Pornography has commanded a growing share of the focus of sex research over the past 50 years. But surprisingly, scientists seem to know very little about it.
Hugh Hefner published the first Playboy in 1953. The centerfold featured Marilyn Monroe. The nude picture had been taken a few years before Monroe became a movie star.
Hefner, who would go on to make millions from the photo, did not pay Monroe more than $50 for the appearance. He felt no need to request Monroe’s permission, either. She had to buy a copy of the magazine to see herself in it.
Pornography and the industry behind it have since evolved. Today, porn stars like Jenna Jameson and Tera Patrick can claim a net worth running into the tens of millions.
The days when consuming pornography meant buying magazines like Playboy and Penthouse are long gone, as well. The same is true for clandestine journeys to a video store in a faraway neighborhood.
Today’s viewers rely on easily accessible websites, such as YouPorn, RedTube, XVideos, and Pornhub.
The demand for pornography these days is also many times more than it was when Playboy first entered the scene.
Roughly 2.5 million people visit the most popular pornographic sites every 60 seconds. That is over 28,000 users tuning in every second.
Still, porn and its effects on people have proved to be an elusive subject of scientific inquiry.
Often, the evidence presented in studies is mixed. The sample sizes and the procedures in recent sex research have had their limitations, as well.
That said, below are four science-proven facts that scientific research has revealed about pornography so far.
1. Pornography does not necessarily trigger sexual violence.
For decades now, the central question surrounding pornography has been whether it encourages, normalizes, or even triggers rape and sexual violence.
In the 1970s, Berl Kutchinsky, a professor of criminology at the University of Copenhagen, measured sex crimes in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. These countries legalized pornography in the late 60s and early 70s.
Kutchinsky found no correlation between a rise in crime and the decriminalization of porn. In fact, some types of sex crime fell during the period, including rape and child molestation.
More recent scientific investigations into pornography appear to support Kutchinsky’s findings. In 2009, a review of more than 80 studies found that evidence of a causal association between pornography and sexual violence is slim.
The researchers concluded that those findings that did suggest a connection are often exaggerated by the media and politicians.
“Research has consistently shown that porn actually has far more positive than negative effects and … it’s only problematic for a minority of users,” Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, says in an article for Vice.
2. There are measurable differences between the brains of people who watch excessive amounts of pornography and those who don’t.
Recent sex research has found measurable differences between the brains of people who watch excessive amounts of pornographic material and those who don’t.
Not long ago, researchers at the Max Planck Institute looked at the brains of more than 60 men while they viewed porn.
They found that the striatum was smaller in men who watched a lot of sexually explicit material than those in men who did not.
“Since the striatum is part of the brain network that is known to respond to sexual cues, one can assume that this reflects a blunting of the reaction to erotic stimuli,” study co-author Simone Kühn told Live Science in 2014.
But the researchers could not tell whether the link between the consumption of pornography and smaller striatums was causal or simply associative.
They said the smaller striatum in in the brains of problematic viewers could be a pre-existing characteristic. The condition could have predisposed them to the excessive consumption of pornography in the first place, the researchers surmised.
3. Couples that watch porn together are closer and more sexually satisfied in their relationship.
In 2010, researchers led by psychologist Ana Bridges of the University of Arkansas published a study that said men who watched more pornography were less satisfied with their sex lives.
Interestingly, the same study cited evidence suggesting that pornography had the opposite effect on women.
Bridges and her colleagues suggest this could be because women are more likely to watch porn with their partners. Men typically watch porn alone.
This assumption is consistent with the findings of a more recent study. In 2021, researchers published a paper that indicates couples who watch porn together feel more dedicated and sexually satisfied in their relationship.
“I think the most important thing that we have found here is that the connection between pornography use and relationship quality is not as simple as some academics, activists, and politicians would have you believe,” says the 2021 study’s lead author Taylor Kohut, a research associate at Western University, in Canada.
4. Pornography is more diverse than most people think.
Research has found that modern pornography is as diverse as human lust and desire. For example, the most popular search terms on Pornhub last year ranged from “hentai” to “Pinay” to – and we imagine Sigmund Freud would smile at this one – “stepmom.”
“The late 90s and early 2000s was the cowboy era of pornography,” says Anna Brownfield, a teaching scholar in film and television at Deakin University.
“There was this extreme stuff that was violent … people were getting away with doing whatever they wanted,” she adds.
But digital disruption has since transformed the industry. The first and most obvious consequence was that pornography became more widely available.
Then, websites like OnlyFans began to allow anyone with a mobile phone to create pornographic material for paying subscribers.
Meanwhile, as some academics focused on the degradation of women in pornography, others have observed a broader move to “ethical” porn.
The latter doesn’t exploit the performers’ healthy sexual interactions with each other. They are, in short, consenting adults who are paid to have sex in front of cameras.
“There’s feminist porn, queer porn, ethical porn, body diverse porn, amateur porn … It’s so much more diverse,” says researcher Alan McKee of the University of Technology Sydney. “That was not the case in the past.”
What Research into Modern Pornography Tells Us
Nearly 70 years after Hefner published the first edition of Playboy, porn is more pervasive than ever. It’s also more verbose and explicit – and so are the debates that surround it.
Research has so far yielded a canon of scientific literature on pornography that is often contradictory, incomplete, and biased.
Perhaps more importantly, these findings suggest we need to take existing research with a grain of salt. “…We don’t even know what kind of porn was being measured in those studies,” says Lehmiller.
“The fact that ‘porn’ is often asked about in such a broad way is probably one of the main reasons so many conflicting studies have emerged over the years.”
In short, after decades of scientific research, we don’t know nearly as much about pornography as we might think.
We know that some people probably shouldn’t watch it. These include people with poor body image, addictive personalities, and those who have been sexually victimized. But is that all?
There are new organizations like Stop Porn Culture, led by the feminist Gail Dines, which campaign for porn’s abolition.
Yet other groups have pointed out the important role of pornography in women’s sexual liberation. Some even say it’s a valuable space for queer people and those exploring their identity.
Indeed, marriage counselors sometimes suggest watching pornography to help people become comfortable with a particular fantasy they or their partner may have.
Meanwhile, some experts say that as the reach of the internet expands across the world, porn, like the internet itself, will be increasingly harder to control.
We can be sure that some will find that cause for horror. Others will see it as a reason to celebrate. Every generation, it seems, will create the pornography it needs, and then study – and argue – about it.
What do you think? Do you think pornography is harmful? Do you watch porn?
