Interesting how some of the men in their 30s and 40s seem to be more into porn than men in their 20s. Is it a generational thing, or is there something else going on?
If I read the article correctly, seems to be they're a product of the new tech, much as the initial adopters of cigarettes were. The younger gens came of age when it was already a thing, they had time to see its effects and are apparently deciding it's not worth it. Negative media portrayal, which I'm fine with, also help.
Will be interesting seeing how they handle AI, tiktok, and the like. It may be to them as marijuana is to the millennials (who generally don't smoke cigarettes.)
Something else IMO. They were sold certain ideals that haven't materialized and realizing that at middle age... The games sort of up. It's a coping mechanism for lack of intinacy and lonliness.
We see the negative effects of porn usafe. First-Gen internet users didn't have anyone to look at and realize how bad unlimited, free internet porn is for everyone.
Thanks for writing this, Simon. To be charitable to Kate, she mentioned in another comment that her views on porn are influenced by her discovering her dad's porn collection (of VHS/DVDs) when she was ~12, which is a whole different level of gross.
I had the same reaction that you did to her claim that porn would never be banned. Virginia is hardly a red state, but our age verification law passed both houses of the General Assembly unanimously or close to it.
All of these figures are driven by self-reports which makes them inherently suspect. I would bet a great deal of money that a majority of men have looked at pornography in the past month.
If self-report is a big factor, then the gender gaps are probably even lower than the study claims, since women probably feel stronger shame about this than men do.
Was going to comment this myself. Self reporting stats are notoriously suspect. You see this with very morally charged issues especially like Church attendance. Personally I don’t know a single non-Catholic or Christian guy who doesn’t consume some sort of pornography regularly whereas most practicing Catholic guys I know (which admittedly is a small number compared to the culture) pretty much 99% don’t regularly.
Right, there's that data showing that self reports of church attendance are way, WAY off of what actual cell-phone data location tagging shows. Like 5% of people go weekly but about 40% say they do, something like that. Too bad there's nothing similar for porn use. It's hard to line up these stats with other ones consistently showing porn sites are the most frequently trafficked on the internet with billions of views every day. I suppose it's possible that large numbers of people never use or only rarely, while large majorities use it in sort of horrific, addictive level amounts, but I don't feel there's any way to know with something that has so much inherent shame and/or damage to personal relationships attached to it.
I know this is mostly about the US, but it's worth to mention that even France is moving against the porn. And with them you can be sure that it's not about religion.
I know that people like to joke that these are uneffective but I don't think so. Sure, with will and determination these barriers can be bypassed, but for many it will be already enough to be deterred. Therefore no one can say that they are useless.
I noticed the young women, under 29, are more approving of porn than the young men. Coincidentally the same age range as the women with Only Fools accounts hoping to get rich becoming video prostitutes.
Yeah mirrors the trend of young men being more religious than young women. Men are leading the charge and women will change their opinions to follow in a generation or two but for now they’re all 90s libs
I do believe that unregulated pornography is a serious issue in the United States and other parts of the West. It's a tricky one too because it's become so wrapped up with other, broader issues in the regulation of the internet and social media.
It actually convinced me that pornography has always been exploitative. The word itself describes the depiction of prostitution, which is harmful for society as a whole.
At the same time, I disagree with the blame-game many feminists play, where the current porn market is blamed on men and women are always victims. The most vehement defenders of pornography I've ever met have been feminists who insist it's empowering for women, and write articles for Cosmopolitan about how they turned a bad date into a pay pig.
How exactly does that fit into the victim-narrative?
From everything I've seen, men and women appear equally complicit in their own ways.
To retroactively punish for something that was widely marketed as legal would be going nowhere. To effectively counter the influence of pornography and public indecency in today's world we need to find root issues.
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s very realistic on a federal level, nor should we want a government with that much power.
What I’d like to see first and foremost is holding social media platforms accountable for allowing women to solicit sex ie including links in bios, using pornographic hashtags, comments etc.
A single well-aimed lawsuit could do a lot toward restoring public decency, at least online.
This goes back to the issue I was referring to, which is where do draw the line between public and private?
I think it’s self-evident how the internet, and smart devices, have destabilized our sense of privacy. Porn is the grossest example of that.
