Photo credit: Dongyoung Won
In 2013, 70 percent of men and 30 percent of women viewed porn. In the same year, 30 percent of the data sent across the internet was from porn websites.
Those same websites garnered more monthly users than Amazon, Twitter and Netflix combined.
Whatever your views on pornography are, it is a fact that porn today is not only dominating our bandwidth but that it is in front of the eyes of a majority of Americans.
Pornography is an incredibly cancerous part of modern society. It is addictive, perpetuates rape culture and ruins relationships. Even ex-porn stars are against the toxic industry of porn.
“Nobody really wants to date a porn star, webcam girl, stripper or escort. As to the whole family thing and having kids, I’m like ‘who’s gonna have kids with an ex-porn star?’ And even when I’m 60 I’m still gonna have this porn on the Internet. It’s like having a virus or something that never goes away,” said ex-porn star Vanessa Belmond in a newsone interview.
The President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded in 1970 that “There [is] insufficient evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior.”
This conclusion has since given porn a free pass of sorts to grow into the industry it is today.
The problem with this decision from 1970 is that technology completely transformed what pornography is. Instead of just being in magazines that must be purchased in stores, it is now accessible to almost anybody in more varieties than ever before.
In recent years, many have begun to look at pornography with a more critical eye. Research on how brain chemistry is affected by porn and the sociological effects of it are becoming more mainstream.
Pornography is addictive. In the same way that different drugs can form addictions with repeated use, viewing porn can flood the brain with dopamine. This process repeated over time will lead to fewer dopamine receptors, leading to a need for more porn. This also makes users feel down when they take a break from viewing it.
Porn’s ability to alter brain chemistry should be scary to everyone, as it gives the content more power in society than we realize.
This power extends to porn perpetuating rape culture. Rape culture is a term that describes how sexual assault and sexual violence have been normalized in society. Pornography directly feeds into this by showing unnatural and unhealthy sexual relationships.
These unnatural sexual expectations cause viewers to see others as sexual objects as the mental line between what someone watches on the internet and in real life begin to merge.
With a generation being raised with porn as their primary example of sexual relationships, the rise of unhealthy partnerships is inevitable.
Porn imprisons those who use it for themselves and pushes them toward selfishness rather than toward their partner.
C.S. Lewis said it well when he asserted that porn “Sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. For the harem is always accessible and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival.”
While Lewis said this in 1956 about masturbation and to a man, it relates perfectly to pornography today and to females as well. Viewership of sex videos normalizes the perverse interactions shown in porn, leading people to have unrealistic expectations of others.
The science behind ‘pornography addiction’ is still under dispute, but even ignoring this side of the anti-porn argument, the relationally-damaging aspect of porn viewership should still make users pause.
Looking forward, it is important for the health of families and individuals to have conversations regarding the effects porn. Taking a deeper look at what has become an established facet of the American experience will not only benefit individuals but our society as a whole.
Evan Roberts can be reached at opinioneditor@theorion.com or @theorion_news on Twitter.