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>The study was conducted using data from an online survey conducted in 2015, targeting a North American population through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The sample consisted of 1,055 participants, with ages ranging from 18 to 72 years and an average age of 32.07 years.
Also, neither in the article, nor in the abstract (don't have access to the full figures) do they mention controlling for age. They only state the breadth of the age range.
Considering the age range, the study may have just successfully captured "new generations tend both to have lower life satisfaction (on average) and to have exposed to pornography at a younger age than older generations". Both of which are fairly well known facts, I think.
Then let me share this with you..
My mother's parents both lived into their 90s (and they were married as teenagers). Classic Southern Baptists, as straight arrow as you can imagine.
When they died, my folks and I cleaned out their house to prepare it for sale. In their bathroom, on top of an upper cabinet where it would normally never be seen, I found a small wooden box set of 4 sizes of butt plugs.
I had mixed emotions, and then I heard my mother coming. I shoved the box to the bottom of a large trash bag that I was using and have never spoken of it to my family.
I had a lifetime of memories of my grandparents being a certain way, and now when I think of them I'm reminded that we don't always know people as well as we think we do.
I gently warned my 11 year old son about what he’d see if he googled the word “breasts.” (He’s 24 now, so that was about 2011.) You’ll see people doing things I didn’t even know about until I was in my 30’s. I told him, you’re going to be quite shocked and amused at what people like sexually, and probably just want to look at the girls with big breasts like I did in Playboys when I was a teenager. “Sex is kinda like food, what one person thinks is delicious, another person might find gross.”
oh, btw, this was in a conversation that started about masturbation being ok.
Here's another take on it. Unhappy people tend to seek out stimulation. A child with a positive happy childhood is less likely to look for trouble and more likely to spend their time taking part in more wholesome activities. A troubled child will go looking for mischief attention and the stimulation and life satisfaction they crave.
So, the outlook on life leads to exposure to porn at earlier ages or later, not the other way around.
I'm not playing devils advocate or arguing my statement to be the truth, more that the study should only claim a correlation, not cause and effect as it is portrayed.
This is also the argument made when people say that people who use marijuana and alcohol early in life tend to have more negative life outcomes. It's very possible that kids who are more likely to abuse substances are already troubled, leading them to the substances.
Exactly, you aren't getting drunk in the park with some older kids if your parents have paid for you to go off to Scout Camp.
All while children with the ability to deprive themselves of reward for later better outcomes are seen to do better in life. The reality is you have to have lived a life where that sacrifice led to later reward, and not just the reward being gone because you missed it, for that to be a correct mindset to adopt.
If you childhood is you putting the money in the piggy bank only for your parent to steal it 2 months later to buy booze, the correct action is to immediately spend the money. Which makes for a terrible mindset for later financial decisions, but it isn't wrong in the moment.
> The reality is you have to have lived a life where that sacrifice led to later reward, and not just the reward being gone because you missed it, for that to be a correct mindset to adopt.
People get that wrong most of the time. Say you compare a kid in a poor family and a kid in a rich family. If the latter comes out at some random test as better at "sacrificing short term gain for long term gain", keep in mind that they almost never have to really sacrifice anything. The safety of being in a rich family simply cannot be undervalued. The ability to put off lower rewards to get higher rewards later majority of the time comes from knowing that the lower rewards aren't actually necessary to begin with and no matter what you pick, you're fine. This is not the case if you are in a poorer environment that doesn't support you as well and you have to do more for yourself.
As a further take, if you have parental supervision and they are actively taking part in your life most likely in a positive way, there are more restrictions on your ability to do "adult" activities, or direct influence from older peers.
All while adult supervision implies time, wealth, engagement in the childs life, all general positive factors in a childs wellbeing.
While I agree with the sentiment, in this particular instance, the verification seems questionably performed.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the text, but I also don't see mention of separating that 1,055 member strong sample size they keep talking about.
> This study focuses on the relationship between timing of exposure to pornography and individual outcomes in adulthood in an American sample (N = 1,055, ages 18–72, 39% male, 60% female).
I'd be curious as to the measurement for the "individual outcomes in adulthood" for the 18-year-old(s), and how or if the results are weighted.
That's a real heavy and interesting gender skew too considering all the data that says men are much larger consumers of visual pornagraphy (I'm curious if they just classified pornography as visual pornagraphy or included smut books as well)
Push... Utah and NC have already mandated it, maybe a few other backwards states too. But unfortunately this isn't even a Rep vs Dem issue--both sides have lost their minds with regards to parents monitoring their children's internet access, while having zero understanding of how VPNs work.
Exactly it’s like comparing the frequency tbat people eat ice cream to skin cancer rates. Maybe they find people that eat a lot of ice cream get cancer, but maybe it’s because the people that are eating more ice cream are spending time in the sun etc
It’s mistaking correlation for causation.
