Pornography is more prevalent and accessible than ever before, yet its effects on relationships, mental health, and human development aren’t popularly well understood. Discussions on the topic are often engaged in from an emotional or religious point of view; less typical is a discussion of pornography from an empirical frame.
My guest today, Dr. Brian Willoughby, a social scientist who has spent the past 15 years studying porn’s impacts, will unpack what the research actually says about how it affects personal well-being, relationship satisfaction, and sexual expectations. We discuss the latest data on porn use across different demographics, how porn impacts religious versus non-religious populations differently, and how exposure affects kids. Brian shares whether using porn causes erectile dysfunction and depression, what parents should know about talking to their kids about porn, the main risk of porn that’s typically under-discussed, and more.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- AoM’s series on porn and how to quit it (also available as an ebook)
- NYT article that Brian was interviewed for: “It’s Time to Talk About Pornography, Scholars Say”
- Most People With Addiction Simply Grow Out of It
- NYT article: “The Teen Trend of Sexual Choking”
- Brian’s research
Connect With Brian Willoughby
Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)
Listen to the episode on a separate page.
Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.
Read the Transcript
Brett Mckay: Brett McKay here. And welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Pornography is more prevalent and accessible than ever before, yet its effects on relationships, mental health and human development aren’t properly well understood. Discussions on the topic are often engaged in from an emotional or religious point of view. Less typical is a discussion of pornography from an empirical frame. My guest today, Dr. Brian Willoughby, a social scientist who has spent the past 50 years studying porn’s impacts, will impact what the research actually says about how it affects personal well being, relationship satisfaction, and sexual expectations. We discussed the latest data on porn use across different demographics, how porn impacts religious versus non-religious populations differently, and how exposure affects kids. Brian shares whether using porn causes erectile dysfunction and depression. What parents should know about talking to their kids about porn, the main risk of porn that’s typically under discussed and more after the show’s over. Check out our show notes at aom.is/porn.
All right, Brian Willoughby, welcome to the show.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Hey, it’s great to be here.
Brett Mckay: So you are a social scientist who studies family life and for the past, oh, almost, I think it’s 15 years now, you’ve been doing a lot of research about porn use and how it affects relationships. Before we get into your research, let’s start with definitions. In academic research, how do you define pornography? Because there’s that famous with Justice Stewart, Potter Stewart quote about obscenity. I know it when I see it. So academically, how do you define pornography?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, it’s interesting because that’s actually a question that kind of got me into this research in some ways. I came from a background of studying healthy relationships and dating during young adulthood. And the reason I started to turn my research into this area is because just so many young adults were mentioning 15, 20 years ago, like, hey, this, this is an issue I’m trying to navigate. I’m trying to figure out what it means for my life, what it means in my relationships. And so I kind of came over to the pornography research from that area and one of the very first studies I published is I was looking at the research is 20 years ago to answer your question is we weren’t defining it for anyone. We were just asking people, how often do you look at pornography? You know, what kind of just kind of these basic questions where we weren’t defining the term. And so I published a study that showed that when you just ask people, do you look at porn? You have no idea what they’re saying. Because people have such varying definitions for one person. That’s a, hey, I was looking at the SI swimsuit issue.
And I think that’s porn for another person. It’s like, well, unless it’s like super explicit group sex, if it’s just a couple having sex, even explicit hardcore sex, I don’t really consider that porn. So it was all over the map. And so today the field has gotten a lot better. Where we do tend to define now that we haven’t agreed completely on one clear definition, but probably the most common definition, at least in the research that we use, is that pornography is a form of sexual media, where the media, so the video, the picture, whatever we’re talking about, was produced and designed specifically or centrally to create sexual arousal. And that’s typically to differentiate it from, you know, Game of Thrones or a movie that might have some explicit sex scenes. But that wasn’t the main reason to produce the show or the film or the picture, you know, whatever it might be. So that’s usually the definition we’ll give people when we do research, say, hey, this is media designed specifically or centrally to create sexual arousal.
Brett Mckay: Well, let’s talk about the research. How prevalent is porn use amongst the general population in the United States?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, well, I mean, the simple answer is very prevalent. Again, it’s, it’s something that we kind of assume is happening and the research suggests that it is and that it’s likely been growing in popularity in terms of frequency and how common it is. We’ve got some good national data sets now that have looked at that question and obviously each data set’s going to have slightly different numbers. But our, our best estimate is, I guess the easiest way to, to answer that is more than half of all people view pornography, men and women. We still do see a little bit of a gender difference where men use porn more often than women. Most of the estimates have about 70 to 80% of men viewing pornography at least somewhat frequently, meaning at least a couple times a year, about around 60% of women. Those are kind of the averages if you look across the different samples. So it’s, it’s over half of both men and women with about a 10 to 20% difference between men and women.
Brett Mckay: Okay, you’ve also done research about how porn use differs amongst religious people. What does the research say there?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, that’s, you get two really interesting things when it comes to religious people is for men, if you look at just kind of overall use of porn, like I said, usually a year span is, is a common one in research. So if you look at the percent of religious men and non-religious men that have viewed Porn in the last year. The numbers are actually not really different. There’s not much difference between religious and non-religious men. Where the difference comes is in the frequency within that year. So religious men tend to use porn less frequently. They’re more likely to be in kind of a monthly pattern where they might use a couple times a month or use for a month and then not use it for a couple months and then come back to it. And then that’s typically due to, you know, moral beliefs or disapproval of porn where they’re trying to stop it or they don’t want it to be a habit in their lives. Non-religious men tend to be much more kind of a weekly pattern if they’re using porn. So it’s more kind of regular part of their, their sexual routine.
