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

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

we found that only seven articles provided original data about the relationships between pornography and its audience in relation to porn literacy

However, much research on young people and pornography tends to isolate pornography from broader media ecologies (Goldstein, 2020). Further to this, a media studies approach to porn literacy can also (but rarely does) address the cinematic, technological and economic aspects of porn and its production and industries (Jenkins, 2004). However, most a

‘Pornographic messages were described as … depicting a distorted reality’

media literacy fundamentally means understanding that ‘media are constructed, and construct reality’

healthy sexual development isn’t the same for everybody. There are many different ways in which you can have a happy, healthy sex life. You can be married in the suburbs with two kids having sex once a week with the lights off. Or you can be single, going out dancing, picking up strangers and having enthusiastic, sweaty fun in the toilets of a nigh

what exactly is a happy, healthy sex life?

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

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.