I added a block on stigma and expanded on the coping mechanism one a bit for the latest experimental porn science post draft. Also, I tweaked a bit of language for Efrati. The stigma block makes clear that censorship is a form of stigma. This is important because othering can come in a more polite form.

I have seen a number of misguided opinions about online porn, sometimes focusing on content, sometimes in pursuit of technologies like age verification, and sometimes suggesting that some new technology should be presumed to be bad. I address these in the following post.

Quite a few arguments hinge on the possibility content "might" be "problematic". Even if these points did have merit, and as I will go into, it is a lot more dubious than someone might make out. It's curious how we wouldn't apply such lines of reasoning to literally anything else. We don't opine on the harms of riding bicycles. While we recognize alcohol can be harmful, we don't look to instate a prohibition on it. We don't theorize about how reading a murder mystery novel might lead someone to go out and commit murder.

Sometimes, someone vaguely points to the "morality" of it. What is moral though? If there is a violent murder or torture scene in a film, is this immoral? That doesn't get censored. Why is that somehow more moral than a scene of someone having sex? Or even a scene with more taboo themes? Unless, someone has a moral belief system which already presupposes something to be bad, that doesn't make sense at all.

As for why it is treated like this, that is likely because it isn't real. If someone went around murdering and torturing people, that would be shocking and appalling, as it should be. When it's simply a work of fiction though, it is hardly notable, a form of entertainment. Even real scenes of murder might be useful in documenting war crimes (Asher-Schapiro, 2017). So, how is this any different?

There are number of pieces of science which call online porn being spooky into question. To name a few:

A Canadian study showed more gender egalitarian attitudes among users of porn (Kohut et al., 2015). A German study failed to find a link between porn use and sexism or "social dominance orientation" (Von Andrian-Werburg et al., 2023).

A 2020 U.S. study analysed 59 studies and failed to find a link between porn and sex crimes (Carr, 2020)(Ferguson & Hartley, 2020). As pointed out by (Olives, 2023), the study found things like telltale signs of p hacking and citation bias. It also found a publication bias which led to studies which didn't find effects being less likely to be represented, and tried to control for variables which might make it appear as if there might be a "link" when one isn't present. More on this later.

Dawson et al. (2019) fails to find a link between porn use and sexual aggression among adolescents which suggests that sexual aggression might not necessarily be an outcome of porn use among adolescents. This might further call into question whether disproportionate interventions are warranted here.

A Croatian study fails to replicate an older Dutch study which showed lower levels of "sexual satisfaction" among adolescents who use porn (Milas et al., 2019). This was found while looking into another study, I figured it would be a waste not to mention it.

As Castleman (2016) points out, there are a number of studies covering a number of countries which even show lower rates of crime (for instance, rape and child sexual abuse) with higher levels of porn use, such as one covering Japan (Diamond & Uchiyama, 1999). Another one is the Czech Republic (and apparently Finland) (Diamond et al., 2010). This even includes forms of porn involving taboos. Castleman (2016) also points to Denmark, China, and the United States. This contradicts the idea that porn use drives such crimes.

A 2022 U.S. study looked into studies regarding whether sexualization in video games caused harm to players and found it was not associated with negative outcomes (Ferguson et al., 2022).

Efrati (2018) shows that moralizing about sex can make matters worse.

Brown (2015) is different from these kinds of studies (it's a news article) but it helps to add context. According to the CDC, there were actually fewer teenagers in the United States who had had sex in 2013 than in 1989. Those who did were more likely to have used some sort of contraception.

Now, for more discussion than details of particular studies.

When thinking about results, it is useful to consider things like the "scientific pile-on effect" (Ferguson, 2013)(Ferguson, 2020) which drive people to go looking for "links" between something like porn and something bad, no matter how weak or tenuous it might be. Factoring this in, you can eliminate a lot of false positives which otherwise don't have value in the real world.

We should also remember that correlation does not imply causation. One classic example of this which is taught in statistics and science is the "ice cream effect" where crime appears to rise with the number of ice cream sales (Peters, 2013). One compelling alternate theory which is pitched is that both ice cream sales, and crime, are associated with warmer weather. Peters also points out that simply because someone is out in hot weather doesn't mean that the hot weather will magically make them go and commit a crime.