Women have much more of a difference when it comes to religious and non-religious women. Non-religious women, like I said, typically have not as high frequently as men. And we actually have, I think, less clear data about frequency patterns for women because I think women are more varied in their patterns. But religious women are the one group that tend to be much lower. Like 20-30% of religious women report using porn. And so it’s the one group that looks like they tend to actively avoid it, which in religious populations creates some interesting dating dynamics because then you often have men that have some history in use of porn and then a lot of religious women that have very little exposure and little use of porn. And so that, that creates some interesting dating dynamics around it.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, hopefully we can talk about that later on though. You’ve done some interesting research on that. Oftentimes when people talk about porn use, they talk about it as an addiction. And I think that word addiction gets thrown around a lot, probably too easily. How many people actually have a bona fide porn addiction?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, this I think is a really important topic because like you said, is the addiction term gets thrown around a lot and oftentimes misused in a lot of cases. So we’ve come a long way, I think, in the last 10 years on the clinical research on pornography. And, and there, there was and is still to a certain extent some debate about how addictive porn is and how much potential there is to develop a full compulsive behavior around it. But I think there’s a growing consensus that like gambling and like other kind of behaviors that have some reward attached to them, that they can be compulsive over time. The World Health Organization a couple years ago designated pornography as an addictive potential behavior. But having said that, the percent of the population that uses porn that would qualify clinically for kind of true compulsive addictive behavior is relatively small. Our best estimates are maybe somewhere between 7 to 15%, depending on the sample. So it’s a pretty small group that has really developed compulsive patterns. Now there’s a larger group next to that. If you want to kind of think about this like a continuum, you’ve got, you know, maybe 10% of your population that’s truly addicted.
Another Maybe, you know, 10 to 20% qualify for what, what’s oftentimes called PPU or problematic pornography use, which basically means, like, you’re not fully dealing with a compulsive pattern of thinking and obsessive thinking. It’s not that full addictive behavior, but it’s something that’s causing distress in your life. So maybe you’ve tried to stop a porn habit and haven’t been able to. Maybe it’s caused some issues in your relationship, it’s caused personal distress in your life. So there’s another kind of 10 to 20%, we think of people that qualify for problematic use because of that distress. And then you’ve got, you know, your other 60% of people that are somewhere on that continuum of I’ve experimented with porn and never really gotten into it to. I’ve used porn on a regular basis, but it’s never really become compulsive. It’s never really become a problem. It’s something that, you know, I’ve been able to stop at different points in my life and not really had any distress around. So if you want to kind of put it in terms of what percent of the population has some level of distress and a bad habit, slash, compulsivity estimates are somewhere between maybe 30-35%, somewhere in that range.
Brett Mckay: Okay. And I thought that was interesting distinction between problematic porn use and addiction. Something I’ve noticed, I think you’ve written about this too, is that people who are religious and they have, you know, moral qualms about pornography, they’ll often label their porn use as an addiction, even though it might be more of a problematic porn use. It’s not like they’re using porn like multiple times a day. It’s just like, well, I use it once a month. I don’t want to. And if I’m going to call this an addiction because I feel like I can’t help myself.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the research on problematic porn use has been centered not on religious people in, in general, but trying to capture that group that does have distress, it’s causing some mental health issues, it’s causing relationship issues. It’s distracting. And acknowledging that there can be a need for clinical resources for that people, but wanting to distinguish it from someone, like you said, that’s truly dealing with a addictive behavioral pattern where this is every day, maybe hours a day. I’m not sleeping, I’m having trouble going to work or school. I can’t hold a real relationship because of this. Like, those are two very things we want to make sure, clinically, in terms of resources and therapy, that we distinguish those. But like you said, we do know that religious men in particular oftentimes will report what’s called perceived addiction, which is they label themselves as addicts even though they aren’t. And there’s been some good research that shows that that self labeling, that perceived addiction sometimes can be more harmful than the, the porn use itself. That, that both those things are at play. But when I label myself a certain way and I get kind of a defeatist attitude about things because, oh, I’m an addict, there’s nothing I can do actually causes depression and causes some mental health issues above and beyond what the porn’s doing.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, and I think I’ve seen research too. It makes breaking or stopping the habit harder.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah.
Brett Mckay: What’s the percentage of the population that have, like, never seen porn?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: A very small dwindling population. When we look at teenage adolescent use and especially exposure rates, like, not just, you know, have you ever regularly used porn, but have you ever seen porn? Intentional or unintentional? That exposure right now is just about 100%. It’s not 100%. We do have, you know, some teenagers that manage to navigate their adolescent years and completely avoid pornography, but that number is dwindling. And I would guess, you know, realistically, Maybe you’ve got 5% of your population by 1819 that’s never seen porn. Now again, that’s intentional or unintentional. Obviously the, the number of people that have never intentionally sought out porn, you know, other than, hey, I clicked on this link and it took me here. My friend sent me this, or I saw this on social media, but that’s the extent of my, my porn use. Then you might be able to get up. I did one study that showed that maybe 10 to 20%, roughly of the population by 1819 has, has kind of avoided intentional porn use. But it is certainly the minority. It’s just, it’s so prevalent on social media. A lot of the pornography companies have gotten very good at hiding their links into other ads and other things you might click on.
I think most people have had that experience where you know, you’re on the Internet, you’re on social media. You. In fact, my teenage son, who’s 17, just referenced this to us. He was clicking on LED lights advertisement on social media. Nope. Took him to a porn site. So I think it’s just a very common experience to get exposed to porn, even if you didn’t intentionally mean to seek it out.
Brett Mckay: And something you’ve written about is that because it’s so prevalent, you kind of make the case that we need to normalize porn use. What do you mean by that? Because I think when people hear like, oh, normalized porn use, it means it’s good. What do you mean by normalizing porn use?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I think it’s important to distinguish, like you said, is normalizing something doesn’t mean to say that it’s healthy. We have a lot of research that I’m sure we might talk about, about the harms and the risks of using pornography at really any age, any stage of life. But the normalization is just acknowledging that it is normal for most teenagers, for most young adults to have exposure for pornography. Like I said earlier, we know the majority of our young adults and teenagers, especially as they get up to 17, 18, 19, have not just seen porn, but are actively using it on a regular basis and masturbating to it. And so if this is a normal behavior, meaning most people are doing it, then it’s I think even more important for parents, for young adults, for really anyone to educate themselves about the potential risks of pornography and educate themselves about what this is, the effect it could have on your life, you know how to navigate it individually and with couples. Because there’s a whole now new area that’s opened up in the last 10 to 15 years where because most men and women have some history with pornography is when we date each other and particularly when we form long term relationships.
