By Pornography consumption is on the rise, and so are its consequences. Access to this type of content is easy, free and discreet. But how does it affect us and why?
Pornography is replacing sexual education for young people and the consequences are immense. Addiction, distorted and aggressive vision of relationships, self-esteem problems… In our interview with Alejandro Villena we discover the need to raise greater social awareness on this issue.
Living and, above all, growing up in such a technological age as the present has its benefits, but also its risks. It is common, for example, for 8-year-old children to accidentally “stumble” upon adult content. And this happens because, to this day, we still do not have filters or effective mechanisms to protect minors from these types of portals.
Porn is free and easily accessible. Teenagers who are used to seeing the world and interacting at an early age through screens are cultured through these images, unwittingly entrenching gender stereotypes and sexual practices that are as violent as they are distorted.
Adults are no strangers to this language, to the fierce, stereotyped and violent porn culture that can affect our relationships. We need change. It is urgent to provide more research, resources and legislation to this dark world of the Internet that is completely distorting the very foundations of human sexuality.
“Sex is not a product, it is an experience.”
-Alejandro Villena-
Pornography consumption and its consequences
Alejandro Villena is a general health psychologist and coordinator of the clinical sexology and sexual health unit at the Dr. Carlos Chiclana clinic in Madrid. He is also a member of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) and the European Society for Sexual Medicine (ESSM).
His work as a researcher on sexuality issues and as the director of the first online course on pornography addiction in Spanish are also noteworthy. Also worth mentioning is his work as coordinator of the Sexualidad y Salud blog and as the founder of the Sexualidad en Tiempos Modernos podcast .
In our interview with him, we try to bring greater awareness and social consciousness on the topic of pornography today.
Q. Why is porn consumption increasing?
One of the best explanations for this is the so-called “Triple A Engineering” which refers to the accessibility, affordability and anonymity of pornographic material on the internet today. It is easy, free and discreet to access pornography in this day and age, unlike before the internet.
Another interesting explanation could be the lack of rules regarding technology use in families. We give screens to the youngest children too early, we do not teach teenagers to tolerate frustration, to manage their emotions or to play with other items. Clearly, giving a screen is much easier than helping to manage conflicts and requires less effort, but it does not help teenagers to develop fully.
All of this implies the risk that teenagers may encounter unwanted, explicit sexual content at a very early age. In fact, between 20-30% of teenagers accidentally access pornography at a stage in their development when they are not prepared to digest or understand the content that appears in these videos.
Finally, we could highlight the business power of the pornography industry , as it carefully studies how to reach the most remote places to advertise its pornographic content. This marketing strategy makes pornography completely accessible on the web for any user, regardless of their age.
Q. How does pornography consumption affect teenagers? Are there differences between boys and girls?
Porn affects teenagers in many ways:
– It can lead to addiction : around 37% of adolescent boys and 20% of adolescent girls have a potential risk of developing problematic use of pornography, which can lead them to lose control over their behaviour, need more and more pornography to feel the same effects and suffer consequences in the personal, relational, family and academic spheres derived from such consumption.
It has also been observed how repeated consumption of pornography can alter brain centers related to pleasure , motivation, empathy, decision-making and learning.
– It encourages an aggressive view : the more pornography is consumed, the greater the likelihood of sexual aggression or coercion. This is demonstrated by several studies, which also discuss the amount of aggressive content that appears in mainstream pornography.
– Distortion of eroticism : the fictitious and reductionist representation of sexuality in pornography means that adolescents do not incorporate a healthy model of sexuality. This utopian vision, added to the scarce and ineffective sexual education, produces unrealistic expectations in adolescents that can lead to frustration for not achieving the expected results that pornography has imposed on them.
– Regarding men and women: until now the main consumer of pornography was men, with around 80-90% of men having been exposed to pornography since they were young; now it is observed that between 35-60% of women also consume pornography and the results that appear are similar in relation to the harmful consequences.
- In men, it has been seen that it can generate more aggressive models , promote gender hierarchies and facilitate risky sexual behavior.
- In women, it is observed that the greater the consumption of pornography, the greater the tolerance to harassment or the probability of being sexually assaulted. This is because when consuming material in which there is explicit violence, women are unable to determine what types of practices are permissible or consensual and which are not. The ability to set limits on sexuality and to feel empathy is altered.
A very recent study in women shows how neurological circuits related to empathy and mirror neurons are altered in women who consume pornography.
Q. How does porn affect self-esteem?
It is completely linked to and has to do with the idealization of sex. If I expect a behavior that is not feasible to carry out in real life, the result will be anxiety, frustration, performance pressure and fear of failure.
All of this affects people’s sexual worth and their sexual self-esteem , which can make the teenager think that he or she is not good enough or valid on a sexual level.
Not only that, but it can also cause “erotic-body dysmorphophobia” , that is, an alteration in the perception we have of our genitals and our own body, derived from the constant comparison and vicarious learning that occurs when we watch pornography repeatedly. There are many cases of young women who operate on their genitals to look like pornographic actresses…
Q. And what about our relations?
It can also distort them. On the one hand, it can alter the vision we have about men and women and how we should behave in bed because it imposes the model of sexual relationships on us.
Women are always the least benefited, as they are usually submissive to the pleasure of men. Men are imposed with a vision of aggressive and dominant masculinity and are dissociated from their affectivity so that they can achieve pleasure at all costs, no matter who falls.