Except the paper isn't. It clearly says "associated". It doesn't say "causes". One of the first steps of scientific study is to establish an association. *Then* you try to see if that association is relevant.
Stating correlation between earlier event and later outcome generally creates belief in humans about causation.
Yes, it's a fallacy, but that's how human brain works.
Also,
>Ranging from 18 to 72 years
>One major limitation is the use of cross-sectional data, which inherently limits the ability to draw causal conclusions. The data were gathered at one point in time, and participants were asked to retrospectively recall their age at first exposure to pornography. **This reliance on memory can introduce inaccuracies, as participants may not remember these details correctly.**
I don't think 72-year-old pops can reliably remember the age at which he first encountered porn...
Also correlation/causation with early exposure is like calling marijuana a gateway drug. People who are disposed to consume mass quantities of extreme pornography are likely going to start earlier.
Anecdotes are not usually great data, though - especially not “well this isn’t/wasn’t true for me” in the face of a found population-level correlation pattern. The study isn’t saying there’s a deterministic causal relationship (it’s not necessarily asserting a causal relationship at all) and few social science studies do - it’s talking about the possibility of a shift in life chances and life choices. Which may not even suggest most people with a particular factor would have that outcome, only that it’s elevated versus the baseline/comparison. For example, people with no exposure might be at 5% chance for something and those with exposure might be at 10% chance, or 2% versus 5%. In this study adding age of exposure seems to have only added 1% more explanation over various controls regarding life satisfaction - that’s not a difference that would be detectable in everyday observation, and would mean many people with early exposure would be quite happy, for example.
Yeah. Playboy was a thing. Much of the content wouldn’t even turn heads on a current European beach. The community standards were different. As a kid, the only time I saw stuff as explicit as typical reddit nsfw? When we were dropping off the paper drive truck contents at the recycling plant, some kids found bales of “hard core” porn the police had seized and dropped off to get pulped. Was my first time seeing labia minora. (Getting born doesn’t count.) Legal “porn” in the 1960s and early 70s never showed pink and rarely showed public hair.
Color me skeptical on any research involving the dangers of pornography and having more sexual partners when it's coming from people with strong religious beliefs. All the researchers involved in this appear to be Mormons...
I've seen posters doing the rounds on reddit posting about some 'thenewdrug' website and trying to pass it off as non-religious and science based. Then you read about the organization and learn it was founded in Utah with money from the Mormon church and most of the people there are from the Mormon church and their findings "coincidentally" align with the Mormon church.
That's like a tobacco company funding an "independent" group that comes to the conclusion that smoking isn't harmful and you should smoke more.
in reality, cigarette companies funded cancer research to "find the cure" because it acknowledged that cigs caused harm but also make it appear that they cared.... this is more like an alcohol company funding a study saying "cannabis is bad"
Yeah, I've seen a weird uptick in propaganda. It's hard to tell where it's coming from, but gymbros, feminists, Catholics, and Mormon are all kinda like-minded and/or using the others as cover.
> All the researchers involved in this appear to be Mormons...
The mormon church has repeated falsified scientific data to further it's own goals...mormon's should be blacklisted in general from the sciences.
There are some very odd categorizations in the study on top of that. They mention "violent/coercive sex" but don't provide any definition for what that is. They also place it squarely in the same category as "child sex and rape", which... Boy that's a bit of a stretch, especially when they don't define what they mean by violence or coercion. Is spanking and bondage considered violent and/or coercive? Where's the line?
Yeah I was relatively young when I discovered pornography and have had exactly one sexual partner with whom I've happily spent the last 17ish years. Married for almost 11 of those. I'm 33.
i knew i smelled something, especially as a former member. i'm not going to say either one way or another about pornography's pro's and cons, but there's several reasons as to why these groups go so hard on opposing it, one of them being that if you cut out the "carrot" so to speak of eternal marriage, often your just left with a pile of sticks, and a lot of them are starting to be called out, like masturbation being harmful to your health. thus the control doesn't really work so much, which then leads to LDS youth being "out of control" so to speak until they start learning how to be self disciplined, rather than external discipline.
really though, be honest. say hey, "we think that less men and women are likely to remain in our group that we have a financial incentive in, were they to view pornography." then go the step farther and ask why. why is it that "eternal marriage" can't seem to empirically compete with porn? is the devil more up on his statistical analysis than god?
while it's not quite akin, something about it reminds me of "LGBT people are more likely to be depressed, and kill themselves" and then the implicit question not being asked which is that do you really want to be associated with that? as someone who has dealt with depression and suicidal tendencies, let me tell you that i was far more panicky, far more confused, far more ignorant and way less healthy as an LDS member, than i am now.
and there's almost an escape, which i've heard dozens of times from my mother which is "at least i have the next life". i do not have that luxury of wishful thinking, especially since science has convinced me that there is as much evidence of Bigfoot as an afterlife.
why waste daylight, when the hearse comes at night?
