Viewing pornography damages the ability of men to relate to women, new research has found.
A meta-analysis published in the Human Communication Research journal found that pornography consumption was linked to significantly lower “relational satisfaction” among male viewers.
The research included more than 50,000 participants from ten countries.
Negative impact
Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said pornography “rewires an individual’s sexuality to pixels on a screen rather than to a real person, which is inherently inconsistent with healthy, organic relationships”.
“A wide body of research is bringing attention to the various ways pornography negatively impacts both women and men, and this latest meta-analysis contributes important findings to that ongoing dialogue,” she added.
Earlier this year, two more US states recognised pornography as a “public health crisis”.
‘Public health crisis’
The Virginia State House voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution expressing concerns over the damaging effects it has on its users.
In South Dakota, there were unanimous votes in both the House and Senate.
In 2016, Utah became the first US state to declare pornography to be a public health crisis.
UK
Last month, a Scottish rapper warned that pornography can “fundamentally deform our conception of human intimacy” and that access should be severely restricted.
Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey made the comments in The Scotsman newspaper, where he admitted struggling with pornography for ten years.
He said that the explicit images have the potential to “distort the way we think about sex” and make real human intimacy seem “unnatural”.
In a stark warning McGarvey concluded that pornography “creates, in many, a ferocious compulsion which can fundamentally deform our conception of human intimacy.”