On the other hand, the body of people who repeatedly consume pornography becomes accustomed to a specific stimulus, in this case a ” superstimulus ” , such as pornography, which can affect the sexual response when the person wants to have sexual relations with a real person.
The body becomes accustomed to virtual, solitary and non-relational sex. Studies warn of the association between pornography consumption and sexual dissatisfaction , erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation , among other sexual difficulties.
Furthermore, when one of the partners consumes pornography and the other does not, the sexual desire towards the partner can be altered , since watching pornography is more “comfortable” and faster. Thus, the person does not need to make an effort to connect with the other person and eventually disconnects from them. In the end, this shapes people who do not dare to become intimate in an authentic way in the sexual sphere.
Q. Is watching pornography related to infidelity?
Repeated consumption of pornography can lead to habituation of the stimulus and, therefore, to the need to seek “stronger” sexual behaviors to obtain the same effects beyond pornography. In fact, consumption of pornography in adolescents has been linked to the desire to resort to prostitution and to frequenting brothels in adulthood. Therefore, it can be linked to infidelity in this way.
There is also a phenomenon that occurs in women called “betrayal trauma ,” in which the wife of an addict (usually the man is the addict), after discovering her partner’s pornography use, may feel betrayed, even developing symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as re-experiencing the trauma, excessive control, hypervigilance, or nightmares.
Q. Why do you think there is a kind of denial about the negative effects of pornography? Are we blind to this reality?
I think that we are and that we do it to ourselves. There is a lack of clear and scientific information in society so that we are aware of the harm that pornography can cause in people.
The vast majority of messages that the population receives are “do what you want, if you are free to do it, it is fine”, “pornography is good and is a way to break down sexual prejudices”, “watching feminist pornography makes you more feminist”.
These messages are very damaging, as they associate concepts as complex and socially important as freedom, equality or feminism with an industry that has the potential to have a negative impact and whose sole purpose is to profit from the views it achieves.
The porn industry is not there to make us better sexually , or to educate us, or to help us have more pleasure. Its goal is to make money at our expense, and it is important to know this.
On the other hand, there are those who do not want to see it because they are not interested , because they are part of the industry or because they are not able to see beyond the momentary pleasure that pornography produces. We live in a hedonistic society with little capacity for effort and this is another reflection of that.
I also think that pornographic culture goes hand in hand with consumer culture. We turn sex into a product and not into a bonding experience. This has great risks because we distort and depersonalize sex, and human beings fall behind pleasure.
In this way, we focus happiness on achieving more pleasure, consuming more sex, thinking that this will make us feel more fulfilled. The reality is that, at the end of all this, we are left with empty people with a false illusion of happiness.
In fact, due to this misinformation and lack of action, we created the association Dale Una Vuelta , with the motto Stop Porn, Start Sex . The idea was to create a citizen platform that would offer help to people who suffer from the consumption of pornography. After more than 4 years, we have helped thousands of people and given workshops in cities throughout Spain.
Q. There is also talk of pornography addiction. Do you think the percentage is high despite being invisible?
General studies indicate that between 3-8% of the population develops problematic use of pornography (colloquially known as porn addiction ). This is a fairly high prevalence in terms of mental health and is very worrying.
It is also necessary to raise awareness among professionals in psychology, sexology and medicine, since we have the responsibility of knowing how the consumption of pornography affects people and of learning to detect and treat people who suffer as a result of it.
Q. What measures and solutions do you think would be best for this problem?
It is an unresolved debate that, in my opinion, should be addressed from a multidisciplinary perspective: social, family, educational, political, legal and clinical.
First of all, it would be advisable to carry out awareness and social consciousness campaigns on the subject of pornography. Being able to write an article here, in La Mente es Maravillosa and in other media, is part of this very important task of dissemination.
From a legal and political perspective, we need to consider whether it is possible to restrict certain types of content such as rape pornography, humiliation or degradation of women that goes against human rights.
Recently, a movement called Traficking Hub has emerged , which denounces real rape videos that appear on platforms such as PornHub. Also, in this area, it would be useful to consider whether some kind of regulation could be applied to pornography in general, to protect minors.
From a clinical and scientific perspective, we need more empirical research to support our discussion of pornography. A European manifesto was published last year to coordinate researchers in the field of pornography consumption. Professionals in psychology, medicine and sexology should also be trained in this area.
In schools, we need educational programs to teach literacy about pornography. In other countries, there are already several schools that include these programs, whose objective is to teach adolescents that what is shown in pornography is not real and to help them develop an empathetic, affectionate and healthy sexuality.
Of course, we need a comprehensive sex education as a foundation , one that is not limited to the prevention of STDs, but that speaks of sexuality as something that connects the whole human being and includes the biological, the emotional, the cognitive, the sociocultural, the spiritual and the ethical. Let us not forget that in any sexual relationship there are two human beings and we have the obligation to understand, care for, empathize, respect and dialogue with the person in front of us.
A recent study talks about the responsibility of parents to take an active role in the sexual education of their children and to promote and recommend healthy and educational websites, instead of prohibiting or restricting negative ones. An education that is based on freedom with responsibility , on fostering the autonomy and independence of the youngest, but with a capacity for discernment and critical thinking.
Ultimately, if we all do our part, we can surely make the world a better place , sexually speaking.