The widespread access to and use of pornography among adolescents indicates that it is not at all unusual for a given teen to use porn. However, parents, educators, and psychologists alike have expressed concern about porn serving as de facto sexual education for many young people, because of its unrealistic depictions of sexual activity.
Is Porn Addiction Really a Disorder?
Shame is an important factor in problematic porn use.
THE BASICS
- The Fundamentals of Sex
- Find a sex therapist near me
This post is in response to Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You Should, Too By David J. Ley Ph.D.
What if the problem with frequent or problematic porn use was not the behavior itself, but how you, your partner, your religion, and the culture around you judged it?
For the past 20 years since pornography became easily accessible online, there has been a tremendous amount of attention on the potentially addictive qualities of porn. There has also been a huge growth in residential treatment facilities that offer sobriety and recovery programs for those who self-identify or whose partners identify them as “porn addicts.”
There has been much discussion in sexuality research and clinical circles on possible new diagnoses and treatment models including hypersexual disorder, impulsive/compulsive sexual disorder (ICSD), non-paraphilic compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD), and out-of-control sexual behavior (OCSB). As a sex therapist who sees clients who frequently come to treatment in crisis when their out-of-control sexual behaviors are threatening their marriages, relationships, or jobs, I often hear clients self-diagnose as “porn addicts.”
I recently began to run the Out of Control Sexual Behavior Men’s Group in my practice. While there was not enough research to warrant a formal diagnosis in the most recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM5) in 2013, in 2019 the World Health Organization included the novel diagnosis of CSBD in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
Porn Use and Relationship Challenges
In a recent study by Beáta Bőthe et al. from a large sample (13,778 participants) researching hypersexuality and problematic porn use, the results indicated that both impulsivity and compulsivity were weakly related to problematic pornography use among men and women, respectively. There is however, growing research that tells us that the frequency of porn use may not be the most critical variable associated with a person’s feeling dysregulated or out of control. Self-perceived problematic porn use (SPPPU) is a term referring to an individual who self-identifies as addicted to porn because they feel they are unable to regulate their porn consumption, and that use interferes with everyday life.
However, within academic research (Grubbs, Lee, et al., 2020; Vaillancourt- Morel et al., 2017) and my clinical practice, people who report problematic pornography use may do so independently of the actual number of times a week they’re using porn or the length of time spent online while watching porn. Thus, there is evidence that quantity or frequency may not be the only determining factor in whether a person reports feeling out of control in their use of porn.
The problematic porn or self-described “porn addiction” use can be viewed more as a symptom of deeper psychiatric issues and/or relational conflicts the person has with others.
In my clinical experience, which has been primarily with cisgender male clients, a client feels out of control due to the shame he feels when the type of porn he is watching is discovered by a partner and he/she feels disgusted by his erotic interests.
In other situations, a client may feel angry with himself for paying a large amount of money to watch porn secretly. He feels guilty for what his partner and he may look upon as a “filthy habit” that has eaten away at their joint savings. At other times, if a client feels resentful of the sense of powerlessness he feels in his relationship or at work, his use of porn may be an unconscious expression of anger, freedom, revenge, and liberation, a powerful antidote to this concoction of emotions that centers erotic and sexual pleasure to silence the feelings he can’t communicate effectively.
THE BASICS
- The Fundamentals of Sex
- Find a sex therapist near me
Part of the Sex Esteem® model used with clients is to teach them how to identify what he is feeling by using mindfulness techniques to initially locate the emotion in his body. If it’s anxiety, frequently a client will feel tightness in his chest, with shame he may report a nauseous sensation in his stomach. If he has not come to terms with his own rage, he may feel clenching his jaw area.
Frequently, these clients report masturbating to porn then feeling deep guilt and shame afterward. What he learns through individual and group therapy is that although he had a moment of reprieve from these intrusive feelings, his conflicts have not been resolved or communicated to the person about or to whom he feels angry, frustrated, ignored, or worried.
