A new meta-analysis of decades’ worth of research about porn and relationships concluded porn-watching is related to less-happy relationships, at least where men are concerned. Among women, however, there seems to be no correlation between porn and relationship satisfaction.
Neither is there a causal link for either gender.
The meta-analysis researchers also found no link between porn-viewing and body dysphoria or sexual self-confidence. (Take that, militant feminists and anti-porn activists who insist porn creates unreasonable expectations.)
Even more interesting, the researchers found no upward trend in relationship dissatisfaction tied to porn use over the years, casting suspicion on the notion easy access to online porn has created a “public health crisis.”
The meta-analysis, “Pornography Consumption and Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis,” published in the March issue of the journal Human Communication Research, analyzed 50 previous studies encompassing more than 50,000 participants in 10 countries. For some of the studies, researchers surveyed subjects about their porn-viewing habits; in others, researchers exposed subjects to explicit material in a laboratory setting. As part of the studies, subjects were asked to rate their sexual satisfaction and general happiness in their current relationship.
After reviewing the previous research, the authors of the meta-analysis determined men who viewed porn reported less sexual and general satisfaction in their relationships than those who did not view porn. They found no significant correlation between relationship satisfaction and porn-viewing in women.
Ultimately, the meta-analysis authors concluded “pornography consumption was associated with lower interpersonal satisfaction outcomes in cross-sectional surveys, longitudinal surveys, and experiments” among male viewers.
The meta-analysis authors stopped short of positing a causal relationship between porn and interpersonal satisfaction, because that kind of conclusion would have been impossible to draw from the analysis. Instead, they noted only that the authors of the previous studies proposed a variety of theories. In one, the original researchers suggested men are more likely to watch porn alone, which could arouse shame and lead the viewer to “displace” real-world sex with the emotionally safer world of porn. Other researchers suggested men already unhappy in their relationships may be more apt to watch porn.
The lack of a definitive conclusion hasn’t stopped anti-porn activists from trumpeting the meta-analysis as vindication for their oft-flogged position that porn harms relationships.
“Pornography is sex-negative,” said Dawn Hawkins, executive director for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly Morality in Media). “Pornography rewires an individual’s sexuality to pixels on a screen rather than to a real person, which is inherently inconsistent with healthy, organic relationships. A wide body of research is bringing attention to the various ways pornography negatively impacts both women and men, and this latest meta-analysis contributes important findings to that on-going dialogue.”
(It’s worth noting MIM also correlated same-sex marriage with mass murder, so the organization’s judgement is suspect, at best.)
Martin Daubney, a documentary filmmaker and lecturer who speaks with teens about porn consumption, presents a somewhat balanced male perspective on the new meta-analysis here. Daubney is no porn-apologist, but neither is he a porn-hater. In the end, he is left with unanswered questions.
“Porn was meant to empower us,” he wrote. “But is it enslaving us?”
