
Survey of research into the effects of pornography - kawera
https://aeon.co/essays/does-too-much-pornography-numb-us-to-sexual-pleasure
======
cm2012
Solid article backed up with research put in context.

TL;DR: Almost everyone watches porn, and people are starting to watch younger
and younger. However, almost all research shows it's not harmful. Porn is also
a reflection of the viewer and society.

------
kawera
There is also a related and thoughtful discussion on Aeon's own website:
[https://aeon.co/conversations/is-it-wrong-to-watch-
pornograp...](https://aeon.co/conversations/is-it-wrong-to-watch-pornography-
and-i-don-t-mean-does-pornography-cause-harm)

------
throwaway13337
The referenced Newton episode is here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PeQG61W4i0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PeQG61W4i0)

The Scandinavian approach to sexual education goes a long way to ensuring
children's confidence about their body and their feelings.

------
carsongross
What are the chances someone interested in researching about porn is going to
find that porn is harmful?

------
OedipusRex
"More than 36% of the internet content is porn". Is this in terms of
bandwidth, size of files, or some other metric? If it's size of files then of
course porn in going to be a large percentage of files because video files are
large.

------
spacehome
Slight NSFW warning (blurred tits).

------
revscat
tl;dr: There is no evidence that pornography has ill effects, and a modicum of
evidence that it can be positive. The (sometimes) conventional wisdom about
porn -- objectification of women, its addictive nature, destructiveness in
relationships -- is flatly wrong.

~~~
claar
I read this as a single researcher (Prause) in a university with an agenda to
push.

Sometimes conventional wisdom is conventional for a good reason.

~~~
nickpsecurity
You should look up Masters and Johnson. The first time any science at all was
performed to test conventional wisdom showed conventional wisdom was mostly
nonsense. Often nonsense passed down from one person to another with negative
effects on people. That was mostly the physical stuff. Now, we need to know
the psychological stuff.

As before, people's pre-existing beliefs and social structures make it hard to
even test the conventional wisdom. Contradicting it is declared evil or
foolish before-hand. Given history of "wisdom" in this area, it's right to
test it in ways that might show contradictions. People have always been
exceedingly foolish on these things when they cast judgment before collecting
data. No reason to believe it will be different this time.