There’s this whole new thing now that’s opened up in relationships where we have to talk and navigate pornography together. There is a study that I did two years ago, or one of the big findings we found in a national sample in the United States was that the majority now particularly of dating couples are using pornography together, which was kind of a new finding. We knew it was happening, but we didn’t know that we had hit the majority point for couples now too. So it’s not just most people use porn on their own. Most couples now use porn together as well. So it’s Just, it’s something that has to be taught. It has to be talked about. And we need just more resources.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, you can’t pretend like it’s not happening, basically. Let’s talk about age. You’ve kind of been mentioning this. Typically, people are getting exposed to porn at a younger and younger age. What’s the average age when people are first exposed to pornography?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, so average age right now in the United States is 10 to 13, which is a lot younger than a lot of people realize. But it very closely follows when most kids get their first smartphones. You know, that’s right around the age, kind of those preteen years where parents are giving kids phones for the first time, or at least they’re getting regular access to the internet. And as we talked about, you’re on the internet long enough, you’re on social media long enough, it’s pretty common then to come across some sort of explicit sexual material. And so that’s, again, that’s the average. You do get people that don’t come across porn, don’t seek it out ’til later in adolescence. You get a smaller group that’s exposed even earlier to that. But right now, 10 to 13 is pretty common. That’s kind of the norm right now in the United States, which is one of the reasons why I typically really try to urge parents to be aware of this, because most parents aren’t really thinking about the sex talk, aren’t thinking about the porn, aren’t thinking about these things ’til their kids really hit adolescence, you know, 13 plus. But by that time, a lot of kids have already been exposed to it.
Brett Mckay: You’ve done research on how the age of exposure influences porn use later in life. Can you walk us through that?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah. So this is, this is when we talk about the risks of porn. This is one of the ones that I think is really most critically, culturally to talk about, because we know the risk to kids is a lot higher to adults. You know, there’s a whole conversation you could be having about consenting adults and free speech and letting people, you know, access the pornography that they want as an adult. But when we talk about kids, a lot of the risks in the research become much more straightforward, much more consistent, meaning that the risk that kids have from regular viewing of pornography are fairly straightforward in terms of what they do. And earlier exposure tends to elevate a lot of those risks. So, for example, one of the most consistent risks we see is elevated risky sexual behavior, which makes sense if you watch and view a lot of porn, particularly as a preteen, as an early adolescent, you’re at a higher risk for sexual risk taking. So that, you know, sex with multiple partners, unprotected sex, things like that. In the earlier work, a child’s exposed, we tend to see elevated risk for that. The other big one, circling back to what we were talking about before, is an elevated risk later in life of compulsive and addictive use.
Just, you know, if you’re exposed earlier, which also makes sense. If you’re exposed earlier, you’re more likely to be hiding it, you’re more likely to be using it with, you know, less impulse control, underdeveloped brain, all that stuff. There’s a study that my grad student and I did also a couple years ago said one of the biggest risks of early exposure was an increased frequency of habitual use later in life. And so those are kind of the two main risks of earlier exposure is increased risk of developing that addictive pattern and an increased risk for risky sexual behavior later in adolescence.
Brett Mckay: Okay, so that’s important for, for parents to start talking to their kids as young as 10 even. You mean, to start having that conversation. And I thought it was interesting, the research you saw about how porn use changes throughout the lifetime. I think what you’ve seen is like, it usually spikes around teenage years, young adulthood, and then for a lot of, I’m talking about men. I’m sure it applies to women as well. When you get into your 30s and your 40s, it kind of tapers off for a lot of people or they just stop it.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, there’s a study that I did looking at this specifically, and we saw three main groups as we kind of tracked it through adolescence and young adulthood. So like you said, we did see this group that had a very typical risk taking pattern. So it’s a similar pattern we see with binge drinking, with sexual behavior, where it kind of builds through teenage years, kind of peaks around 18, 19, 20, 21, and then it starts to come down after that. And for a, a large group of people that use porn, that’s the typical pattern. It’s that kind of typical, you know, experimentation, I guess, pattern. We did see another group in that same study, though, that had this escalating pattern that never really went away. And we think that was probably capturing kind of this problematic compulsive group where it also built and kind of increased during adolescence, young adulthood, but it never really came down. It was something that the people were still dealing with or using at a high level throughout their 20s and 30s. And then we saw a third group, which is kind of what we call the abstaining group. But we acknowledge that most people in the abstaining group still reported seeing porn infrequently throughout their adolescent to young adult years. It just never became a regular pattern. And that was actually the biggest group. It was under 50%, about 40% in the study. And then the other 60% were kind of split between those two other groups.
Brett Mckay: I think it’s interesting because you see similar trends with other vices or other potentially addictive behaviors. Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs. And people don’t talk about this, but oftentimes what the research has found is people just grow out or they age out of their addictions. They might have an addiction to alcohol or cigarettes in their 20s, and by the time they’re 40, they just, it wasn’t like they tried to. It’s just they stopped for some reason. And I remember reading an article, a research article. I can hopefully find a link to it in the show notes. But a huge amount of people just age out of problematic vice behavior.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, yeah. In fact, you know, sometimes I hear people throw around drug analogies with porn, and oftentimes I hear, you know, porn is like heroin, porn is like cocaine, and those are really poor analogies. But for me, the one I always tend to use is alcohol. Alcohol is a really good comparison point for a lot of the research on porn because, like you said, is, you know, pornography or if you look at alcohol, you see this wide spectrum of how people engage in alcohol. And technically, every time you drink alcohol, you know, you’re hurting your body a little bit. You know, your liver is processing it and things like that. At least most, you know, hard liquors and stuff. But you get a segment of people that are able to utilize and use alcohol in ways that doesn’t really have a huge negative effect on their life and they use it responsibly and all those things. And then you have a group, like you said, that kind of, you know, goes through their typical young adult years and it spikes. And they go through college and they’re binge drinking and passing out, and, you know, it’s certainly having a lot of risk during that time in their life, but they kind of age out of it and they, they come down.