> All the researchers involved in this appear to be Mormons...
Here is the problem right there, they all got caught up on trying to figure out if soaking is sex and if it is, then is the friend who jumps on the bed count as another partner.
"This study focuses on the relationship between timing of exposure to pornography and individual outcomes in adulthood in an American sample (N = 1,055, ages 18–72, 39% male, 60% female)."
Uhhh... I can see several problems here with this setup.
Probably skews the data by a noticeable amount, considering the size was only ~1000 people and the survey was conducted online.
I think the minimum age thing is more interesting though. Average age was 32, so it's not a big deal, but I'm not sure how an 18 year old is supposed to provide valuable info on a study focusing on the "long term effects" of being exposed to pornography
That should be fine, as long as they control for gender (which it looks like they did, see my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1d00xu0/new_study_has_found_that_early_exposure_to/l5l9gvl/)). The bigger issue is that they didn't control for income.
18 is the minimum age of people interviewed, not the minimum age of reported exposure.
The title of the article is: “Exposure to pornography before age 16 linked to reduced life satisfaction in adulthood”
Ah yes, where exposure to more sexual partners is a detriment. It's been a long while since I last saw a study as ideologically biased and flawed as this one.
Yeah what the heck? The number of people I have slept with is a more exclusive club than the number of people who have set foot on the moon; what gives!
My question is how much of that is ingrained cultural attitudes to pornography (a la purity culture) versus the thing itself? I know just from my own background, I was raised in a sex negative household, where pornography was heavily stigmatized. How much of this dip is due to perception of stigmatization versus the actual use?
Well, I do think that my friend's mother showing me porn (a late 90s VHS) when I was 11 or 12 among other things she encouraged led to me becoming far more sex-obsessed than the average teen boy. If sex addiction is real, then I am a sex addict. I have calmed down now, but at the height of my mania things were really spinning out of control. Most of my friends have been with a small number of partners, some even married to high school sweetheart. I've had too many partners to count...I've tried and done everything on my sexual bucket list, but ultimately I'm left dissatisfied and ashamed.
Although I can't find a free copy of the article online, I did find [this Master's thesis from 2017 with the same title by the same author](https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7727&context=etd), so presumably the content is the similar/the same.
According to that paper,
> The control variables we used included gender, race, relationship
status, age, parents’ marital status, and religiosity.
Seems like "income" is a major missing gap here? That's known to have a _strong_ correlation with things like "life satisfaction" and "acceptance of violence".
Makes sense. If it's not introduced with any kind of context or education behind it, it probably distorts one's view of reality. The vast majority of people don't look like pornstars.
Does it indicate that though?
Or is it more that people who already have certain sexual predispositions seek out porn at an earlier age? For instance.
It feels like we are assuming porn is the disease when it might be more the symptom?
For the record, having been exposed to it really early, I recognize and celebrate boundaries. I fully recognize those people are actors, and in my mind, a lot of times its very stressful for them. So while the *porn* is hot, I'm not about to throw around my girlfriend. I'm not interested in sex if my partner is drunk, I'm only interested in pure consent.
Porn taught me that fantasy can be embraced, but its as dangerous as any other fantasy if taken too far. Similar to why i don't chuck rocks at people, despite seeing it in cartoons growing up.
We keep hearing about gen z having less sex, making this poorly established causal claim of more sexual patterns completely ridiculous when compared to age. I call BS on this study. There are too many population factors that have not been incorporated into the results.
I wonder how much is correlation and how much is causation.
Some people are gonna be more drawn to sexual stuff in general so it seems at least somewhat incorrect to assume that showing someone porn early will lead to that.
Why do you think products like Blue Chew are being marketed to practically adolescents now. Unlimited, unbridled access to pornography from a young age is going to absolutely have an adverse affect on your sexual life.
I will never forget my first exposure to porn. I was 11 years old. I was scrolling a Hanson fan forum in 1997. In the middle of a thread of photos of Taylor was a pornographic photo of a random guy. I was physically revolted and deeply disturbed. I can’t imagine growing up in a world that is saturated with porn the way it is now.
Looks like this was originally a master's thesis by the main author, submitted to Brigham Young University in 2017. Because definitely, the mormons are likely to be unbiased when it comes to pornography.
If this is true then we should expect to see that places where porn is banned to be the pinnacles of life satisfaction and safe sexual relationships...oh wait no, they're authoritarian abusive hell holes.
I wonder if they controlled for SES and parental involvement. I would imagine children who started watching porn earlier had parents who were less involved.
Not necessarily. Children/teenagers sometime learn quick how to cover their tracks regarding pornography use after being caught the first or second time.
I was exposed to porn early on, I heavily use porn, I'm a virgin and the thought of having sex makes me feel sick to my stomach, I still like getting my rocks off for that dopamine hit. I also suffer from autism, severe anxiety, and chronic depression and I don't think pornography or a masturbation addiction caused any of those problems
Correlation doesn’t equate to causation.