Porn is degenerate. There is no reason to tolerate degeneracy. If a stronger government is needed to crack down on degeneracy, then you need a stronger government. Libertarianism cannot be used to build a Christian state.
Yes that’s why martial debt was such a huge thing for a long time. Due to concupiscence men and women owe each other sex or they will fall into sin like porn
I'm 48. I've struggled with pornography since my teenage years, and the internet made it much, much worse. Since becoming a follower of Jesus 9 years ago, my usage has dwindled and at the time of this writing I have not viewed porn in 7 months. I suspect I am far from alone. It can be done. It has been done. It will be done by more and more men who want freedom from the evil that is porn.
For some reason I can't restack this, but this seems spot on. If you adsume porn is a vice, it should follow the same social process as others.
"The liberal attitude on porn will eventually fall out of fashion, because more and more people will realize the obvious: that porn is a vice. Conservative reformers will continue to create software to help people break their porn addictions. Legislatures will curtail the ability of pornographers to give their wares to children. And most importantly of all, porn use will fall out of fashion among the upper and middle class. There will be a growing realization that porn use is undisciplined. Porn-use will become low-class."
It seems women (many vocal ones online at any rate) will on the one hand be in grossed-out despair of men's porn use; but will on the other hand criticize men's not fitting into porn-brain society. By the latter I mean men who are not ruled by their passions when it comes to women; who see women's beauty as principally a functional thing - attracting men toward marriage and the begetting and raising of children. This appears to be unsatisfactory to (at least online) women, not enough fire there for their liking, and the slurs of incel and/or gay are then liberally applied.
This seems correct. People who openly proclaim themselves fans of pornography and masturbation are few and far between, with good reason
I am
Interesting how some of the men in their 30s and 40s seem to be more into porn than men in their 20s. Is it a generational thing, or is there something else going on?
If I read the article correctly, seems to be they're a product of the new tech, much as the initial adopters of cigarettes were. The younger gens came of age when it was already a thing, they had time to see its effects and are apparently deciding it's not worth it. Negative media portrayal, which I'm fine with, also help.
Will be interesting seeing how they handle AI, tiktok, and the like. It may be to them as marijuana is to the millennials (who generally don't smoke cigarettes.)
Something else IMO. They were sold certain ideals that haven't materialized and realizing that at middle age... The games sort of up. It's a coping mechanism for lack of intinacy and lonliness.
We see the negative effects of porn usafe. First-Gen internet users didn't have anyone to look at and realize how bad unlimited, free internet porn is for everyone.
Presumably increasing conservatism among young men
Probably due to the monotony of life that comes in 30s/40s.
There's just no way 25% of 18-29 year old dudes have never watched porn.
They’re lying.
Thanks for writing this, Simon. To be charitable to Kate, she mentioned in another comment that her views on porn are influenced by her discovering her dad's porn collection (of VHS/DVDs) when she was ~12, which is a whole different level of gross.
I had the same reaction that you did to her claim that porn would never be banned. Virginia is hardly a red state, but our age verification law passed both houses of the General Assembly unanimously or close to it.
All of these figures are driven by self-reports which makes them inherently suspect. I would bet a great deal of money that a majority of men have looked at pornography in the past month.
If self-report is a big factor, then the gender gaps are probably even lower than the study claims, since women probably feel stronger shame about this than men do.
Not me!
Was going to comment this myself. Self reporting stats are notoriously suspect. You see this with very morally charged issues especially like Church attendance. Personally I don’t know a single non-Catholic or Christian guy who doesn’t consume some sort of pornography regularly whereas most practicing Catholic guys I know (which admittedly is a small number compared to the culture) pretty much 99% don’t regularly.
Right, there's that data showing that self reports of church attendance are way, WAY off of what actual cell-phone data location tagging shows. Like 5% of people go weekly but about 40% say they do, something like that. Too bad there's nothing similar for porn use. It's hard to line up these stats with other ones consistently showing porn sites are the most frequently trafficked on the internet with billions of views every day. I suppose it's possible that large numbers of people never use or only rarely, while large majorities use it in sort of horrific, addictive level amounts, but I don't feel there's any way to know with something that has so much inherent shame and/or damage to personal relationships attached to it.