And some people go through that and say, you know what? I think I’m done with alcohol in my life. Some people say, no, I’m going to at least bring it down and be more responsible with it. And then you’ve got that group that, you know, struggles with alcohol, and it develops into an addictive, compulsive pattern, and they have to deal with that for the rest of their life. I mean, it’s not most people that drink alcohol. It’s a small percent of people that drink alcohol. But I think pornography tends to follow that, where there’s these kind of distinct groups that, you know, technically I think all have risk, but the risk profile is very different.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, I bet pornography is similar to sports gambling or online gambling. Same sort of thing. I bet it’s like a lot of young people who are primarily doing the online gambling and then fewer older people people.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the only caveat sometimes I note to all these patterns we’re talking about is there have been some in my field, including myself, that have at least noted that all the stuff we’re talking about has been based on data over the last 10 to 15 years. In the past, what we don’t really know is we have, because right now, the current young young adult Cohort in their 20s was kind of the first group that were digital natives to the smartphone. Right. As they grew up. The smartphone was there when they were born, and now they’ve spent their whole life with the version of the Internet that we have now. And so although all the patterns we’ve talked about have been kind of true of the past 10 to 15, 20 years, we don’t really know if that’s going to hold. There has been some discussion of, because of how the porn industry has shifted because of how much exposure to online technology and smartphones this generation in their 20s is now. There is the question of, do we see a larger portion of our current young adult generation that struggles with pornography into adulthood? In other words, is that group that has typically had a decrease into adulthood, is that group going to get smaller in the current generation? It’s been a question that’s been posed, but we don’t have the data yet.
Brett Mckay: We’re going to take a quick break for our word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So I’m sure a lot of people listening to this podcast, you know, if they got like a lecture from parents or a pastor about porn use, they probably were told these scare things about how porn will, you know, it’ll give you ED erectile dysfunction, it’ll make you depressed or will turn you into a sexual deviant. What does the research say about those things? Does porn use cause depression? Does it cause erectile dysfunction? You’ve seen a lot of that reporting in the popular press. And like, what’s porn’s connection with sexual violence to sexual crimes?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah. So this is where understanding those kind of distinctions around patterns of use is really important because the research shows very different effects based on if we want to kind of simplify and say, hey, we’ve got that compulsive group and that problematic use, if we kind of separate them out into people that are having clinical issues with pornography and then everyone else, the research suggests the risks and the effects of porn are fairly different in those two groups. So if we go over and talk about the people that are struggling with an addiction, struggling with problematic use, that’s typically where we see the mental health pieces. Now I guess I want to step back for a second and address something you said, which is the erectile dysfunction kind of arousal dysfunctional stuff that that’s out there. Very little to no research that suggests that’s the case. In fact, most of the research suggests that watching porn increases your arousal, it doesn’t decrease it. And actually that increased arousal can cause issues for people. But we don’t see a lot of compelling evidence. We do see links to the mental health stuff. So the depression loneliness, lower self worth and lower body image, those kind of things are in the research and particularly for that group that has kind of a high frequency problematic to compulsive use pattern.
That’s usually where we kind of see the majority of that research. And so pornography carries a mental health risk, particularly once it gets to that really high frequency compulsive pattern. That’s typically where we start to see that kind of outcome emerge for the majority of people that fall into that kind of occasional use. You know, maybe it’s a regular pattern, but it’s not, you know, becoming a bad habit, it’s not causing distress in my life. Where we see the risk there is largely relational. And so we have several meta analyses now that have shown that any kind of porn use, or the more porn that you use, relationship satisfaction and particularly relationship stability tends to decrease. What we think that’s about is pretty straightforward. It comes down to expectations and what we call sexual scripts, which are kind of when you go into a sexual situation, what do you think is going to happen? What are your expectations, how do you behave based on those expectations? And what we see is that people that use porn tend to carry with them unhealthy scripts and expectations into their real relationships. And part of this is often because pornography starts in adolescence.
And so when you don’t have a lot of sexual experience and porn becomes kind of the primary way that you think about sex and how you expect sex to look like when you become an adult or when you start to engage in your own sexual relationships. And the reality I think most adults understand is pornography is not showing a fairly normative view of sexual intimacy. You know, people don’t look like that. They don’t act like that. They’re engaging in a lot of sexual behavior that a lot of people in their real relationships don’t even enjoy. So that is the main negative outcome and risk that we see for pornography is just making real relationships, just generally and also specifically with sexual intimacy, more difficult. Now, there isn’t also, the other consistent thing we’ve seen in research, with a couple meta analyses, which are kind of studies of studies, is the violence piece. And it’s not quite as straightforward as the satisfaction stability research, but there is research that suggests that more frequent porn use is linked to more aggressive and violent attitudes, particularly about men towards women. There’s some research out there that suggests that it does increase the risk of aggressive behaviors towards women.