Porn Addiction
Pornography use is a widespread means of dealing with one’s sexual drives. More than 90 percent of young men report watching porn videos with some regularity, particularly in the United States. Many of these videos depict acts that they might never engage in themselves—in other words, erotic fantasies.
On Pornhub, the world’s largest porn website, alone, well over 90 billion videos are viewed daily by more than 64 million visitors, 26 percent of them female. Although viewing erotica is nearly ubiquitous among males, some men and women regard watching internet porn as pathological and believe that time spent doing so may be a sign of “porn addiction,” although such a diagnosis is rejected by many psychologists, as are treatment approaches based on addiction models.
Contents
- The Debate over Porn
- Pornography and Relationships
The Debate over Porn
Many individuals worry that their own or a partner’s use of porn is pathological, but neither porn addiction nor sex addiction is a recognized disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, however, now includes Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder, for which clinicians report that compulsive use of pornography is the leading concern of diagnosed patients. But that guide states that personal distress over sex acts such as porn use based on one’s own moral judgments isn’t sufficient to diagnose a disorder. So if someone believes that masturbation to porn is immoral, yet they do it anyway, most clinicians agree that in itself is not a sign of a mental health disorder.
Is it normal to use porn?
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In surveys, virtually all men admit to having used pornography at some point in their lives, and nearly as many acknowledge using it within the last six months. Such results indicate that, whatever critics believe about the dangers or downsides of porn use, for individuals or relationships, those risks may be exaggerated.
Should parents be concerned about their children’s porn use?
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The widespread access to and use of pornography among adolescents indicates that it is not at all unusual for a given teen to use porn. However, parents, educators, and psychologists alike have expressed concern about porn serving as de facto sexual education for many young people, because of its unrealistic depictions of sexual activity.
I can’t stop watching porn. Am I addicted to it?
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Many researchers doubt porn addiction is a true clinical condition. Instead, some research shows, those who believe they have an addiction to pornography may not use it more than others, but may hold cultural or religious beliefs that make them feel more guilty about it. Other research shows that seeing oneself as a porn addict may be closely correlated to depression, anxiety, and anger.
When does pornography use become problematic?
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Experts agree that even if porn use is not a clinical disorder, an individual’s use is a problem if he or she believes it to be one. Surveys find that around four percent of men and one percent of women believe they may be addicted to porn. Some researchers believe therapists should discuss clients’ cultural and religious beliefs, and consider their own, before making any diagnosis based on the use of porn.
Does pornography use affect the brain?
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Brain monitoring of individuals who believe they have an addiction to porn does not show increased activity in regions of the brain generally activated by addiction when those people view sexually explicit images. Instead, some neuroscientists believe that what may be perceived as an addiction to porn may be a manifestation of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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Pornography and Relationships
There is no question that porn use can create distress for individuals or couples. Porn is a common source of conflict in relationships, research finds, primarily when one partner has been hiding their use knowing that the other would disapprove or consider it to be an act of infidelity. Joint counseling can help partners understand each other’s sexual interests and negotiate what is and is not acceptable in their relationship going forward. But it is more likely, many psychologists believe, that disputes about porn use will be found to be driven by other more critical underlying sexual or relationship issues that need to be addressed.
Why does pornography cause problems in some relationships?
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Research finds a correlation between porn use and the likelihood of future breakups, but the effect is not necessarily based on the use of porn itself but whether a partner disapproves of it. Psychologists urge partners to discuss potentially divisive issues like porn use before getting married to avoid potentially devastating disputes in the future.
What does porn use reveal about a relationship?
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Many therapists agree that couples’ disputes about porn are generally about deeper issues. A partner may assume the other knows they disapprove of porn use but may never have openly discussed it, or other core values. Or someone may believe porn use is a sign that a partner has withdrawn from the relationship, but that concern tends to be based on an accumulation of signals.
Does pornography use cause erectile dysfunction?
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The belief that porn use leads to erectile dysfunction (ED) is generally not accurate. Studies have found that men who reported both frequent porn use and ED were also the subjects most likely to hold the most conservative views about sex and religion; in other words, the distress they felt about their porn use likely influenced their experience of ED.
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