When it comes to news media, it is important to remember a few things. The number of crimes or "risk" of such is known to not be associated with their occurrence in the news. The media is known to have a bias towards negativity and shock (Thompson, 2023)(Perlmutter, 2019). We also have to watch out for "sensationalism" and "man bites dog" type articles which focus on unusual events precisely because they are unusual (Kaplan, 2015).

Quite a few things which might get blamed on "the porn" are actually general mental health issues which could be dealt with more normally (Tuckman, 2017), and crucially, without conflating it with porn (which might even detract from dealing with someone's actual issues) (Ley, 2023a). Things which someone dislikes about their sexuality (including homosexuality) might also be blamed on "the porn" (Ley, 2023b).

From observing policy shifts, public discourse, and instances of censorship, it also seems that over the past few years, the amount of censorship which platforms (and others) have exerted has tended to increase over time. Some instances are documented by the ACLU (Holston-Zannell, 2023). Despite this, we are not hearing of the amount of crime decreasing in response to this. Censorship doesn't appear to be helping here, and it has it's own harms, particularly for marginalized groups.

Dark / taboo fantasies are fairly common and aren't a bad sign (Lehmiller, 2019) (Lehmiller, 2022). As Diamond and Uchiyama (1999) and other pieces of science remind us, this sort of content is not associated with crime, even if the fictional character is like / is a child, or the content is violent. Lehmiller (2022) found that many adults have sexual fantasies involving cartoon / anime characters, although these findings regarding taboo fantasies are not exclusive to that sort of content. If you know of people involved in such things, this might not be surprising to you. Not stigmatizing content because it might be offensive to someone is not the same as not having any sort of ethics though, for instance, someone could still remove content which depicts real minors (or non-consenting adults).

In fact, physical taboo media often even explicitly have a label cautioning someone against carrying out the acts featured in it (as well as a more typical R18 label). This is presumably to counter people who complain. Then again, do not re-enact statements have been used in seemingly sillier cases, such as telling someone not to murder anyone, and telling someone not to jump off a building, or a moving vehicle (think of those Hollywood type stunts). Now that I've mentioned that though, Sakoui (2020) should give you an idea as to why you shouldn't imitate Hollywood stunts.

While this is generally well-understood, something being a "cartoon" does not mean it is for someone younger. Even for shows like Scooby Doo (to give a well-known Western example), there might be spin-offs for adults like HBO Max's Velma (Wolinsky, 2022). There are plenty of people who enjoy such things. In this case, the reason people like it is fairly obvious, people grow up watching that show, and they're interested in more adult content when they're older.

As Lehmiller (2022) points out, people with some personality types (particularly those who are more easily stressed out) might fantasize about a fictional character to avoid stress or anxiety, or with one particular attachment style, for greater emotional distance. Tuckman (2017) and Moynihan et al. (2022) also point to the use of porn as a coping mechanism. Someone might also use porn as a form of entertainment (more specifically, it is used to escape from meaninglessness in life, boredom being a significant form of this here) (Moynihan et al., 2022). Medeiros (2024) argues that boredom can be psychologically harmful, as it is a state of psychological deprivation.

Stigma can be psychologically harmful, can make mental illnesses worse, and can make someone feel helpless (Vintiadis, 2017). You also have to think of how someone subject to censorship might be more inclined to adopt a "them versus us" mentality, and how that might impede constructive integration.

When it comes to restrictions like "age verification", trying to implement it in practice can lead to sites being blocked entirely, rather than an age verification process being implemented (Burgess, 2021). It's a good example of an idea which "might" work in theory but runs into challenges with the global nature of the Internet.

There can be privacy concerns with a platform holding sensitive personal information. If the government does it instead, you might have the same human rights concerns you would have with a government having access to such sensitive information. Even in the best of scenarios, the prospect of someone handing over information in such a setting might be unnerving for someone, particularly if they're from a marginalized group.

Is it really proportionate to do something like this? And consider there are alternatives which don't involve verifying with a platform, such as parental controls, which is used more with some age cohorts than others. Alternatively, something like sex education might be useful, primarily for the older ones.

