Every so often, people panic about porn addiction, probably unnecessarily. They think that watching more porn causes some kind of irreparable damage. A new study published in the International Journal of Sexual Health suggests that panic may be a bit overblown.
According to the researchers, it’s not how often people watch porn that predicts odd, sometimes frightening sexual health problems, but why they’re watching it in the first place. The study surveyed 890 Hungarian adults aged 18 to 64. It used established psychological scales to measure viewing frequency, motivations, sexual functioning, and signs of problematic use.
The researchers split motivations into two camps: “Positive” motivations included curiosity, pleasure, and fantasy exploration. “Negative” motivations involved using porn to cope with stress, loneliness, boredom, or emotional pain.
Watching Porn Is Fine—as Long as You’re Doing It for the Right Reasons
They found that people who watched porn for enjoyment or exploration often did so frequently yet showed no signs of sexual dysfunction. They tended to have healthier sexual regulation, less emotional withdrawal, and were more likely to engage in partnered sex for intimacy and connection. Porn was almost like a hobby that they could dip in and out of without it taking over their lives or influencing their behavior.
The trouble started when porn became a coping mechanism. Viewers who relied on it to manage negative emotions were far more likely to report feeling out of control and emotionally disconnected during sex with partners.
Things get problematic when you start using porn to cope with your emotional and psychological problems, which leads to sexual deactivation, essentially using porn to check out emotionally.
These outcomes couldn’t be predicted solely from frequency. High use only became an issue when paired with distress and loss of control. As lead author Norbert Meskó noted, porn doesn’t become a problem with frequent use. Problematic use, however, had the strongest links to emotional and sexual difficulties.
In other words, don’t use porn to fill emotional and psychological gaps in your life, or to generally make you feel better. It’s not an antidepressant. It won’t give you the long-lasting endorphin rush of a good workout.
Of course, the study isn’t definitive. It’s based on self-reported data and captures only a single moment in time, so it can’t prove cause and effect. But it does suggest that maybe when it comes to porn consumption, we should stop looking at a stopwatch to determine healthiness and start trying to understand the emotional context that drives people to watch in the first place.
The post Are You Watching Porn the Wrong Way? appeared first on VICE.