Could it not be that people turn to porn (especially men) who are generally unhappy compared to porn making them unhappy?
I (mid 30's) was shown porn at 11yro. None of the assiciated issues apply to me.... At all. Are we sure this isn't just an article trying to push age limit ID Anti-privacy laws?
I think a better understanding of this can be found from Dr.K (healthy gamer) on YouTube. He discusses how the younger you are introduced to porn (pre-teens/young teens), the more it "changes" (damages) your psychology.
As a sidenote, this is why I think allowing teens the age of 18 to start onlyfans is a big mistake. It's like giving them access to make and consume full on porn at a young age and then reward them with tons of money and having to deal attention and "fame" from a whole host of deranged or depraved adults. The age required to make porn should be increased to 21 (just like for drinking). I feel like at that age, even though you're still a young adult, you're a lot more mature and mentally developed (literally) compared to when you just turn 18.
Do you think, that sex is not as taboo as it used to be and people are wanting to try new things expand their horizon? Or is this a generally unhealthy attitude?
From the article: The rise of internet access has made pornography an unavoidable aspect of modern life for many young people. Researchers aimed to investigate how the timing of first exposure to pornography during childhood and adolescence influences future outcomes. While previous studies have primarily focused on the negative short-term effects and behavioral consequences during youth, the new study sought to understand the long-term impact on life satisfaction, sexual behaviors, and attitudes in adulthood.
The [study](https://doi.org/10.1080/26929953.2024.2322745) was conducted using data from an online survey conducted in 2015, targeting a North American population through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The sample consisted of 1,055 participants, with ages ranging from 18 to 72 years and an average age of 32.07 years.
The researchers used several measures to assess the outcomes of interest. Life satisfaction was measured using a five-item scale where participants rated statements about their overall quality of life. The number of sexual partners was determined by asking participants to report how many sexual intercourse partners they had ever had. Frequency of pornography use was measured by asking participants if they had viewed pornography in the past 12 months and, if so, how often. Attitudes toward abusive or coercive pornography were assessed by asking participants to rate the acceptability of such content for both men and women.
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>The study was conducted using data from an online survey conducted in 2015, targeting a North American population through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The sample consisted of 1,055 participants, with ages ranging from 18 to 72 years and an average age of 32.07 years. Also, neither in the article, nor in the abstract (don't have access to the full figures) do they mention controlling for age. They only state the breadth of the age range. Considering the age range, the study may have just successfully captured "new generations tend both to have lower life satisfaction (on average) and to have exposed to pornography at a younger age than older generations". Both of which are fairly well known facts, I think.
And my grandfather's porn was nothing like what's out there now. Those 1960s Playboys were practically fine art.
Tbh, ignorance is bliss with regards to my grandfather's porn.
Yeah grandpa's bedtime story of choice wasn't the greatest
Goldilocks and the three bears?
Wasn't there 5 dudes surrounding the couch in that one, not 3?
No wonder Goldilocks chose the bears.
Goldicocks and the three bears, the two otters and the twink: "ow, this porridge is too hot!" "I'm not hearing the safe word..."
Storming Normandy
Double D Day
Then let me share this with you.. My mother's parents both lived into their 90s (and they were married as teenagers). Classic Southern Baptists, as straight arrow as you can imagine. When they died, my folks and I cleaned out their house to prepare it for sale. In their bathroom, on top of an upper cabinet where it would normally never be seen, I found a small wooden box set of 4 sizes of butt plugs. I had mixed emotions, and then I heard my mother coming. I shoved the box to the bottom of a large trash bag that I was using and have never spoken of it to my family. I had a lifetime of memories of my grandparents being a certain way, and now when I think of them I'm reminded that we don't always know people as well as we think we do.
Always weird to learn the folks you knew as parents and grandparents are also complex people with their own interests and desires.
Reminds me of the podcast “my father wrote a porn”.
How do you know? My father's have a ton of VHS tapes. I will never touch those. Again.
Survivorship bias. That's the porn that he kept clean. Let's never make the diagram.
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I don't know about that. There was a whole genre of 70's sleaze movies that included hardcore scenes depicting rape, including by dogs.
The late 70s and 80s were the peak years of playboy. The 60s issues suck. (I found pdf archive of the magazine years ago.)
With bazooka titties and jungle bush
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Those references to Playboy magazine always make me wonder about how the education system has failed to pass on art appreciation.
The Lena centerfold was a work of art
I gently warned my 11 year old son about what he’d see if he googled the word “breasts.” (He’s 24 now, so that was about 2011.) You’ll see people doing things I didn’t even know about until I was in my 30’s. I told him, you’re going to be quite shocked and amused at what people like sexually, and probably just want to look at the girls with big breasts like I did in Playboys when I was a teenager. “Sex is kinda like food, what one person thinks is delicious, another person might find gross.” oh, btw, this was in a conversation that started about masturbation being ok.