And again, that just ties back to the content. We know there’s a lot of pornography that depicts aggression and violence towards women, with women oftentimes enjoying or being depicted as enjoying that violence. And so that media use, just like any form of media use, has an influence on people, and it tends to make, again, healthy relationship formation more difficult. And that’s where most of the research has been for most people, is the main risk of porn is just making your actual human relationships a lot more challenging.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, there’s been articles about this in the popular press about how the scripts you pick up in pornography, you carry that over into your relationship and it just, people don’t like it. Right. You know, you’re a young guy and you watch, oh, you know, anal sex is normal. And you try that and like, your girlfriend or wife’s like, I don’t like that, or choking. That’s a violent thing. And there was a study that was done, I think they said that two thirds of female college students have been choked by their partner during sex. And that can obviously be a really scary thing for them. But guys think, oh, yeah, well, that’s what you do during sex. But I’ve also seen articles where the men themselves who do these things actually don’t even like doing it. But, yeah, they feel like they’re supposed to, because that’s what you do when you have sex. Because, well, that’s what I saw in porn.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah. Yeah, it sets up that expectation we did a survey two years ago where one of the questions we were asking couples, these were largely young adult and adult couples. And we asked them, you know, when you’re having sex with your partner, are you thinking about porn? Are you worried about porn? And what clearly came out is there is a significant group of people that were in a committed relationship that said, yeah, I’m worried, like when we’re having sex, I’m worried that my partner’s thinking about porn. I’m worried, I feel pressured that they want me to perform a certain way or engage in behavior that they’ve seen in porn. And that’s what I was referencing before about modern couples having to navigate something completely new that previous generations haven’t had to navigate. And it’s this. It’s knowing that both partners have history watching porn. And oftentimes a male partner who has maybe an extensive history throughout their life of watching porn, it’s just there. Even if you’re not talking about it, both partners kind of know that it’s there. It’s subtle, you might be able to pick up on it and what your partner is kind of asking for or kind of hinting at.
And so it creates a whole ‘nother dynamic. Particularly, like you said, when we know that a lot of people might be feeling pressured because of porn to act a certain way with their partner, that’s not either A, what they want to do or B, what is creating actual connection between the two of them. Because we know that sexual intimacy is meant to be and can be this very bonding, connecting, positive thing in a relationship. But when it starts to be this pressure filled, anxiety filled interaction, because we haven’t really openly talked about how porn’s influencing that, but we know that it is, we think that’s where some of the satisfaction, stability, you know, communication stuff we see in the research starts to come in.
Brett Mckay: So that’s another thing you talk about with your kids. Like, porn is not real sex. It’s designed for a specific purpose and they’re going to do things. Like the analogy that I use, like porn is like a fight scene in a movie. Like, no one really fights like people fight in movies. It’s the same sort of thing. Like, no one really has sex the way you see in porn.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, yeah. In fact, a common question I’ll get from parents is, is when, when should I have the porn talk? And I always try to quickly correct them and say, well, I don’t think you should have the porn talk. This is about the sex talk. It’s part of the Sex talk that hopefully you know, earlier than you think. Like we Talked about like 9, 10, you should be talking to your kids about sex and hopefully part of the message to your kids, you know, whether you’re religious or not or what your personal values are about sexual intimacy. I’m assuming most people would agree that, that sex between adults is a powerful and can be very positive thing in a relationship and that should be part of the message your kids is getting. And then if, if you have a desire like most parents do, that hey, I someday I want you to grow up and have this healthy, long term committed relationship with another person. Now let’s talk about porn in that context and let’s talk about how porn is showing you things and might make some of the things you think about sex. And in contrast to this positive, you know, message about connection and bonding and commitment, it might make that more challenging so that you can talk to your kids about the risks of sex in the context of some of the more positive and hopeful messages you’re giving them about intimacy as an adult.
So, so that, that way the message they’re getting isn’t just porn is bad because sex is bad. And so really what I’m learning is that if I have any sexual desire or sexual arousal, I probably shouldn’t talk to my parents because, because everything about that is bad.
Brett Mckay: Okay, so porn use negatively impacts all relationships. Does the degree of harm differ between religious and non-religious people?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: We, we don’t see that typically in the, in the relationship outcomes. So like the stability satisfaction is oftentimes in fact a lot of the research just controls for religion or religiosity and shows that same effect regardless. Now having said that like we said before, is, is what you can get in religious populations with couples is someone that might be in that, that occasional use. You know, hey, I’m using porn a couple times a year pattern that can now in addition to the relationship stuff, do two additional things in religious couples. One is like we said before, it could have some element of perceived addiction. You know, where I kind of exaggerate how bad and how negative use is and that causes personal distress and depression and stuff that, that wouldn’t happen in a non-religious couple. The other thing you get in religious couples because you get so, so there’s another term we haven’t mentioned, another academic term called moral incongruence, which is basically when you do something that is in opposition to a moral belief you have and that, that becomes relevant in religious couples because what can happen then in addition to all the stuff we talked about is that if we both hold these moral beliefs that porn is wrong morally.
And I find out, you know, if we go, you know, stereotypically gendered here, if I’m a wife and I find out that my husband’s been looking at porn three times in the last year, you can certainly get a much more exaggerated what we sometimes call behavioral trauma effect, which means, I feel violated in this relationship because you’re looking at porn. And in many cases in religious couples, for religious women, I feel like you have cheated on me. That, you know, they perceive it as a form of infidelity. And so now that perception, kind of like perceived addiction, that perception is going to increase the distress in our relationship because, not necessarily because of what the porn’s doing, but because I perceive this as this moral violation of our relationship or our marital covenant or however, you know, they’re perceiving it, that has that exaggeration effect. That’s oftentimes how I talk about this with religious populations is that there’s an exaggeration effect of all the other outcomes that we see.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, I’ve seen just anecdotally, marriages end because of that very thing. Like, the wife finds out, oh, my husband looked at porn two times in the past year. Divorce or like, engagements called off because the lady found out that her fiance had seen porn before.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, yeah, you see that typically only in religious couples. And again, that’s often due to this kind of moral incongruence, this moral boundary violation that religious couples have, where they have a more expansive view of what the boundary of fidelity is in a marriage. And in many religious couples, particularly a lot of religious women, do perceive pornography as, hey, you’re looking at another woman. You’re masturbating to another woman. I view that as infidelity. And then oftentimes it has the same effect psychologically and in the relationship as, you actually cheated on me. And it’s a hard thing sometimes to navigate clinically because from an outsider’s perspective or a therapist, you know, you can be tempted to say, hey, your husband looked at porn twice. That’s not cheating. Stop acting like it is. But if the woman perceives it to be that and it feels like that to her, it’s going to feel very real. And so oftentimes you have to work that couple through that as if it was infidelity, because it feels that way to one partner.
