focus on Global Gender and Sexuality)

We do not have data about whether people who consume pornography have better levels of porn literacy.

Historians Reay, Attwood and Gooder, describe sex addiction as ‘a response to cultural anxiety’ (Reay et al., 2015, p. np), while Ley, Prause and Finn (as clinical psychologists and neuroscientists) reject the concept of pornography addiction (Ley et al., 2014, p. 96). The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Ment

The literature does not provide data about whether people who use pornography are likely to have more information about how to have (good) sex than people not using pornography. We know that people say they use pornography to learn about sex, but we do not know how formal sex education, parents, friends and sexualised entertainment compare as sourc

We do not have data about whether people who consume pornography have more or less pleasurable sex lives.

However, it is not clear that behaviours that are currently described as sex addiction (or pornography addiction) are actual health issues. Humanities researchers insist that these are moral issues; and some data from the social sciences support this contention.

The fact that many people feel bad about their pornography use, and that they may self-identify as ‘porn addicts’, demands attention and explanation. But the model of porn addiction currently offered does not present a model of healthy use against which perceived addiction can be judged.

Much of the research on pornography has been normative; it has assumed that the only healthy form of sexuality is vanilla sex (that is, not kinky) between monogamous couple-based partners for reasons beyond simply pleasure.

There is no agreement in the literature as to whether consumption of pornography is correlated with better or worse understandings or practices of sexual consent,

Authenticity is a key aspect of DIY/amateur porn being read as intimate and representing ordinary people. On this basis, it can be argued that ‘perceived realism’ – to re-signify this term – is necessary to incite particular kinds of affect and erotic pleasure for young people.