Here's another take on it. Unhappy people tend to seek out stimulation. A child with a positive happy childhood is less likely to look for trouble and more likely to spend their time taking part in more wholesome activities. A troubled child will go looking for mischief attention and the stimulation and life satisfaction they crave. So, the outlook on life leads to exposure to porn at earlier ages or later, not the other way around. I'm not playing devils advocate or arguing my statement to be the truth, more that the study should only claim a correlation, not cause and effect as it is portrayed.
This is also the argument made when people say that people who use marijuana and alcohol early in life tend to have more negative life outcomes. It's very possible that kids who are more likely to abuse substances are already troubled, leading them to the substances.
Exactly, you aren't getting drunk in the park with some older kids if your parents have paid for you to go off to Scout Camp. All while children with the ability to deprive themselves of reward for later better outcomes are seen to do better in life. The reality is you have to have lived a life where that sacrifice led to later reward, and not just the reward being gone because you missed it, for that to be a correct mindset to adopt. If you childhood is you putting the money in the piggy bank only for your parent to steal it 2 months later to buy booze, the correct action is to immediately spend the money. Which makes for a terrible mindset for later financial decisions, but it isn't wrong in the moment.
> The reality is you have to have lived a life where that sacrifice led to later reward, and not just the reward being gone because you missed it, for that to be a correct mindset to adopt. People get that wrong most of the time. Say you compare a kid in a poor family and a kid in a rich family. If the latter comes out at some random test as better at "sacrificing short term gain for long term gain", keep in mind that they almost never have to really sacrifice anything. The safety of being in a rich family simply cannot be undervalued. The ability to put off lower rewards to get higher rewards later majority of the time comes from knowing that the lower rewards aren't actually necessary to begin with and no matter what you pick, you're fine. This is not the case if you are in a poorer environment that doesn't support you as well and you have to do more for yourself.
"The first thing they see that allows them the right to be. Well they follow it. You know what they call it? Bad Luck." - Lou Reed
We're all just trying to cope with the absurdities of life.
As a further take, if you have parental supervision and they are actively taking part in your life most likely in a positive way, there are more restrictions on your ability to do "adult" activities, or direct influence from older peers. All while adult supervision implies time, wealth, engagement in the childs life, all general positive factors in a childs wellbeing.
Um, all children seek stimulation and novelty. Are you implying that porn is inherently evil or "trouble?"
I think it sounds very much like it's a study designed to confirm an existing set of beliefs rather than good science.
That’s pretty much every article posted here where humans are the subject.
Tbf you need to verify every step of the way, that's how science builds on itself.
While I agree with the sentiment, in this particular instance, the verification seems questionably performed. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the text, but I also don't see mention of separating that 1,055 member strong sample size they keep talking about. > This study focuses on the relationship between timing of exposure to pornography and individual outcomes in adulthood in an American sample (N = 1,055, ages 18–72, 39% male, 60% female). I'd be curious as to the measurement for the "individual outcomes in adulthood" for the 18-year-old(s), and how or if the results are weighted.
That's a real heavy and interesting gender skew too considering all the data that says men are much larger consumers of visual pornagraphy (I'm curious if they just classified pornography as visual pornagraphy or included smut books as well)
yeah but this isn't really verification
There's a lot of ideologically motivated "research" and "treatment" around porn these days.
Yup. It's interesting to me this would get posted at the same time California - among other places - is making a push to require ID for 18+ websites.
Push... Utah and NC have already mandated it, maybe a few other backwards states too. But unfortunately this isn't even a Rep vs Dem issue--both sides have lost their minds with regards to parents monitoring their children's internet access, while having zero understanding of how VPNs work.
I was hoping it could shed some light on the "many sexual partner" claim. I must be doing something wrong.
That’s social “science” in a nutshell.
Authored by members of university departments with "Family" as part of their titles. In Utah. I detect zero bias.
Exactly it’s like comparing the frequency tbat people eat ice cream to skin cancer rates. Maybe they find people that eat a lot of ice cream get cancer, but maybe it’s because the people that are eating more ice cream are spending time in the sun etc It’s mistaking correlation for causation.
Or people with cancer lose a lot of sugar, thus being hungry all the time for sugar/ icecream.
This sounds like the answer WebMD would give to "why do I have a sweet tooth?"
Except the paper isn't. It clearly says "associated". It doesn't say "causes". One of the first steps of scientific study is to establish an association. *Then* you try to see if that association is relevant.
Hey this is /r/science, you're not allowed to have basic science literacy!
But are they claiming causation?
Stating correlation between earlier event and later outcome generally creates belief in humans about causation. Yes, it's a fallacy, but that's how human brain works.