Brett Mckay: So is there any advice that you have? I know you’re looking at this from a descriptive point of view. You’re trying to describe the situation, but let’s say someone’s dating. So there’s this discrepancy between porn use between men and women or attitudes toward porn, women typically view it less, especially if you’re religious. Religious men are viewing it about the same percentage of non-religious men. How do you navigate, how do you have that conversation when there’s such differing expectations?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I think first off you need to have the conversation because that’s what the descriptive research tells us is most people when they’re dating or married just don’t talk about this very openly. And that’s obviously an issue. And I think there’s two clear things to start talking about when you’re dating and to be clear. You know, this isn’t necessarily a first date, type of topic. But you know, once you’re committed and you’re kind of moving forward with the relationship, there’s two big things to talk about. One is disclosure, which just means that you should be talking about your history and your use of porn. And again, I’m always clear. Kind of like I talked about with parents is this isn’t this high pressure porn talk where you kind of awkwardly approach each other and say, okay, let’s hear it. You know, do you have a porn history when you’re dating someone you know, over the course of several months to several years, there’s this natural disclosure that happens. You start telling them about your family and you know, this hard thing that happened when I was a teenager and mental health struggles that you’ve had, you, you naturally do that in a committed relationship. So it’s simply adding porn to the list of things that you disclose to each other naturally that, hey, you know we kind of assume both of us probably have had some history with porn. As we get more committed, we should be talking openly about that so that we’re not hiding it.
Then the other thing that I think is really important to talk about is boundaries. What are the boundaries in our relationship? And I think this goes for all couples now, religious or not, it’s important to have a conversation openly with each other about boundaries. You know, if I’m dating someone again, I might be even a non-religious person, but I might in my head say, I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be watching porn four times a week when you’re dating me. That doesn’t make me feel good. Well, if you feel like that, you should talk about that and negotiate the boundaries in your relationship around porn just like you would other boundaries like, hey, I, you know, I’m not comfortable with you hanging out with your co-worker at night alone, or I’m not comfortable with this. You need to talk about that with porn, about individual use, couple use.
Brett Mckay: Those are the two conversations that couples need to be having. I think all couples need to be having now is disclosure of what’s been happening in your history, and then discussion and negotiation and agreement about what the boundaries in the relationship are moving forward. That’s not going to necessarily alleviate all the stress and all the issues tied to porn, but doing those two things will alleviate a lot of the stress on this topic for most couples.
So we’ve talked about how porn use can negatively impact all relationships. Is there anything couples can do to mitigate the negative impacts of porn use? Is it just like not, you know, not using porn? Is that what the… Is that what you do?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I mean, the, the simple answer to that is what you said. And in fact, again, tied to some of the studies, national studies that, that we’ve done, we always have the small group of people and couples that have decided, you know, whether it’s for religious reasons or other reasons to avoid pornography. And that’s always the healthiest group that we see. And, and so, yes, there’s some research to support the idea that, again, if you think about pornography as a risk at any level, if I want to maximize my risk of a positive relationship, then I would say, yeah, then, then avoid pornography. If you want to be in the, what we might call minimal risk category, then a lot of it goes back to what we talked about is clear, open communication, clearly establishing boundaries with each other. And then, I think, you know, I don’t want to say moderation, but I think being aware, like we said, if one of the main effects of porn is, is based on content, I think being really open and talking to each other about what the content is that we’re viewing. Again, we haven’t gotten quite to the point in the research where we’ve really paired content, specific content to specific outcomes, but I think we’re certainly moving in that direction that suggests that, hey, you know, if I’m watching porn and it’s consenting adults, and that’s all I’m looking at, that’s probably different than consistently watching porn that’s group sex or violent content.
Or, you know, depicting underage content or incest porn, you know, all these other things that I think will probably in the next 10 years in the research come out as having a more negative effect than, you know, maybe what you might call vanilla porn in some ways. So I think that’s another factor to be thinking about is what is the content that I’m consuming and how that might be affecting me individually and how it might be affecting us as a couple.
Brett Mckay: So we’ve been talking about, you know, you should start the porn discussion early with your kids and put it in the context of like, hey, look, I want you to have a satisfying long term relationship in the future. Sex is a part of that can be a really great part of your relationship, how you connect to your spouse and then porn use can harm that. I think that’s a great way to frame the conversation. I’m more, I’m curious too, particularly if you’re religious. We mentioned there’s that discrepancy between men and women where women view it less and have negative attitudes towards it and there’s that exaggeration effect. Should part of the conversation. As a parent, let’s say this is kind of very gendered, but let’s say you have, you know, if you have a son, you’d be like, don’t look at porn because it’s going to hurt your relationship. Right. Try to avoid it. With your daughters and if you’re religious, should you tell your daughters, like, look, hey, you’re going to be dating guys. And most of them probably seen porn.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I, well, first off, I, I do think with your daughters is still have the porn conversation because I will say that being a religious woman who has a regular pattern of using pornography can be very isolating. A lot of religious women feel very isolated. They feel, they recognize that they’re kind of outside the norm and because of that they feel very anxious about talking to people about their porn use. You know, whether that’s going to a religious leader or their family or dating partners. It can be a very stigmatized, isolating experience. So I, I do think it’s important to talk to daughters about that just like you would with men and boys. But yes, I, I do think part of the message for religious families talking to daughters is again back to normalization, helping them understand that the vast majority of guys they date and our potential marriage partners down the line are very likely to have viewed porn at some point in their life, are very likely to have had some pattern of porn use in their life and teaching them that doesn’t necessarily and probably shouldn’t be this automatic no to a dating or marriage partner because immediately you shrink your, your, your dating pool down to a very small group of guys.
If that’s what you’re looking for and that it’s more about, like we said before, talking openly about it, talking about the potential impact it could have on your relationship. Understand the difference between a guy that, you know, had a year when he was 16 that looked at porn and that’s been the only thing in his life, versus a guy who’s been looking at porn and struggling with it for eight years of his life. Those are two different things that you need to approach differently in a relationship. I think having those nuanced conversations with. With your daughters and helping them understand it’s something they’re gonna have to navigate is a really important part of, of parenting, particularly for religious families.
