It turns out everyone likes porn, not just men.

Sex has been depicted for as long as depiction has existed, eventually reaching the forms we know today. It’s often assumed that women prefer erotic fiction while men go for internet porn, but this gender divide may be a false assumption.

At the University of Montreal, psychology professor Beáta Bőthe has been investigating “problematic pornography use” (PPU) – the point when “people can’t control their use” of the stuff. This is more about one’s habits than emotions – so feeling guilty for watching porn doesn’t make someone a problematic user, or vice versa.

The scale of Bőthe’s study is serious: 82,000 people in 42 countries, including many women and non-binary folk. It sheds light on just how widespread porn is:

"In North America, Europe and Australia, 70-94% of adults have used pornography at some point in their lives.”

The study used “special analytical tools” to work out how serious a respondent’s porn habit might be. They found that about 3% have a “real problem”, with men more likely to fit this description; sexual orientation meanwhile doesn’t have as much of a link. Unfortunately, not many will try and find help with this issue.

Online, porn comes in many forms. It could be videos, photos, artwork, erotica, livestreams, virtual reality experiences, chatrooms, even animation. Unsurprisingly, younger people consume more of it than the older generations. Not everyone is doing it for kicks, with some looking at it for curiosity, exploring their identity or even education (but we don’t recommend that last one).

There’s a divide between how much men and women consume porn, and this could be down to societal taboos making women less likely to seek it out. Meanwhile, sexual minorities may watch more porn than heterosexual and cisgender folk, due to the greater challenge of finding partners or people with similar experiences. But Bőthe adds, “they don’t report more problems with their porn use than their heterosexual peers.”

Ultimately, a huge number of factors influence what someone’s porn habits are going to be. These general trends can help us better understand what our society actually looks like, but in the end, it comes down to whether you’re happy with your habits as they are.

by Louis Davies @louis.on.air

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Source:

Bőthe B, Nagy L, Koós M, Demetrovics Z, Potenza MN, International Sex Survey Consortium, et al. (2024) Problematic pornography use across countries, genders, and sexual orientations: Insights from the International Sex Survey and comparison of different assessment tools. Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.16431