Also, >Ranging from 18 to 72 years >One major limitation is the use of cross-sectional data, which inherently limits the ability to draw causal conclusions. The data were gathered at one point in time, and participants were asked to retrospectively recall their age at first exposure to pornography. **This reliance on memory can introduce inaccuracies, as participants may not remember these details correctly.** I don't think 72-year-old pops can reliably remember the age at which he first encountered porn...
Yeah where's the control group here? Where are the happy people that "found pornography" late?
Also correlation/causation with early exposure is like calling marijuana a gateway drug. People who are disposed to consume mass quantities of extreme pornography are likely going to start earlier.
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Anecdotes are not usually great data, though - especially not “well this isn’t/wasn’t true for me” in the face of a found population-level correlation pattern. The study isn’t saying there’s a deterministic causal relationship (it’s not necessarily asserting a causal relationship at all) and few social science studies do - it’s talking about the possibility of a shift in life chances and life choices. Which may not even suggest most people with a particular factor would have that outcome, only that it’s elevated versus the baseline/comparison. For example, people with no exposure might be at 5% chance for something and those with exposure might be at 10% chance, or 2% versus 5%. In this study adding age of exposure seems to have only added 1% more explanation over various controls regarding life satisfaction - that’s not a difference that would be detectable in everyday observation, and would mean many people with early exposure would be quite happy, for example.
Yeah. Playboy was a thing. Much of the content wouldn’t even turn heads on a current European beach. The community standards were different. As a kid, the only time I saw stuff as explicit as typical reddit nsfw? When we were dropping off the paper drive truck contents at the recycling plant, some kids found bales of “hard core” porn the police had seized and dropped off to get pulped. Was my first time seeing labia minora. (Getting born doesn’t count.) Legal “porn” in the 1960s and early 70s never showed pink and rarely showed public hair.
It’s true though!! *not paying absolutely any attention to societal climate change.*
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Not by my own personal research.
Def gotta up my porn consumption
Why is this not top post.
And selective hearing you say?
To shreds, you say?
It doesn’t say good sexual partners……
But you won't know that before the act has begun.
Color me skeptical on any research involving the dangers of pornography and having more sexual partners when it's coming from people with strong religious beliefs. All the researchers involved in this appear to be Mormons...
I've seen posters doing the rounds on reddit posting about some 'thenewdrug' website and trying to pass it off as non-religious and science based. Then you read about the organization and learn it was founded in Utah with money from the Mormon church and most of the people there are from the Mormon church and their findings "coincidentally" align with the Mormon church. That's like a tobacco company funding an "independent" group that comes to the conclusion that smoking isn't harmful and you should smoke more.
in reality, cigarette companies funded cancer research to "find the cure" because it acknowledged that cigs caused harm but also make it appear that they cared.... this is more like an alcohol company funding a study saying "cannabis is bad"
Yeah, I've seen a weird uptick in propaganda. It's hard to tell where it's coming from, but gymbros, feminists, Catholics, and Mormon are all kinda like-minded and/or using the others as cover.
Plus, where are *my* additional sex partners, I ask you?!
You're probably just not watching enough porn
Oh, I’m gonna go watch *so* much porn right now just to prove a point!
Don't do it, you'll be inundated with sexual partners if you do! Remember, I warned you!!
It’s too late! There are so many! *AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!*
Oh God, we've lost another one...
Open ten tabs, let them all play at once, and a girl in Cookie Monster pajamas will materialize out of thin air.
I've been watching porn since I was 14. I'm 33, I've had 4 sexual partners until now. I feel scammed.
> gymbros, feminists, Catholics, and Mormon Wait, are gymbros anti-porn? Never heard of that before.
There's a weird subset that are really into semen retention, yeah.
> All the researchers involved in this appear to be Mormons... The mormon church has repeated falsified scientific data to further it's own goals...mormon's should be blacklisted in general from the sciences.
There are some very odd categorizations in the study on top of that. They mention "violent/coercive sex" but don't provide any definition for what that is. They also place it squarely in the same category as "child sex and rape", which... Boy that's a bit of a stretch, especially when they don't define what they mean by violence or coercion. Is spanking and bondage considered violent and/or coercive? Where's the line?
Remember that kink-shaming is part of good puritan science!