Brett Mckay: Yeah. I think the openness, just the, the honesty whenever you, Of course, you know, I’m not saying I approve of porn, but if you stigmatize it so much, what ends up happening? You did some research on this. Like, guys just lie, particularly religious guys, because they know. I think you did research on. They know how much their value will go down in the dating market or the marriage market.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yes.
Brett Mckay: If they admit to porn use.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah.
Brett Mckay: And so they just lie about it.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yep. Or either outright lied to about it, or they do what I call toe dipping disclosure. You know, where you, like, kind of stick your toe in the pool to see what the temperature before you jump in. So what a lot of religious guys will do as teens and young adults and even adults is they’ll say, okay, I, I know the porn question is going to come up. So when it comes up, I’m going to tell you this little thing that happened. You know, So a lot of times, like, what a guy in his 20s might do when he gets asked about this in a religious dating context is say, well, yeah, I looked at porn a little bit when I was like, 15. And then they’ll wait to see what the reaction is. And if the reaction is, okay, we just had this very stressful conversation. You almost broke up with me because of that. Okay, well, now I’m definitely not going to tell you what I did last week. And so sometimes it’s not just outright lying, but it is that kind of partial reveal and then holding everything else back, which in some cases ends up being worse, because then down the line and when this inevitably oftentimes comes back out, it felt almost worse that you didn’t just lie to me, but you kind of half told the truth and then you withheld all this other stuff. And now I feel like I’m constantly peeling the onion back to get to different levels of the truth. And so, yeah, just being open is a really important part of that.
Brett Mckay: Do you have any advice on, I mean, you’re, you’re a parent of a teenager. Any advice on helping our kids avoid pornography?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I mean, again, to be clear, completely avoiding it is likely not going to happen. But I do think there can be things parents can do that can really reduce one, the risk of early exposure. So at least kind of push that age out into the life course a little bit into adolescence, and then just generally reduce the frequency or likely engagement. And part of that goes back to just what we call digital literacy, which is understanding the current digital and technological environment that kids are in. Honestly, the, the easiest and best thing parents can do to help their kids avoid porn is delay giving them a smartphone and delay giving them access to social media. And those are two things that a lot of media and other scholars in my field that have looked at adolescent development in the context of technology have been saying for a decade now. I think the voices on that are getting stronger. There’s just not a lot of positives that come in the research from giving a preteen or even an early adolescent access to a smartphone and to social media. There’s just so much research that’s come out on cell phone addiction, on social media addiction, on the negative mental health effects that social media brings.
And then when you bring in the porn stuff, where those two aspects of technology are oftentimes the gateway to porn, for a lot of young kids, that’s a really easy thing to do, is just limit access and delay access. And it’s hard, again, I’m a parent. I’ve had, now four teenagers, got two kids in their 20s now. And it’s hard to be the parent that, that your kids are coming to you and saying, hey, every one of my friends has a smartphone. Every one of my friends has access to TikTok. Every one of my friends has access to Instagram. But helping kids understand that, you know, one, you’re not barring them for life, that you have a plan with them about how they’re going to slowly get access to these technologies and, and how it’s not an all or nothing. I think that’s a common approach parents give is they set this age, you know, whether it’s 10, 11, 12, 13, and say, okay, that’s the age where we give you this device. And then it’s just kind of go, you know, maybe we put some filters on your phone that kids can get around really easily instead of, I think a more nuanced and appropriate plan for helping kids slowly manage that.
Say, okay, you know, we’ll give you a cell phone early on, and it’s not going to be as smart smartphone, but we’ll give you a cell phone so you can start messaging and start getting access, and then we’ll get you a smartphone here. So you kind of lay it out to kids that, hey, there’s this plan from 10 to 18 where we’re going to slowly help you manage and learn how to use technology in an appropriate way. Just doing that will really help on the porn side, especially if you’re pairing that with the conversations that we’ve had. I think that’s kind of the magic formula oftentimes for parents is you have good digital literacy and you have a good, clear plan for slowly helping your kids navigate technology with a regular, ongoing conversation about pornography itself.
Brett Mckay: I don’t know if you have any advice. I’m sure there’s guys listening to this. They’re in their 20s, 30s, 40s. I mean, they’re married, they use porn. They’re not. It’s not compulsive. They’re not addicted. If you are addicted, you need to go get professional help to help you with that. But let’s say you just hit that problematic point. It’s like, you’re not happy with it. Any advice there based on your research and just talking to people in your field about what you can do about that?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I think there’s two good resources to turn to. One is, and this feels simple, but again, back to the fact that so many guys don’t openly talk about this with other people. Is social resources really help? Again, so we talked about the drug analogies earlier, but there’s another analogy for most guys when it comes to porn, because again, for most guys, if they want to stop porn, it’s more of a bad habit when it comes to eating. So if you think about, like, diet and exercise, like, I want to exercise more, I want to stop eating so many donuts or drinking so much soda. And you think about what we know and what has worked for a lot of people about getting healthier. It’s not going to the gym by myself. It’s not buying all the home gym stuff like that. Some people can be super dedicated and do that. As soon as I get a group and I go to the gym with someone and, you know, I’m online in an environment where we’re doing a fitness challenge. People tend to be much better at breaking bad habits when it comes to eating and getting better habits when it comes to fitness, when they turn to other people and porn’s the same way.
Talk to your wife, talk to your friends, talk to someone. If you want to kick a habit, talk to someone about it and say, hey, you know, I’m trying to kick this habit. I want someone that’s checking in with me or setting goals with me. That in and of itself oftentimes is all people need to really move in the right direction or move in a positive direction when it comes to porn. They’re often just not willing, because porn’s kind of a taboo topic, to utilize those social resources. And again, it could be a spouse, it could be a religious leader, it could be friends, family members. Just using other people to help support you through that is oftentimes all someone needs to kick a habit that’s, you know, maybe a very infrequent or, or maybe in an occasional use type of pattern. That’s one thing. The other thing is there are apps and websites out there that are specifically designed to help people avoid porn. And they range from services that will basically lock your phone down for you, that are more meant for people struggling with compulsive use. But there’s other programs out there that are more kind of coaching based, that are more kind of geared towards the occasional use.
