the feminist librarian reads

The common assumption in porn addiction research has been that porn is contributing to and causing those negative emotional states and life events. In fact, there have been two or three longitudinal studies that looked at this question, and what they found consistently is that porn is a symptom, not a cause. There do appear to be folks who increase their use of porn as something akin to a coping method when they are experiencing increased levels of depression or loneliness. The reason I think that is important is that it leads us to focus not on the pornography, but on the person. Instead of talking about porn causing these bad feelings, now we can say this person is using porn to manage the bad feelings. Is that a bad thing? Sexuality and sexual arousal is a very effective, perhaps the most effective, method of distracting oneself from negative emotions. There is an assumption in the porn addiction field that using porn and masturbation is negative and unhealthy in some way — but that is a critically unevaluated assumption that is very heavily driven by cultural bias and norms.