I looked through the website to find the survey methodology, but I couldn’t find it. Could you tell me where you saw it?
Excellent post.
I know this is mostly about the US, but it's worth to mention that even France is moving against the porn. And with them you can be sure that it's not about religion.
I know that people like to joke that these are uneffective but I don't think so. Sure, with will and determination these barriers can be bypassed, but for many it will be already enough to be deterred. Therefore no one can say that they are useless.
I noticed the young women, under 29, are more approving of porn than the young men. Coincidentally the same age range as the women with Only Fools accounts hoping to get rich becoming video prostitutes.
Yeah mirrors the trend of young men being more religious than young women. Men are leading the charge and women will change their opinions to follow in a generation or two but for now they’re all 90s libs
I do believe that unregulated pornography is a serious issue in the United States and other parts of the West. It's a tricky one too because it's become so wrapped up with other, broader issues in the regulation of the internet and social media.
I once embarked on a research project to make a distinction between the history of pornography before the internet: https://arboles.substack.com/p/the-devolution-of-public-decency .
It actually convinced me that pornography has always been exploitative. The word itself describes the depiction of prostitution, which is harmful for society as a whole.
At the same time, I disagree with the blame-game many feminists play, where the current porn market is blamed on men and women are always victims. The most vehement defenders of pornography I've ever met have been feminists who insist it's empowering for women, and write articles for Cosmopolitan about how they turned a bad date into a pay pig.
How exactly does that fit into the victim-narrative?
From everything I've seen, men and women appear equally complicit in their own ways.
Pornography, just like prostitution, is degenerate, sinful and disgusting. The only way forward is to punish both the producer and the consumer.
To retroactively punish for something that was widely marketed as legal would be going nowhere. To effectively counter the influence of pornography and public indecency in today's world we need to find root issues.
Finding root issues does not mean that porn actors and producers should not be imprisoned.
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s very realistic on a federal level, nor should we want a government with that much power.
What I’d like to see first and foremost is holding social media platforms accountable for allowing women to solicit sex ie including links in bios, using pornographic hashtags, comments etc.
A single well-aimed lawsuit could do a lot toward restoring public decency, at least online.
This goes back to the issue I was referring to, which is where do draw the line between public and private?
I think it’s self-evident how the internet, and smart devices, have destabilized our sense of privacy. Porn is the grossest example of that.
Porn is degenerate. There is no reason to tolerate degeneracy. If a stronger government is needed to crack down on degeneracy, then you need a stronger government. Libertarianism cannot be used to build a Christian state.
Be careful with that.
Yes that’s why martial debt was such a huge thing for a long time. Due to concupiscence men and women owe each other sex or they will fall into sin like porn
Huge whitepill!
I'm 48. I've struggled with pornography since my teenage years, and the internet made it much, much worse. Since becoming a follower of Jesus 9 years ago, my usage has dwindled and at the time of this writing I have not viewed porn in 7 months. I suspect I am far from alone. It can be done. It has been done. It will be done by more and more men who want freedom from the evil that is porn.
For some reason I can't restack this, but this seems spot on. If you adsume porn is a vice, it should follow the same social process as others.
"The liberal attitude on porn will eventually fall out of fashion, because more and more people will realize the obvious: that porn is a vice. Conservative reformers will continue to create software to help people break their porn addictions. Legislatures will curtail the ability of pornographers to give their wares to children. And most importantly of all, porn use will fall out of fashion among the upper and middle class. There will be a growing realization that porn use is undisciplined. Porn-use will become low-class."
Good work!
Beautifully written and well documented piece of work.
Excellent post
Very interesting considerations. Thanks for the post.
It seems women (many vocal ones online at any rate) will on the one hand be in grossed-out despair of men's porn use; but will on the other hand criticize men's not fitting into porn-brain society. By the latter I mean men who are not ruled by their passions when it comes to women; who see women's beauty as principally a functional thing - attracting men toward marriage and the begetting and raising of children. This appears to be unsatisfactory to (at least online) women, not enough fire there for their liking, and the slurs of incel and/or gay are then liberally applied.