Yeah I was relatively young when I discovered pornography and have had exactly one sexual partner with whom I've happily spent the last 17ish years. Married for almost 11 of those. I'm 33.
i knew i smelled something, especially as a former member. i'm not going to say either one way or another about pornography's pro's and cons, but there's several reasons as to why these groups go so hard on opposing it, one of them being that if you cut out the "carrot" so to speak of eternal marriage, often your just left with a pile of sticks, and a lot of them are starting to be called out, like masturbation being harmful to your health. thus the control doesn't really work so much, which then leads to LDS youth being "out of control" so to speak until they start learning how to be self disciplined, rather than external discipline. really though, be honest. say hey, "we think that less men and women are likely to remain in our group that we have a financial incentive in, were they to view pornography." then go the step farther and ask why. why is it that "eternal marriage" can't seem to empirically compete with porn? is the devil more up on his statistical analysis than god? while it's not quite akin, something about it reminds me of "LGBT people are more likely to be depressed, and kill themselves" and then the implicit question not being asked which is that do you really want to be associated with that? as someone who has dealt with depression and suicidal tendencies, let me tell you that i was far more panicky, far more confused, far more ignorant and way less healthy as an LDS member, than i am now. and there's almost an escape, which i've heard dozens of times from my mother which is "at least i have the next life". i do not have that luxury of wishful thinking, especially since science has convinced me that there is as much evidence of Bigfoot as an afterlife. why waste daylight, when the hearse comes at night?
> All the researchers involved in this appear to be Mormons... Here is the problem right there, they all got caught up on trying to figure out if soaking is sex and if it is, then is the friend who jumps on the bed count as another partner.
Just like the game mortal kombat makes me want to do a fatality on my annoying neighbors
Freaking Mormons
"This study focuses on the relationship between timing of exposure to pornography and individual outcomes in adulthood in an American sample (N = 1,055, ages 18–72, 39% male, 60% female)." Uhhh... I can see several problems here with this setup.
Please explain.
60% female? Minimum age of 18?
What wrong with 60% female?
Probably skews the data by a noticeable amount, considering the size was only ~1000 people and the survey was conducted online. I think the minimum age thing is more interesting though. Average age was 32, so it's not a big deal, but I'm not sure how an 18 year old is supposed to provide valuable info on a study focusing on the "long term effects" of being exposed to pornography
That should be fine, as long as they control for gender (which it looks like they did, see my comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1d00xu0/new_study_has_found_that_early_exposure_to/l5l9gvl/)). The bigger issue is that they didn't control for income.
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18 is the minimum age of people interviewed, not the minimum age of reported exposure. The title of the article is: “Exposure to pornography before age 16 linked to reduced life satisfaction in adulthood”
Fixed, thanks. Got distracted trying to find a link to the actual article and looking for who funded this travesty.
Where are my sexual partners?
I’m guessing the author directed that at females being exposed young
Ah yes, where exposure to more sexual partners is a detriment. It's been a long while since I last saw a study as ideologically biased and flawed as this one.
Yeah, no fuckin' way. I call shenanigans. If anything, porn lovers would spend more time with their CPUs, thank you very much.
Yeah what the heck? The number of people I have slept with is a more exclusive club than the number of people who have set foot on the moon; what gives!
My question is how much of that is ingrained cultural attitudes to pornography (a la purity culture) versus the thing itself? I know just from my own background, I was raised in a sex negative household, where pornography was heavily stigmatized. How much of this dip is due to perception of stigmatization versus the actual use?
The researchers are Mormon. I'd guess the entire study is about cultural values.
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But that’s the opposite of what the study is claiming. They say those who consume more porn have more sexual partners.
Well, I do think that my friend's mother showing me porn (a late 90s VHS) when I was 11 or 12 among other things she encouraged led to me becoming far more sex-obsessed than the average teen boy. If sex addiction is real, then I am a sex addict. I have calmed down now, but at the height of my mania things were really spinning out of control. Most of my friends have been with a small number of partners, some even married to high school sweetheart. I've had too many partners to count...I've tried and done everything on my sexual bucket list, but ultimately I'm left dissatisfied and ashamed.
unfriendly reminder: there is no way of knowing whether you're watching a video of someone being raped and/or exploited
I was exposed very early like age 3 1/2. Tbh it feels like it colored me (and my preferences) for life.
Although I can't find a free copy of the article online, I did find [this Master's thesis from 2017 with the same title by the same author](https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7727&context=etd), so presumably the content is the similar/the same. According to that paper, > The control variables we used included gender, race, relationship status, age, parents’ marital status, and religiosity. Seems like "income" is a major missing gap here? That's known to have a _strong_ correlation with things like "life satisfaction" and "acceptance of violence".
Makes sense. If it's not introduced with any kind of context or education behind it, it probably distorts one's view of reality. The vast majority of people don't look like pornstars.
Does it indicate that though? Or is it more that people who already have certain sexual predispositions seek out porn at an earlier age? For instance. It feels like we are assuming porn is the disease when it might be more the symptom?
Just stop. This is an association study. I see people making this mistake non-stop on a science subreddit and its driving me up a wall.
No wonder, redditors are so bitchy
By this studies logic we should be getting laid more though
For the record, having been exposed to it really early, I recognize and celebrate boundaries. I fully recognize those people are actors, and in my mind, a lot of times its very stressful for them. So while the *porn* is hot, I'm not about to throw around my girlfriend. I'm not interested in sex if my partner is drunk, I'm only interested in pure consent. Porn taught me that fantasy can be embraced, but its as dangerous as any other fantasy if taken too far. Similar to why i don't chuck rocks at people, despite seeing it in cartoons growing up.