Now, onto the new technologies. New technologies aren't really "symbols of evil". They might be used in a positive manner or a negative manner (i.e. to be harassing). Similarly, someone could use a car as a form of transport to take them to another location, or they could use a car to run someone over.

Contrary to what some might believe, "AI" did not spring out of the aether when it was unveiled by the likes of OpenAI or Stability AI in 2022 (these use what we'd call "diffusion models"). Older forms based on GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), such as StyleGAN, were already in existence prior to that. Someone could throw in millions of, say, anime images, leave a few GPUs doing heavy crunching for a few weeks, and get something which roughly spits out novel imagery (Gwern, n.d.).

There are critiques of the web scraping practices of a few large AI firms which use diffusion models. Whether you think these critiques have merit, this process is distinct from someone using a large general purpose model to generate some sort of offensive content. Even if someone didn't generate specific forms of offensive content, these web scraping practices wouldn't magically change. Taking it a step further, would it make sense to attack content which wasn't generated via these processes? As the quality of training sets and outputs can be less than optimal, however, I would recommend creating a specialized model for these particular tasks, rather than relying on a general purpose one.

Also, if someone is involved in abuse / real child porn, that would be a more appropriate avenue for dealing with them, otherwise it undermines due process and invites a "guilt by association" of innocent people.

When it comes to sex robots, there has been quite a bit of chatter about these over the years. From curiosity, to expectation, to nonsense. Practically, speaking though, they're not really in a place where they're ready for practical use (and it's unclear whether they ever will be). Nonetheless, there are imitations which do get quite a bit of attention, such as the "sex dolls", they're neither new, or particularly smart. Coverage of them goes back a decade, and it doesn't appear the sky has fallen. A few argue they should be banned because they find them "disturbing" (and they also propose an inverted burden of proof where you have to show they "reduce crime", rather than simply being harmless, which is curious).

Some argue they reduce child sexual abuse. Finnish therapists who work with sex offenders made such an argument back in 2017 (Sexpo, 2017). Whatever you think of that, there isn't any evidence they increase crime, and studies so far have not supported the possibility they might (Ludden, 2022). While it's not something I generally see people use, I don't see why they should be held to a more restrictive standard than with online porn. Even if there are former / current criminals who use them, there are already laws against the crimes they're committing, and intervening would likely impede reintegration.

Asher-Schapiro, A. (2017). YouTube and Facebook are removing evidence of atrocities, jeopardizing cases against war criminals. The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/war-crimes-youtube-facebook-syria-rohingya/

Kohut, T., Baer, J. L., & Watts, B. (2015). Is Pornography Really about “Making Hate to Women”? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes Than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample. The Journal of Sex Research, 53(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2015.1023427

Von Andrian-Werburg, M. T. P., Siegers, P., & Breuer, J. (2023). A Re-evaluation of Online Pornography Use in Germany: A Combination of Web Tracking and Survey Data Analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(8), 3491–3503. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02666-8

Carr, S. (2020). Study: Pornography does not cause violent sex crimes. https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-crimes-study.html (press release for the study to add more context)

Ferguson, C. J., & Hartley, R. D. (2020). Pornography and sexual aggression: Can Meta-Analysis find a link? Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 23(1), 278–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838020942754

Olives (2023). https://qoto.org/@olives/110462274531891870

Dawson, K., Tafro, A., & Štulhofer, A. (2019). Adolescent sexual aggressiveness and pornography use: A longitudinal assessment. Aggressive Behavior, 45(6), 587–597. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21854

Milas, G., Wright, P., & Štulhofer, A. (2019). Longitudinal assessment of the association between pornography use and sexual satisfaction in adolescence. The Journal of Sex Research, 57(1), 16–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1607817

Castleman, M. (2016). Evidence Mounts: More Porn, Less Sexual Assault. All About Sex. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault

Diamond, M., & Uchiyama, A. (1999). Pornography, rape, and sex crimes in Japan. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0160-2527(98)00035-1

Diamond, M., Jozifkova, E., & Weiss, P. (2010). Pornography and sex crimes in the Czech Republic. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40(5), 1037–1043. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-010-9696-y

Ferguson, C. J., Sauer, J. D., Drummond, A., Kneer, J., & Lowe-Calverley, E. (2022). Does sexualization in video games cause harm in players? A meta-analytic examination. Computers in Human Behavior, 135, 107341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107341

