EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE INTERNET AGE, pornography has been
consumed in greater quantities than ever before in human history, and its
content has grown more graphic. Recent research suggests that pornography
consumptionespecially consumption of a more hard-core or violent sort
has negative effects on individuals and society. More studies are necessary, but
a growing body of research strongly suggests that for some users pornography
can be psychologically addictive, and can negatively affect the quality of
interpersonal relationships, sexual health and performance, and social
expectations about sexual behavior. Widespread pornography consumption
appears to pose a serious challenge to public health and to personal and
familial well-being. With concerted action from legislators, the therapeutic
community, educators, policymakers, and responsible corporate leaders,
however, some of the negative effects of pornography consumption can be
combated.
"e Witherspoon Institute is grateful to the SOCIAL TRENDS INSTITUTE,
the CASTER FAMILY TRUST, and the STUART FAMILY FOUNDATION for
making this project possible.
Please note that this report contains graphic language
to convey the reality of contemporary pornography and its
impact on men, women, and children.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
FINDING ONE 13
Unlike at any other time in history, pornography is now available and
consumed widely in our society, due in large part to the internet. No one
remains untouched by it.
FINDING TWO 17
!ere is abundant empirical evidence that this pornography is qualitatively
different from any that has gone before, in several ways: its ubiquity, the use of
increasingly realistic streaming images, and the increasingly hard-core character
of what is consumed.
FINDING THREE 23
Todays consumption of internet pornography can harm women in particular.
FINDING FOUR 27
The social cost of pornography
Todays consumption of internet pornography can harm children in particular.
FINDING FIVE 33
Todays consumption of internet pornography can harm people not immediately
connected to consumers of pornography.
FINDING SIX 37
!e consumption of internet pornography can harm its consumers.
FINDING SEVEN 41
Pornography consumption is philosophically and morally problematic.
FINDING EIGHT 45
!e fact that not everyone is harmed by pornography does not entail that
pornography should not be regulated.
RECOMMENDATIONS 47
CONCLUSIONS 53
http://www.internetsafety101.org/upload/file/Social%20Costs%20of%20Pornography%20Report.pdfFINDING FOUR
a
Todays consumption of internet pornography
can harm children in particular.!e few statistics available about the use of pornography by children and
adolescents are even more difficult to assess than those concerning adults. Few
parents would allow their children to be research subjects in such an area, and
researchers do not have reliable access to children and adolescents without
their parents consent.
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that children and adolescents are far
more exposed to pornography via the internet than they ever have been
before. One 2004 study by Columbia University, for example, found that
11.5 million teenagers (45%) have friends who regularly view internet
pornography and download it.31 !e prevalence of teens with friends who
view internet pornography increases with age. Boys are significantly more
likely than girls to have friends who view online pornography. In one study,
65% of boys ages 16 and 17 reported that they had friends who regularly
viewed and downloaded internet pornography.32
Despite the illegality of marketing sexually explicit material to minors, the
pornography industry does not effectively deny access to young consumers.
Approximately 75% of pornographic websites display visual teasers on the
homepages before asking if the viewers are of legal age; only 3% of such
websites require proof-of-age before granting access to sexually explicit
material, and two-thirds of pornographic websites do not include any adult-
$% National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse IX: Teen Dating Practices and
Sexual Activity, !e National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University,
p. 6; cited in C. C. Radsch, Teenagers Sexual Activity Is Tied to Drugs and Drink, New York
Times, August 20, 2004, p. A14.
$& National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse IX: Teen Dating Practices
and Sexual Activity, !e National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University, p. 23.
28
content warnings.33 Nor are there effective filtering systems widely in place
on cell phones with internet access or iPods that can transmit podnography,
despite the popularity of such contemporary media among adolescents.34
Some of this contact is unsought. In one study funded by the US Congress
through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the authors
concluded that sexually explicit material on the internet is very intrusive
and can be inadvertently stumbled upon while searching for other material
or when opening e-mail.35 In a more recent study by the same authors,
34% of adolescents reported being exposed to unwanted sexual content
online, a figure that appears to have risen by 9% over the last five years.
