The Porn Debate

In essence all YBOP’s articles can be classified as debate for the existence of Internet porn addiction and porn-induced problems. However, the following articles were written as a response to Psychology Today blog posts, questionable studies or as updates on the relevant advances in addiction medicine.

Also see – Questionable & Misleading Studies

• Gary Wilson – “Porn Research: Fact or Fiction?” – Wilson exposes the truth behind 5 studies propagandists cite (all listed below) to support their claims that porn addiction doesn’t exist or that porn use is largely beneficial.
• Debunking “Why Are We Still So Worried About Wat­­ching Porn?”, by Marty Klein, Taylor Kohut, and Nicole Prause (2018)
• Boys and Porn: A Moving Target: The chief “unique vulnerability” behind problems today’s young porn users are reporting is likely to be the adolescent brain colliding with today’s super-potent online sexual stimuli.
• Toss Your Textbooks: Docs Redefine Sexual Behavior Addictions  – American Society of Addiction Medicine agrees to disagree with DSM. America’s top addiction experts have just released a new definition of addiction confirming that sex (and porn) addictions are genuine addictions.
• Recent Internet Addiction Studies Include Porn – Brain research on Internet addiction points in only one direction. Since we wrote Ominous News for Porn Users: Internet Addiction Atrophies Brains, which addressed recent online videogame addiction research, a tide of brand new research has been rolling in from around the world addressing Internet addiction.
• Porn, Pseudoscience and DeltaFosB (2013) – Can you spot these 5 familiar myths about porn addiction? Ever heard someone claim that the concept of Internet porn addiction is pseudoscience? Chances are you’ll also hear various popular myths in support of the claim. However, a single neurobiological discovery invalidates these “sciency” rationalizations

Dr Don Hilton debates the evidence

• Is there evidence supporting the existence of pornography addiction? – A discussion of  “Pornography addiction – a supranormal stimulus considered in the context of neuroplasticity” by Donald L Hilton, MD, in Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology.
• Porn Addiction Is Not Sex Addiction–And Why It Matters – Sex addiction requires real people; porn addiction requires a screen. While porn addiction remains hidden under the umbrella of sex addiction, users who develop symptoms are in a precarious position. They have to figure things out for themselves.
• Porn and DSM-5: Are Sexual Politics At Play? – Care to weigh in on Internet pornography/cybersex addiction? The DSM-5 should move everything related to Internet addictions (gaming, cybersex, social media and pornography) to ‘Substance Use and Addictive Disorders’ and place it under the jurisdiction of addiction specialists who understand that Internet addiction is one condition—the product of plastic brain changes, and generally reversible.
• The Wages of Sexual-Addiction Politics – Did addiction politics leave us stranded on a slippery slope? In 1992, a political skirmish took place in the field of medicine, which has discouraged deeper understanding of human sexuality. According to David E. Smith MD, past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), doctors bartered away the recognition of sex addiction as a pathology in order to address a more immediate risk.
• The Other Porn Experiment – Internet porn studies rely on anecdotal evidence and have no control groups. What can informal control groups of former porn users show us?

Debate on politics and porn

• Politics, Porn and Addiction Neuroscience  – Curious about Internet porn? Ask an addiction specialist. All Internet addictions have the power to alter brains, with negative consequences for children and adults
• Exclusion of Internet Porn Addiction Makes No Biological Sense – Both sexual anorexia and sex addiction can co-exist. This article is a reply to one of David Ley’s many attacks on us and the science of Internet porn addiction.
• Porn Study: Does Viewing Explain Doing—Or Not? – Porn alters sexual behavior; so do other things.Is today’s porn driving some young users toward riskier behavior while others are shut out because of the symptoms of their heavy porn use?
• The End of The Porn Debate? – Tools to measure porn’s effects on the brain are here. What exactly what would brain researchers be looking for in porn users’ brains? Why hasn’t this research been done already? And why do diagnostic labels matter anyway?

DSM Failure was a setback for the debate

• DSM-5 Attempts to Sweep Porn Addiction Under the Rug – Time to acknowledge the link between sex and brain science Unless the DSM reconsiders, if you fall into compulsive porn use, your condition “doesn’t exist” and you will be treated, if at all, for the unpleasant symptoms of addiction (such as anxiety, ED, depression, concentration problems) instead of your actual pathology.
• Teach Porn In Schools? – Prepare students to deal with porn; teach them about their brains. Those giving up porn are also beginning to shape our culture. Like soldiers returning from the front, they offer some of the pithiest and most moving insights into the realities of life with, and without, highspeed porn.
• Drumroll: An Academic Journal For Porn Fans – Academia prepares to ‘accentuate the positive’ in new porn periodical. If there were ever a human phenomenon in need of serious objective investigation, Internet porn use is surely it. However, the board of the “Porn Studies Journal” appears to lack the detachment and expertise necessary to fulfill this critical role.

