There Are 3 Types Of Pornography Watchers, And Only 1 Is Healthy: Which Group Do You Fall In?
It you watch pornography, you’re not alone. According to The Huffington Post, porn sites get more visitors than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. However, research suggests that not all porn viewers are the same. Instead, these viewers can be split into three distinct groups, and only one of these is considered “healthy.”
The study, now published online in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, found that most porn viewers could be split into the following groups: The recreational, the compulsive, and the distressed. Recreational porn watchers made up the highest group, accounting for 75 percent of all participants involved in the study, NY Magazine reported. This group watched an average of 24 minutes of porn a week and was largely made up of women and people in relationships. This was followed by “the distressed” who, as you may have guessed, associated a lot of emotional distress with their porn habits. This group also watched the least porn, averaging about 17 minutes per week.
Lastly, “the compulsive” group made up only 11.8 percent of the participants; the group may be small but their viewing habits were mighty. This group watched an average of 110 minutes of pornography a week. According to the researchers, however, only the first group is healthy, whereas porn creates a problem for the two smaller subgroups.
For the study, the team of researchers from Université Laval in Quebec had 830 volunteers answer questions about their pornography habits covering topics such as how often they watched porn, how compulsive their porn habits were, and their level of emotional distress while watching porn. Of this group, about 70 percent were women with an average age of 25, and 80 percent classified themselves as heterosexual. The group was also evenly split among those in serious relationships, those simply dating, and those who considered themselves to be single.
While the majority of those who watch porn use it in a healthy manner to enhance their sex life or as an outlet for pent-up sexual desires, for the remaining minority, porn can be a problem. One such group is those with porn addictoin. Although still not classified as a true addiction, by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, many researchers support the idea that one can become addicted to pornography just as they would a drug or alcohol.
Then again, others suggests that this may not be the case, and pornography itself is not the root cause for some individual's missue of explicit media. For example, a 2015 study showed that for "porn addicts", pornography failed to activate the same area of the brain that is activated when gamblers see a casino or when a drug addict sees their drug of choice.
Source: Vaillancourt-Morel MP, Blais-Lecours S, Labadie C, et al. Profiles of Cyberpornography Use and Sexual Well-Being in Adults. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. 2017
Correction: The article has been corrected to show that the 2015 study found pornography did not activate the same areas of the brain as gambling and drug addiction.
See Also:
Porn Addiction: True Dependence Or Another Type Of Problem Entirely?