"is 2006 Youth Internet Safety Survey of 1,500 representative youth found
that one in seven reported unwanted sexual solicitation, and one in eleven had
been harassed online.36 A 2002 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Report
found that 70% of youth ages fifteen to seventeen reported accidentally
coming across pornography online, and 23% of those youth said that this
happened very or somewhat often.37
Furthermore, such numbers do not even take into account how often young
people are exposed to pornographic materials via media other than the
internet. Pornography and pornographic references are frequently laced
into popular video games, advertisements, television, and music, and also
## D. "ornburgh and H. S. Lin, eds., Youth, Pornography, and the Internet (Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 2002), pp. 78-79.
#$ D. L. Delmonico and E. J. Griffin, Cybersex and the E-Teen: What Marriage and Family
"erapists Should Know, Journal of Marital & Family !erapy 34, no. 4 (October 2008): 43144.
#& K. J. Mitchell, D. Finkelhor, and J. Wolak, "e Exposure of Youth to Unwanted Sexual
Material on the Internet: A National Survey of Risk, Impact, and Prevention, Youth & Society
34, no. 3 (2003): 33058; K. J. Mitchell, D. Finkelhor, and J. Wolak, Victimization of Youths
on the Internet, in !e Victimization of Children: Emerging Issues (Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth
Maltreatment & Trauma Press, 2003).
#' J. Wolak, K. J. Mitchell, D. Finkelhor, Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later,
2006: 7, 10, available at
http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV138.pdf.
#( "e Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Report, 2002.
29
are ubiquitous in music videos.38 !ere is also the growing phenomenon
of sexting, or sending pornographic images via text messaging, which is
raising unprecedented legal and other issues across the country. !e combined
effect of these proliferating images and references is that many more young
people experience pornography through a variety of media, with consequences
that are similarly varied.
!e foregoing research corroborates the fears and experience of caretakers
of children everywhere: pornography has infected modern childhood. Some
parents worry about what their sons are doing while they use the internet
for schoolwork. Others wonder what the male peers of their daughters are
viewing online. Some adults directly witness the infiltration of pornography
into the lives of the children for whom they care, catching them acting out
pornographic films or viewing pornography at local libraries. In the news
one often finds stories of child pornography arrests, and school incidents
in which teachers are caught looking at pornography on school computers
during school hours.39
Child psychologists report similar experiences and concerns. Kids today
are going to run into pornography online, not erotica, as one Massachusetts
psychologist puts it. !eyre getting a very bad model. Pornography
doesnt show how a real couple negotiates conflict or creates intimacy. She
further worries that internet pornography, much of which is rape-like, is
a brutal way to be introduced to sexuality. !e clinical director of Masters
and Johnson reports seeing fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys who are
addicted to pornography: Its awful to see the effect it has on them; at such
a young age, to have that kind of sexual problem. A psychologist who runs
the Coche Center in Philadelphia describes one case in which an eleven-yearold
girl was found creating her own pornographic website, explaining that
pornography is considered cool among her friends. !e Coche psychologist
#$ See, for example, D. Levin and J. Kilbourne, So Sexy So Soon: !e New Sexualized Childhood
and What Parents Can Do to Protect !eir Kids (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008), pp. 14247; M.
Moore, Rapelay Virtual Rape Game Banned By Amazon, Telegraph, February 13, 2009, available
at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/4611161/Rapelay-virtual-rapegame-banned-by-Amazon.html; M. Edlund, MUSIC; Hip-Hops Crossover to !e Adult Aisle,
New York Times, March 7, 2004.
#% Paul (2010).
