The American Institute for Boys and Men, the think tank founded by social scientist Richard Reeves to promote the well-being of boys and men, has a new area of focus: pornography.
Researchers for the institute say there is little longitudinal research that has been done on the subject, and that much of the existing research has been funded by religious institutions and other groups that are opposed to pornography for moral reasons.
Meanwhile, the amount of research funding on pornography is dwarfed by what is dedicated for studies on gaming, artificial intelligence and social media, according to David Sasaki, director of the institute’s Boys and Men Online program.
It’s a curious juxtaposition: the proliferation of pornography in a culture that doesn’t want to talk about it.
“It’s just a taboo topic that most of us would prefer not to think about or have to deal with,” Sasaki said. “That’s true for parents who feel uncomfortable about their kids at an ever younger age, growing up with pornography as just a normal part of their digital lives.” This discomfort is also found in professional circles, he added.
“Very few people want to be ‘the pornography professor’ or ‘the pornography funder’ at a foundation or at the NIH. It just doesn’t attract the attention that it deserves. But you look at the most trafficked websites in the world, and quite a few of them are pornography websites. It’s a core part of everyone’s online experience, especially for young people.”
While some online exposure is accidental, more than 80% of American men have been exposed to pornography over their lifetime, and the average age of exposure for boys is now 12, according to the institute’s new report, “The Landscape of Pornography Use by Men in the United States.“
The authors surveyed studies on pornography that have been conducted over the past two decades, concentrating on the past 10 years, and concluded that pornography use “is commonplace among boys and men, with the highest rates observed in adolescence and emerging adulthood.”
And yet, they say, there is little longitudinal research tracking porn use from adolescence to adulthood.
The idea that research on pornography is insufficient is challenged by anti-pornography scholar Gail Dines, who leads the nonprofit Culture Reframed and says the harms of pornography to both men and women are well-established.
At least 16 states have passed legislation declaring pornography a public health crisis, noting the detrimental effects of explicit material. Utah was the first to take that step in 2016 calling for additional education, prevention, research and policy changes. And that was before the tremendous rise in video content and AI.
There is no argument on this point: The pornography landscape is rapidly changing. Dines, author of the book “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality,” said that any research done on pornography prior to 2015 is not going to tell a true story.
“Cellphones and COVID changed the entire landscape of the porn industry,” she said.
New findings about pornography
In a recent webinar, Bailey Way, a co-author of the AIBM report, said that 70% of adolescents report having been exposed to pornography.
“As described in scientific literature, unintentional exposure occurs by accident, design of the pornography industry, or through other means (e.g., peers, predators),” the report says.
Citing several studies, the authors wrote, “Interviews with 1,500 youths (aged 8–19 years old) and 900 parents indicated many young people unintentionally searched the internet and were presented with pornography. ... Relatedly, according to a review article exploring the effects of pornography viewing on young people, the pornography industry intentionally creates ways for ‘people who are not searching for pornography to be exposed to it.’“
They went on to write, “Notably, 41% reported viewing pornography during the school day and 31% reported viewing pornography while physically attending school. Of those who viewed pornography during the school day, 44% reported viewing pornography on school-owned devices.”
In commentary on the American Institute for Boys and Men website, Sasaki wrote, “By the time (the average American boy) graduates high school, he will have spent years consuming content that bears little resemblance to what researchers have studied over the past 20 years, or what most parents imagine.”
That’s because pornographic content has undergone dramatic change over the past half century, from X-rated content that was clearly defined as pornographic a half-century ago, to today’s porn websites and platforms where content producers interact with their fans, to the latest offering, AI porn.
“The pornography research field has not kept up with these developments. Nor have parents, educators, policymakers, or funders,” Sasaki wrote. “Our collective avoidance of a fact-based, honest conversation about porn means that we are failing young people, who are navigating unprecedented, ubiquitous access to sexually explicit media — without guidance, support, or honest conversation."
That’s largely in part because the industry is changing so fast, he told me.
“What most parents don’t have a grasp of is the pathways through which young people are exposed to pornography, starting with mainstream social media websites. ...
“Every young male that I speak with talks about the thirst traps — When they log onto YouTube, they see attractive young women, often in cheerleading suits, and it’s autoplayed, so they’ll see a woman in a short skirt jumping up and down. That’s really hard not to click on if you are 13 years old. And you’re surrounded by that.”
Harms of pornography
The AIBM report notes that various research has found that male pornography use “is related to decreased relationship quality and sexual satisfaction, increased sexist ideologies, greater levels of infidelity, and greater relationship instability,” among other outcomes.
Other studies the authors surveyed found that pornography viewers were more likely to have multiple sexual partners than those who did not view pornography, that pornography users “were more likely to have negative communication with their partner and were more likely to engage in infidelity.” Other research has explored the association between pornography use and male sexual aggression, the report noted.
As for societal harms, the report says, “Compared to individual- and relationship-level research, studies examining macro-level effects of pornography remain limited, in part due to methodological challenges associated with longitudinal and causal research, including limited representative samples. As a result, societal-level claims about pornography often extend beyond the available evidence.”
The authors also say there has been limited research exploring “the potential neutral to positive correlates of pornography.” In an interview, Sasaki said that in some contexts, pornography can offer affirmation for “people who have a body type or ethnicity that is not often depicted as sexy or attractive in the mainstream.”
But these “potential positives” need to be explored in an educational framework that also talks about all of the risks, he said.
An opposing viewpoint
Gail Dines, who was not involved in the AIBM report, takes issue with suggestions that pornography can be beneficial to anyone, and said the report was not balanced.
“The data does not match the conclusions,” she said, noting that the end of the report cites potential “positive correlates” of pornography, including sex education.
“If you want (boys) to learn intimacy, connection, how to develop trust, you don’t go to pornography; you learn the very opposite there.”
In addition, Dines said, most pornographic content is acting, adding, “You wouldn’t go to ‘Top Gun’ to learn to fly a plane.”
The idea that most research on pornography has been funded or done by groups with a religious or moral agenda might also be challenged by the studies done by neuroscientists and other medical experts, some of which are catalogued on the website Your Brain on Porn.
Sasaki also talked about the concern that some people have about young people learning about sexual intimacy through pornography. “Pornography is not a realistic portrayal of sex for most people, nor should it be,” he said.
The future of pornography research
Emily Rothman, a professor in Boston University’s School of Public Health who studies the effects of sexually explicit media, said during the panel discussion that she believes there has been adequate research on the harms of pornography, but not enough on what can be done to help people who have been harmed, and what factors seem to be protective of harm.
Exposure to pornography, Rothman said, “doesn’t affect all individuals in the same way. That’s something that often gets left out of the conversation ... the scaffolding that individuals have is really important.”
She also said her work on a recent study about what parents say to their young children when they learn they have seen pornography “convinced me we have a lot more work to do, because parents were saying everything like, ‘oh, they were just doing yoga,’ kind of making things up because they were like deer in the headlights and not sure what to say.
“This is a tremendously important issue, and all of the people around younger children need help, and need information, need support about what they’re supposed to do, what they’re supposed to say in the moment because I think it’s happening in communities everywhere,” Rothman said.
As for the report, it recommends more research on the efficacy and effect of age-verification programs, like the one that Utah pioneered, and how the impact of pornography changes over a user’s lifetime. “We are making consequential decisions — about regulation, education and clinical treatment — with a research base that is thinner than the scale of the issue deserves," the report said.