Posted on 04/17/2015 4:53:57 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
One of music artist John Mayer's signature songs is “Daughters,” a sweet and simple tribute to the importance of parents' influence on their little girls. Here's the refrain:
“So fathers, be good to your daughters, Daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, So mothers, be good to your daughters too.”
But when John Mayer isn't crooning about your beautiful daughters, he's looking at naked pictures of them, sometimes hundreds at a time before he gets out of bed in the morning. In fact, he often prefers that to an actual human being, according to his wildly controversial 2010 interview with Playboy magazine.
“You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora's box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 (naked women) before I got out of bed,” he told the magazine.
Unfortunately, Mayer's morning routine is not unique to him. Studies show that easy access to free internet pornography is having devastating effects on real-life relationships.
Preferring pixels to people
“For many individuals, the more porn they consume, the more likely it is that they can end up preferring the fantasy to reality, they can end up preferring the pixels to a person, and that's really messing up relationships, as you can imagine,” said Clay Olsen, co-founder of the internet movement “Fight the New Drug” (FTND).
The FTND movement, so named because of porn's addictive properties, aims to raise awareness of the harmful effects of pornography through creative mediums such as blogs, videos and infographics. The website includes personal stories as well as scientific studies to illustrate pornography's effects on the brain, the heart (relationships), and ultimately on the world.
“Our goal is to change the conversation from 'Dude, check this out,' to 'Dude, that's messed up,'” Olsen told CNA.
The longstanding, pervasive cultural narrative surrounding pornography is that it is a healthy sexual outlet and can improve sex lives. However, science begs to differ. Several studies cited in FTND's article, “Porn Ruins Your Sex Life,” found that pornography not only leads to dissatisfying sex, it can lead to less sex with actual human beings.
In a series of studies examining pornography use, “The Social Costs of Pornography: A Collection of Papers” published by the Witherspoon Institute, researchers found that those who viewed pornography became less satisfied with their sex lives, and that viewing porn just once can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction towards a human partner.
According to an article in Psychology Today by clinical psychologist Tyger Latham, Psy.D, erectile dysfunction, while once considered an issue plaguing old men, is cropping up more in young men who rely heavily on pornography to become sexually aroused. A study by the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine surveyed 28,000 men on their internet porn habits, and found that porn use over time led to a lower sex drive and an eventual inability to become aroused at all.
“As soon as they try to actually get close to someone and commit to somebody and have an intimate relationship with somebody, it's in those moments that the harms of pornography show their full colors and truly manifest themselves,” Olsen said. “The unrealistic expectations are completely exposed…
And we now see people in their 20s having porn-induced erectile dysfunction because they cannot get excited or aroused without the presence of pornography.”
A decline in marriage rates
Not only is pornography use destroying the physical sexual life, it may be impacting the number of people pursuing marriage or committed sexual relationships.
In the fall of 2013, an article in The Guardian sounded the alarm that fewer people in Japan were having sex, citing as evidence numerous statistics on the country's declining birth rate, marriage rate, and even rates of young people who are dating or who are interested in dating.
A follow-up article on Slate found that while the actual number of people having or not having sex might not be definitively pinpointed, the statistics on falling marriage and birth rates only mean Japan is leading a world-wide trend, rather than bucking one. While it's not clear whether porn is directly influencing these numbers, many have speculated that it is.
Researchers with The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany found an increase in free Internet pornography is at least correlated with a significant decrease in the percentage of young married men, and it may even be contributing to the trend. A 2013 Pew study found that 71 percent of single Americans were not looking for a committed relationship. Another study found that nearly 40 percent of American women had never been married.
“The results in this paper suggest that such an association exists, and that it is potentially quite large,” the study notes, as reported in the Washington Post.
The study used General Social Survey (GSS), a comprehensive, nationally representative survey which analyzed internet use of 1,500 men ages 18-to-35, between the years 2000 and 2004. The researchers studied the number of hours spent on the internet per week, how often internet pornography was used in the past 30 days, as well as other activities such as use of religious sites.
Even when adjusted for variables such as age, income, education, religion and employment, the study found that generally, the more a person used the internet, the less likely they were to be married. Additionally, it found that the more a person used internet pornography, the less likely they were to be married. On the other hand, the use of religious websites was positively correlated with marriage.
Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a Catholic who has studied religion and sexual behavior, cautioned against assuming that correlation equals causation in such studies – but said that pornography use is likely part of a more complex reason for dropping marriage rates.
“We know that both things are occurring, but it's difficult to establish a causal connection,” he told CNA in an e-mail interview. “A variety of things are contributing to the declining marriage rate.”
“I don't think porn use necessarily causes that, but contributes to it (together with diminished earnings power, diminished confidence, etc.),” he added. “To be sure, porn use doesn't help build confidence in men, something that's pretty necessary (but not sufficient) to be considered marriageable. So I'd say porn use is a suspect here, but connecting the dots is hardly straightforward.”
Increasing awareness
Only in the past few years and months has a conversation countering the “it's healthy, it's normal” narrative been emerging in mainstream media about pornography. Several celebrities are speaking up, and there are an increasing number of websites dedicated to helping people fight pornography addictions.
A few months ago, the release of the controversial “50 Shades of Grey” movie sparked a conversation on social media about sexual violence against women in media, with the hashtag #50dollarsnot50shades encouraging people to forgo the movie and instead donate to places that help victimized women.