30
also says that more boys, including pre-adolescents, are being treated for
pornography addiction, adding, Before the internet, I never encountered
this.40
Pamela Paul, a participant in the Princeton consultation, expressed a reaction
to these facts that many people share:
It is terrible enough that adults are suffering the consequences of
a pornified culture. But we must think about the kind of world we
are introducing to our children. Certainly everyoneliberals and
conservatives alikecan agree with the statement, It wasnt like this
when we were kids. And I cant imagine anyone would have that
thought without simultaneously experiencing a profound sense of
fear and loss.41
But is there evidence that this exposure is harmful to children?
For some people, no more evidence is needed. However, even skeptics could
not deny the evidence of harmfulness that is emerging in clinical settings.
For one thing, some children and adolescents feel so harmed that they are
presenting themselves for treatment. Further, a study of 804 representative
Italian teenagers found that boys who viewed pornography were significantly
more likely to report having sexually harassed a peer or having forced
somebody to have sex.42
Another study of 101 sexually abusive children in Australia documented
increased aggressiveness in boys who used pornography. A quarter of the
participants said that an older sibling or a friend had shown them how to
access this material; another quarter said that using pornography was their
primary reason for going online. "is study points to one more troubling
fact about the access of children today to the internet, including internet
#$ Ibid.
#% Ibid.
#& S. Bonino, S. Ciairano, E. Rabaglietti, and E. Cattelino, Use of Pornography and Self-
Reported Engagement in Sexual Violence Among Adolescents, European Journal of Developmental
Psychology 3 (2006): 26588.
31
pornography: their parents are almost all unaware of what they are doing.
Nearly all of those parents independently reported that they doubted that
their child would access pornography on the internet.43
In addition, there is abundant evidence that children and adolescents use
pornography to coerce each other into sexual behavior, while adults also
groom or coerce children by the same means. One therapist reports, I am
also witnessing more female adolescents tolerating emotional, physical,
and sexual abuse in dating relationships, feeling pressure to make out with
females as a way to turn guys on, looking at or producing pornography so
that their boyfriends will think they are open-minded and cool, and
normalizing sexual abuse done to them because they see the same acts
eroticized in pornography.44 Indeed, one recent study finds that adolescent
girls who report using pornography are more likely to report being victims
of passive violence, where they experience sexual harassment or forced sex
at the hands of male friends or acquaintances.45
A study focusing on juvenile sex offenders found that a disproportionate
number of such offenders had been exposed to pornography as a child;
specifically, twenty-nine of the thirty juvenile sex offenders had been exposed
to X-rated magazines or videos, and the average age of first exposure was
about seven-and-one-half years.46
"e signatories contend that even the most extreme libertarians who argue
that children should be allowed to view such materials must take these
various harms into account. After all, defenders of the circulation of
pornography among adults justify themselves primarily on the claim that
adult consumers know the difference between reality (sex with real people)
and cyber-reality (contrived scenes of rape and violence). However, neither
children, nor perhaps even adolescents, can easily make that distinction.
#$ P. Goodenough, Online Porn Driving Sexually Aggressive Children, CNSNews.com,
November 26, 2003.
## Manning (2006).
#% Bonino et al. (2006).
#& E. Wieckowski, P. Hartsoe, A. Mayer, and J. Shortz, Deviant Sexual Behavior in Children
and Young Adolescents: Frequency and Patterns, Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment
10, no. 4 (1998): 293304.
32
In sum, there is evidence that the prevalence of pornography in the lives
of many children and adolescents is far more significant than most adults
realize, that pornography is deforming the healthy sexual development of
these young viewers, and that it is used to exploit children and adolescents.
33
FINDING FIVE
a
Todays consumption of internet pornography
can harm people not immediately connected
to consumers of pornography.!ough most of the testimony provided at the Princeton consultation
concerned those immediately affected by todays levels of pornography
consumption, other people whose lives are influenced by such consumption
should also be considered in the assessment of pornographys wider social
impact.