Efrati, Y. (2018). God, I can’t stop thinking about sex! The rebound effect in unsuccessful suppression of sexual thoughts among religious adolescents. The Journal of Sex Research, 56(2), 146–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2018.1461796

Brown, E. N. (2015). Despite all the panic, millennial teens have much less sex than their elders did. Reason. https://reason.com/2015/07/23/despite-all-the-panic-millennial-teens-h/ (the layout of one of the sites appears to have changed after 2018)

Ferguson, C. J. (2013). Soda and the scientific Pile-On Effect. TIME. https://ideas.time.com/2013/08/28/soda-and-the-scientific-pile-on-effect/

Ferguson, C. J. (2020). “13 Reasons Why” and Teen Suicide. Checkpoints. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/checkpoints/202007/13-reasons-why-and-teen-suicide

Peters, J. (2013). When ice cream sales rise, so do homicides. coincidence, or will your next cone murder you? Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/07/warm-weather-homicide-rates-when-ice-cream-sales-rise-homicides-rise-coincidence.html

Thompson, D. (2023). The Internet Loves Bad News. And That's Bad. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/negativity-bias-online-news-consumption/673499/

Perlmutter, A. (2019). How Negative News Distorts Our Thinking. The Modern Brain. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-modern-brain/201909/how-negative-news-distorts-our-thinking

Kaplan, S. (2015). Man bites dog. No, really. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/04/man-bites-dog-no-really/

Tuckman, A. (2017). Porn Isn’t the Problem. Sex Matters. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/sex-matters/201710/porn-isn-t-the-problem

Ley, D. J. (2023a). Why Narcissists Are More Likely to Identify as Porn Addicts. Women Who Stray. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/women-who-stray/202309/why-narcissists-are-more-likely-to-identify-as-porn-addicts

Ley, D. J. (2023b). Homophobia and Religiosity Drive Struggles with Porn. Women Who Stray. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/women-who-stray/202307/homophobia-and-religiosity-drive-struggles-with-porn

Holston-Zannell, L. B. (2023). Sex workers and legal advocates file Federal Trade Commission complaint against Mastercard [Press release]. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/sex-workers-and-legal-advocates-file-federal-trade-commission-complaint-against-mastercard

Lehmiller, J. J. (2019). Our 7 Most Common Sexual Fantasies. The Myths of Sex. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-myths-sex/201911/our-7-most-common-sexual-fantasies

Lehmiller, J. J. (2022). Why Animated Porn Is So Popular. The Myths of Sex. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-myths-of-sex/202212/why-animated-porn-is-so-popular

Sakoui, A. (2020). Injured stunt performer on “Resident Evil” film speaks out. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-05-04/resident-evil-stuntwoman-lost-her-arm-hollywood-accidents-milla-jovovich

Wolinsky, D. (2022). First Look At HBO Max's Velma Adult Animated Series. GameSpot. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/first-look-at-hbo-maxs-velma-adult-animated-series/1100-6503660/

Moynihan, A. B., Igou, E. R., & Van Tilburg, W. A. (2022). Pornography consumption as existential escape from boredom. Personality and Individual Differences, 198, 111802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111802

Medeiros, J. (2024). Boring architecture is starving your brain. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/modern-architecture-starving-public-stimulation-thomas-heatherwick-cities-design-wired-health/

Burgess, M. (2021). Germany is about to block one of the biggest porn sites. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/germany-porn-sites-age-checks/

Vintiadis, E. (2017). On Fighting Mental Health Stigma. Minding the Mind. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/minding-the-mind/201708/fighting-mental-health-stigma

Gwern. (n.d.). This Anime Does Not Exist. https://thisanimedoesnotexist.ai

Sexpo. (2017). Avoin kirje Tullille: Huoli lasta esittävistä seksinukeista on turha. https://web.archive.org/web/20170420182546/https://sexpo.fi/2017/03/09/avoin-kirje-tullille-huoli-lasta-esittavista-seksinukeista-on-turha/ (posts older than 2018 appear to be missing on the new site)

Ludden, D. (2022). What Kind of Men Buy Sex Dolls? Talking Apes. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/talking-apes/202208/what-kind-person-would-own-sex-doll