Study Says Negative Effects of Watching Porn may be Exaggerated

A new study led by Gert Martin Hald, from the University of Copenhagen, suggests that watching sexually explicit material is just one ‘small to moderate’ factor that influences sexual behavior in teens and young adults. The researchers conducted an online survey involving 4,600 young people from The Netherlands between the ages of 15 and 25 and asked them about how often they viewed pornography and the various aspects of their sexuality, including their tendency to exchange money for sex, one night stand or indulging in ‘adventurous sex’, such as threesomes.

The researchers found that over 88 percent of men and 45 percent of women had watched pornography in the last 12 months. But when the researchers tried to find the link between pornography and sexual behavior, they found that the relationship was a modest one with the participants’ own personal dispositions having a greater influence. The study has been published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine

“There has been a sort of moral panic – sometimes in Britain and in the U.S. especially – about the influence of pornography on sexual behaviours. And although this study can’t claim to investigate cause and effect, it can still say that there are a lot of other factors that determine sexual behaviours, so maybe we should put the debate into a larger perspective instead of being just one-sided”, Hald said.

Source-Medindia