That again, I think when paired with social resources can really help you because oftentimes people just need to, to regularly remind themselves about avoiding porn. They need to recognize triggers in their life, like, oh, I’m stressed today, or I, you know, saw something on Instagram that kind of made me start thinking sexual thoughts. Usually just recognizing those triggers, having something that has me reflect on them is again, often enough to help someone kick a habit if it’s something that’s just a couple times a month to a couple times a year.
Brett Mckay: And I think the other thing too is just like, don’t beat yourself up too much if you backslide, because that’s just going to put you in that defeatist attitude. You’re going to get depressed, which is going to want to make you look at porn again. So just creates this vicious cycle and it’s just, it’s just going to make it worse for you.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, definitely.
Brett Mckay: I’m curious, is there any lines of research that you’re curious about exploring to understand pornography’s impact on relationships and emerging adulthood development?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, I mean, I think two areas. One is just better understanding the relationship dynamics. Again, we’ve got all this research now about the risks of porn to relationships like we talked about, but we don’t know a lot yet about how modern young adults and even teenagers are actively or not actively discussing or navigating it in the relationship. Again, we’re kind of assuming that couples are probably having some version of these conversations, but we’re not really clear right now in the research about how those conversations are going. Like I said earlier, we know that most couples are using porn together, but we don’t know how they got there. Like, how did that happen? Like, did the guy introduce it? Did you have a conversation about it? How do you navigate, like, what porn you look at together and what porn you don’t? So there’s a lot of questions about just kind of the coupled dynamic stuff that’s happening that I think we need more research that I want to do in the future. The other big thing, and this is actually where I’m putting most of my energy in, like, most things, it feels like when it comes to technology is artificial intelligence.
I think artificial intelligence is about to change the game when it comes to sexual media. Actually got a report that’s coming out through the Wheatley Institute, which is a group I’m affiliated with at my university, that’s going to be showing some national US Data when it comes to AI companion apps and AI generated images on social media that are oftentimes sexualized and AI porn. That’s showing that, particularly among people in their 20s, this is actually a very common behavior. It’s not more than half, but we’re finding 1 in 4, 1 in 3 young adult men are using AI companion girlfriend apps at some level now. And I think that’s really going to change some of the dynamics around pornography and sexual media in the next. I think it already is, but particularly in the next five years, is that technology becomes more and more popular. That’s another area that we really need to start having some more public discourse about, because I think it’s really potentially going to impact relationships in some unique way.
Brett Mckay: Yeah, I think so, too. I’ve been reading some articles about that. I think Esquire did one, New York Times did one about the AI companions. And what’s interesting with the guys, of course they’re using the AI to create, you know, explicit images. But what they’ve found is that the guys really just like the companionship. It’s an emotional thing. And so when they talk to the chat bot, they just get this great dose of affirmation, like, oh, she just loves everything I say. You know, it just. It just feels good. And that’s probably not Good for forming human to human relationships.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: That’s my, my big concern from the early research that’s coming out is that pornography, as common as it’s become, has never really threatened to replace a real relationship. It’s just kind of there. People are still, you know, dating and having sex with real people and getting married. And pornography doesn’t seem like it’s having a huge impact on that. It’s just impacting the trajectory and the dynamics. I think the AI stuff has the potential to really impact just baseline desire to engage in a real relationship. Because like you said, now if I have this companion app and most of these AI platforms are allowing me to now emotionally engage with someone that seems very real, that I can call on the phone and hear a real, you know, a real human voice that does not sound like a robot anymore, that can send me images and eventually videos that are explicit. So I can tie the porn piece that we’ve been talking about to now, someone who is perfectly validating, perfectly emotionally connecting, that always cares about what I have to say, that never fights with me. It starts to very quickly create an environment and an ecosystem that says, why would I engage in a real relationship if I can get almost everything I need over here instead?
Brett Mckay: And also, I think it complicates the infidelity aspect of porn. So, you know, a lot of, you know, men and women, they might think, well, if my spouse looks at porn, it’s not. He’s not cheating on me. I don’t like it, but it’s not cheating. The AI thing’s weird is like, oh, my gosh, I found these text messages my husband’s having with his AI girlfriend. This feels like it’s infidelity, like he’s cheating on me with a chatbot.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, yeah. In fact, I’ll give you just two fun, not fun, but scary scenarios that they’re tied to that just how complex this can get. Because a lot of these companions also have deepfake technology where I can feed an image in and use that to kind of generate the avatar. And so what happens when, you know, I feed our next door neighbor’s wife into that? And so I’m now engaging in a relationship with an AI companion, but it looks like our neighbor, or here’s another just crazy scenario that I think will happen. I can feed my spouse’s picture into it. And so I’ve created an idealized, perfectly sexual, perfectly, you know, shaped version of my spouse. Can you cheat on your spouse with your spouse? Is going to be a question people are going to ask themselves in the next five years.
Brett Mckay: And she doesn’t nag me, she just affirms me. Wow. Crazy world we live in. Well, Brian, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Yeah, so you can go to my faculty website at Brigham Young University. It’s usually where I’ve got my latest research published. Like I said, I’m a fellow at the Wheatley Institute at BYU as well. We’re regularly be publishing public reports on a variety of topics. Like I said, we’ve got the AI one coming out in the next couple days. So those are two of the the best places.
Brett Mckay: Fantastic. Well, Brian Willoughby, thanks for time. It’s been a pleasure.
Dr. Brian Willoughby: Thank you.
Brett Mckay: My guest today was Dr. Brian Willoughby. He’s a social scientist at Brigham Young University. Check out our shownotes at aom.is/porn where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives. And check out our new newsletter. It’s called Dying Breed. You can sign up @dyingbreed.net It’s a great way to directly support the show. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot and if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to AOM podcast but put what you’ve heard into action.