Porn and culture debated

• Post-Porn Culture -“Once recovered, I’m guarding my sex drive like Fort Knox”. Education that helps kids cope with today’s Internet porn phenomenon is a great idea. But let’s not waste a brilliant educational opportunity trying to sort good porn from bad porn.
• Measuring Porn’s Effects: What About the Users? – An open letter to Simon Lajeunesse. Simon Lajeunesse is a researcher who couldn’t find any “porn virgins” to do a study on the effects of Internet porn. He concluded porn was harmless. We give him some basic understanding of the problem
•  How can we bring the problem of porn addiction into the mainstream? – Ex-porn user outlines the challenge of explaining porn’s genuine risks
• Pornography Consumption Effect Scale: Useful or Not? – The most egregious porn study ever published! The ‘Pornography Consumption Effect Scale’ (PCES) seems to measure little but its creators’ enthusiasm for demonstrating that porn use is “positive.” Some of the resulting conclusions are beyond belief.
• ‘A Billion Wicked Thoughts’ Is Only A Snapshot: Longitudinal studies are needed to reveal morphing porn tastes
• Analysis of “No Evidence of Emotion Dysregulation in “Hypersexuals” Reporting Their Emotions to a Sexual Film” by SPAN Lab, (2013) – SPAN lab researchers used pre-Internet sexual-addiction theory, as well as the term “hypersexuals,” to describe problem porn users, thereby implying that they are discovering useful information about sex addicts—without using the term. Yet there are several problems with this effort.

SPAN Lab papers fuel the debate

• Nothing Correlates With Nothing In SPAN Lab’s New Porn Study (2013) – SPAN lab once again ignores their actual findings to concoct propaganda for public consumption. Five peer-reviewed papers support YBOP’s analysis.
• Analysis of “The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Review of the ‘Pornography Addiction’ Model”, by David Ley, Nicole Prause & Peter Finn (2014) – An unbelievable propaganda piece masquerading as a review. The analysis completely dismantles it, line by line.
• Analysis of “Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with ‘porn addiction’ (2015)”, by SPAN Lab – SPAN lab finally finds a control group for their 2013 EEG study. The results indicate desensitization, SPAN lab spins the results.
• Critique of “Perceived Addiction to Internet Pornography and Psychological Distress: Examining Relationships Concurrently and Over Time” (2015), Grubbs et al. – Joshua Grubb’s re-labels a porn addiction questionnaire as “perceived porn addiction”. Perhaps the most egregious piece of propaganda we have witnessed.
•  Is Joshua Grubbs pulling the wool over our eyes with his “perceived porn addiction” research? (2016) – Extensive critique of “perceived pornography addiction” and many of Joshua Grubbs assertions.

Prof Zimbardo enter the debate

• How Porn Is Messing with Your Manhood, by Philip Zimbardo & Gary Wilson – A 2016 article for Skeptic magazine, co-authored with Philip Zimbardo PhD
• More on Porn: Guard Your Manhood—A Response to Marty Klein, by Philip Zimbardo & Gary Wilson – A 2016 article for Skeptic magazine, co-authored with Philip Zimbardo PhD. This was our response to Marty Klein’s response to our original article.
• Op-ed: Who exactly is misrepresenting the science on pornography? (2016)  – Response to an op-ed by written by a Kinsey Institute grad, and signed by 7 other PhD’s.
• Critique of: “Damaged Goods: Perception of Pornography Addiction as a Mediator Between Religiosity and Relationship Anxiety Surrounding Pornography Use” (Leonhardt, Willoughby, & Young-Petersen, 2017) – Three BYU researchers concoct an actual porn addiction test and relabeled it “belief in porn addiction”.
• Critique of “Is Pornography Really about “Making Hate to Women”? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes Than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample” (2016) – Canadian researcher defines egalitarianism in such a way as to guarantee that porn watchers re more egalitarian.
• Critique of “Perceived Effects of Pornography on the Couple Relationship: Initial Findings of Open-Ended, Participant-Informed, Bottom-Up Research” (2016) – Canadian researcher selects couples where 95% of the women use porn so as to skew results. Uses non-standard assessment procedures.
• YBOP response to Jim Pfaus’s “Trust a scientist: sex addiction is a myth” (January, 2016)
• Debunking “Should you be worried about porn-induced erectile dysfunction?” – by The Daily Dot’s Claire Downs. (2018)
• Debunking Kris Taylor’s “A Few Hard Truths about Porn and Erectile Dysfunction” (2017)
• Debunking the “Men’s Health” article by Gavin Evans: “Can Watching Too Much Porn Give You Erectile Dysfunction?” (2018)