The movie sparked a response from an unlikely source – British comedian Russel Brand, whose short video about the problems with pornography went viral, generating over 500,000 views on his YouTube channel and over 2 million views on FTND's website.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is another celebrity who has been outspoken about the negative impact of pornography, most notably in his 2013 movie “Don Jon,” which he wrote, directed and co-starred in along with Scarlett Johansson. The film explores the unrealistic expectations of love and relationships that come from pornography addictions and from the media at large.
“I think that there's not a substantial difference between a lot of main-stream culture and pornography. They're equally simplistic, reductionist,” Gordon-Levitt said in an interview with NPR about the film.
“Whether it's rated X or 'approved by the FCC for general viewing audiences,' the message is the same. We have a tendency in our culture to take people and treat them like things.”
But the internet has been around for decades now – why has it taken society so long to catch on to the fact that pornography is harmful?
“Science has caught up with the fact that pornography's harmful,” Olsen said, “but society is still catching up.”
It often takes years for something that was once culturally accepted as true to be flipped on its head as science proves otherwise, Olsen said, so Fight the New Drug knows they still have a lot of work ahead of them.
“We're very excited to see some of this progress and some of these mainstream media outlets kind of following suit and starting to talk about the negative impacts, we couldn't be more excited about it, but we still have a long way ahead of us.”
Some other websites that are also trying to raise awareness and give help to those struggling with pornography include The Porn Effect and Covenant Eyes, and internet filtering and accountability system.
The best way to kick a porn habit? Keep fighting it and lean on the sacraments, Regnerus said.
“(My) advice: don't give up hope; pursue confession regularly; recognize and avoid the contexts which give rise to temptation. That's a start.”
But don’t you think that the availability, quantity, choice, and expense of consuming it makes the current era way different from anything of the past? Given a certain level of technology, there just aren’t any comparable limits like there was in the past. Not saying the desire wasn’t there, just the technical limitations tended to act as a governor. Now people can watch on their phones.
Freegards
Marital aids.
I know this isn’t the point the thread — which strikes me as perfectly valid — but when I first heard Mayer sing that song in that creepy, droning whisper I said to the radio, “if someone like you ever got near my daughter, I’d make sure he never did again” — that’s a) how good my instincts as a father are and b) how transparently smarmy he is. Have never like him and he’s overhyped as a guitar player on top of it.
If a person works at work and watches [legal] porn at home, they are perfectly safe. If a person watches porn at work, they are asking to be fired at least because they don't do what they are supposed to do.
All things considered, even a terabyte of porn at home cannot get you fired. However a "wrong" joke at work can cost you your job. Or a Presidential nomination, as it happened to one Herman Cain.
My impression is that the increase in media and the migration to large cities is causing this.
Back in the olden days, the boy at the farm two miles away that was close to the age of the girl was judged to be a good match for the daughter. He might not have been matinee idol handsome, but he was a good worker from a good family.
My impression now is that young women are all after the same couple of hundred guys. They want the guy in the band or in the movie. They are not going to lower their sights and accept somebody less. They shouldn’t have to.
This allows the guys who look right to the young ladies to then use them. They are the goal and they know it. This then sours the young ladies on all men. They then want wealth. We may have talked a lot about love in the 1960s, but our daughters are way more financially sophisticated.
Beautiful children or big money. If you can’t provide those, then write all the poetry you want because the girls are waiting for someone who can provide those.
I think the fact that an accidental pregnancy can make a young man a slave to the government for 20 years or so could have something to do with it. The laws in this country are now set up to screw men in every aspect of relationships with women. The feminists did that, now they are unhappy when men decide to opt out.
Congratulations! You have moved into a place most will never find.
I have been married for 23 years.
My intimacy with my wife grows better every day.
If you will trust in the Lord Jesus Christs righteousness he will give you satisfaction beyond anything immorality has to offer. You can be hers and she can be yours.
ummmm.....
I would not agree, for the same reasoning that lung cancer is all due to smoking..
I believe they said the same thing about nudist colonies and Playboy fifty years ago.
Yet marriage is the picture that God gives of His relationship to the Church. A relationship where the husband loves his wife enough to give His life for her, and the wife respects her husband enough to give up her control for Him.
It’s not a business arrangement. It’s not a “what’s in it for me?” For men and women it’s a chance to learn where they are still immature brats and be forced to grow up. Growing up is worth that pain, and what is born out of it all is the ability to love without thought of what you get back. “Fireproof” is a fantastic movie that really addresses what real love is. It doesn’t just happen in marriage, but marriage is a place where it is tested beyond most other relationships.
I understand men being afraid, but love is worth it. The trick is to find a spouse who is ALSO willing to be filled with Jesus’ love and to spend a lifetime passing on that love and growing out of their own selfishness. If both people are doing that, it’s a totally different ballgame than what you’ve described, which is truly a scary prospect.
The West is dead. Fleeing to Russia looks really good now. Their civilization is not ay a risk of collapse unlike ours.
Soap operas are basically porn for women, and they can be just as damaging as male porn, for the same reasons.
Point made, and accepted.
Oddly, a week ago, I read that men are turning to porn more because they can’t be bothered with the games women play between who’ll Theyll date and who they want to be with and what they say they want and what they seem to want....
Algore invented the Internet and barack Obama is destroying the Internet with his FCC getting control of the Internet
Unless you’re the son of an upper management type and a minority to boot. Stay on the payroll, get an office, and a promotion, presumably out of the way.
Well, let’s see what happens when Planned Parenthood finds out!!!
I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so.
Is Real Doll business booming?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.