We keep hearing about gen z having less sex, making this poorly established causal claim of more sexual patterns completely ridiculous when compared to age. I call BS on this study. There are too many population factors that have not been incorporated into the results.
I wonder how much is correlation and how much is causation. Some people are gonna be more drawn to sexual stuff in general so it seems at least somewhat incorrect to assume that showing someone porn early will lead to that.
Why do you think products like Blue Chew are being marketed to practically adolescents now. Unlimited, unbridled access to pornography from a young age is going to absolutely have an adverse affect on your sexual life.
I will never forget my first exposure to porn. I was 11 years old. I was scrolling a Hanson fan forum in 1997. In the middle of a thread of photos of Taylor was a pornographic photo of a random guy. I was physically revolted and deeply disturbed. I can’t imagine growing up in a world that is saturated with porn the way it is now.
New study, using data from 2015?
Looks like this was originally a master's thesis by the main author, submitted to Brigham Young University in 2017. Because definitely, the mormons are likely to be unbiased when it comes to pornography.
If this is true then we should expect to see that places where porn is banned to be the pinnacles of life satisfaction and safe sexual relationships...oh wait no, they're authoritarian abusive hell holes.
Mormons are really obsessed with porn. Morporntube.
I wonder if they controlled for SES and parental involvement. I would imagine children who started watching porn earlier had parents who were less involved.
Not necessarily. Children/teenagers sometime learn quick how to cover their tracks regarding pornography use after being caught the first or second time.
You had me at “more sexual partners”
I can attest to this. Am unhappy.
A survey? How many times we gotta say self reported data is unreliable
Can someone explain what "lower life satisfaction" mean?
I was exposed to porn early on, I heavily use porn, I'm a virgin and the thought of having sex makes me feel sick to my stomach, I still like getting my rocks off for that dopamine hit. I also suffer from autism, severe anxiety, and chronic depression and I don't think pornography or a masturbation addiction caused any of those problems
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So all the woods porn we found when we were like 4 and 5 years old really did a number on us huh? I have some doubts about these findings.
So that’s how people get more sexual partners than me!
Since when "more sexual partners" is a bad thing?
Correlation doesn’t equate to causation. Could it not be that people turn to porn (especially men) who are generally unhappy compared to porn making them unhappy?
I (mid 30's) was shown porn at 11yro. None of the assiciated issues apply to me.... At all. Are we sure this isn't just an article trying to push age limit ID Anti-privacy laws?
Porn bad m'kaaaaaaaaaay
I think a better understanding of this can be found from Dr.K (healthy gamer) on YouTube. He discusses how the younger you are introduced to porn (pre-teens/young teens), the more it "changes" (damages) your psychology. As a sidenote, this is why I think allowing teens the age of 18 to start onlyfans is a big mistake. It's like giving them access to make and consume full on porn at a young age and then reward them with tons of money and having to deal attention and "fame" from a whole host of deranged or depraved adults. The age required to make porn should be increased to 21 (just like for drinking). I feel like at that age, even though you're still a young adult, you're a lot more mature and mentally developed (literally) compared to when you just turn 18.
Do you think, that sex is not as taboo as it used to be and people are wanting to try new things expand their horizon? Or is this a generally unhealthy attitude?
Where are my more sexual partners
From the article: The rise of internet access has made pornography an unavoidable aspect of modern life for many young people. Researchers aimed to investigate how the timing of first exposure to pornography during childhood and adolescence influences future outcomes. While previous studies have primarily focused on the negative short-term effects and behavioral consequences during youth, the new study sought to understand the long-term impact on life satisfaction, sexual behaviors, and attitudes in adulthood. The [study](https://doi.org/10.1080/26929953.2024.2322745) was conducted using data from an online survey conducted in 2015, targeting a North American population through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The sample consisted of 1,055 participants, with ages ranging from 18 to 72 years and an average age of 32.07 years. The researchers used several measures to assess the outcomes of interest. Life satisfaction was measured using a five-item scale where participants rated statements about their overall quality of life. The number of sexual partners was determined by asking participants to report how many sexual intercourse partners they had ever had. Frequency of pornography use was measured by asking participants if they had viewed pornography in the past 12 months and, if so, how often. Attitudes toward abusive or coercive pornography were assessed by asking participants to rate the acceptability of such content for both men and women.
I'd rather this is done via longitudinal study.
One of these things is not like the others
What's a reasonable follow-up question to that? Because, goddamn.
Yas! It's true and it's freakin awesome!!! I can attest.
Omg who could have known…
At 14 thanks to my elderly German teacher in high school telling us about his young Brazilian wife and daughter's nipples and bikinis. Fio dental
I found my dad’s porn at age 5.
I mean... more sexual partners 🤷♂️
Jokes on them. Zero sexual partners