Is it an addiction?
Whilst gambling and gaming are recognised as legitimate disorders, application of the addiction model to pornography remains controversial.
Addiction or disorder? The terminology matters more than you might think.
We like to casually ascribe the word ‘addiction’ to all manner of things, and it’s quite easy to make throwaway comments such as ‘I’m a chocaholic’ (especially in this joyful Eastertide - yes, until tomorrow for those of you who don’t follow the Christian calendar all that closely), even though we’re probably all aware that there’s no medically agreed addiction associated with chocolate consumption. The danger with using the ‘A’ word somewhat lackadaisically is that one runs the risk of trivialising genuine addiction and the many problems it can bring.
When spoken about in serious terms, addiction has typically been in reference to alcohol and drugs, both legitimately recognised by the World Health Organisation. Reference of ‘porn addiction’, however, is much more of a grey area. Since the internet’s inception, there has been online pornography in one form or another, and there’s little doubt that many individuals find themselves in a very difficult relationship with it; whether that’s characterised as an addiction or something else is another matter.
The ‘online’ bit may be crucial; YouTube-style websites like XVideos and Pornhub (11th and 12th respectively in online rankings of any category) are designed to keep their users engaged, promising endless content and carefully tracking their preferences (as, indeed, do many internet services). Porn is now just a few clicks away in a way that it wasn’t a few decades ago, and that poses many issues; not least in how to keep children and other vulnerable people from accessing it (whether intentionally or by accident).
The term ‘Porn addiction’ is being used more and more - in correlation with the rise of the internet - but there isn’t actually any scientific agreement as to whether it can be applied to the addiction model.
I’m not sure exactly how often I’ll branch out of politics and culture on this Substack but there will, at the very least, be a strong focus on the impact of internet pornography upon society. The discussion of whether excessive engagement with pornography should be classified as an addiction or a disorder might seem a strange place to begin, but I hope that it will prove a good starting point and one that I’ll be able to refer back to in future pieces on the subject.
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Sophia Smith-Galer is the author of Losing It, a book which sets out to debunk myths around sex education, and is among those who are sceptical of the concept of pornography addiction. She points out that the term has yet to make it into the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a diagnostic tool maintained by the WHO.
Smith-Galer also notes research which suggests that those who believe they have a porn addiction are more likely to think so if they disapprove of it from a moral standpoint. Her concern extends beyond internet pornography - she also points to scepticism of other so-called addictions too. (For what it’s worth, I have no horse in this race. When I say ‘so-called’ it is only in the absence of it being an official WHO-designated addiction or disorder as of yet.)
Some might say that putting forth arguments as to whether or not pornography is something one can be addicted to isn’t all that helpful; whether ‘addiction’, ‘disorder’, or an altogether different term, there a lot of people who are finding their engagement with this sort of content quite troublesome, and help with that should trump semantics.
But Smith Galer argues that the terminology is important in terms of how to help people, pointing to research from Dr Joshua Grubbs who states that clinicians treating those affected by pornography are more likely to believe that a ‘disorder’ is treatable than an ‘addiction’.
There’s a lot of scepticism too as to what much of the anti-porn movement really stands for, and whether it’s simply there for puritanical reasons. Exodus Cry is one such group with links to the American Christian right. They seek the abolition of pornography as well as the sex industry more broadly. Whilst the group may be seeking porn’s eradication for religious reasons, it would be fair to acknowledge their Traffickinghub campaign which has sought to challenge tube sites like PornHub. They argue that these sites have amassed a huge amount of wealth whilst allowing child abuse and other non-consensual material to run rife.
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What about the pro-addiction side of the argument? The NHS refers to internet addiction and states, perhaps controversially, that ‘it’s possible to be addicted to just about anything’. Whilst the WHO hasn’t yet recognised porn addiction, they have, in recent years, recognised other technology-related activities like gambling and gaming as ‘disorders due to addictive behaviours’. Considering this, many on the pro side of the argument think it’s only a matter of time before porn is recognised as well. The ICD-11, adopted in 2019, did reference ‘compulsive sexual behaviour disorder’ as an impulse control disorder, which could include the use of pornography.
Fight the New Drug is an anti-pornography group which boasts support from the likes of Terry Crews and Josh Radnor. Even in their name, they draw parallels between porn addiction and more standard substance-based abuse. With the fear that any anti-porn organisation might be viewed as being puritanical, FNTD are at pains to stress that they are both secular and nonpartisan. They argue that porn can affect the brain just like a drug and that it can change the brain, citing a variety of medical journals.
There is another question here, which I alluded to earlier, which is the specific role that technology is playing in this. As with pornography, there has been scepticism about internet or technology addiction (though such scepticism is arguably dwindling in recent years with technology-specific addictive disorders being recognised more officially). But search ‘pornography addiction’ in Google Ngram Viewer (a tool to search the appearance of words/phrases in printed resources), and the popularisation of the term alongside the rise of the internet is stark.
Although internet addiction isn’t currently recognised by WHO, recent studies have found that Generation Z (the group that’s probably more likely to have been involved in the rise of online pornography) are particularly affected by damage to their mental health from social media.
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I’m not intrinsically anti-porn. I believe that it can be produced and consumed ethically, but that there are two major problems with the status quo. The first is that the majority of porn freely available (and thus that which is most accessible) is degrading to women and damaging to the minds of those who consume it, and so-called ‘Big Porn’ (the likes of Pornhub and Brazzers, owned by MindGeek) has to answer why they are too frequently found to be hosting objectional content including, but not limited to, abusive content and revenge porn.
The second is that, whatever sort of porn it is, children should not be consuming it, and it is currently far to easy for them to do so. In the United Kingdom, the government’s Online Safety Bill should (we hope) help to prevent children and young people from accessing this sort of content, but it’s taken far too long to get here; even if the bill were implemented in full tomorrow, there are around three decades worth of people who’ve grown up with access to incredibly harmful material just a click away.
Even if these issues are solved, there will be many (predominantly male) people who find that their use of pornography is having an adverse effect on their lives.
Regardless of one’s view on the matter - pro-addiction or anti - the status quo isn’t working.