Beaten, tied up, and viciously raped, consistently for nine months, Elizabeth Smart told CNN and many other news sites “pornography made [her] life a living hell.”  Her captor would come to her excited and “amped up” with porn magazines. He would show her the pages and say that they were going to try these things. And even with endless cases like this,  the billion dollar porn industry, that supports violence against women and encourages rape culture, is still thriving. But it can be harmless right? After all, as notorious serial killer and cult leader Charles Manson said, “I’ve watched pornography my entire life. Hasn’t affected me none. ”

Identifying Porn as a Problem

The examples above are few of the more extreme examples of how, seemingly harmless, pornography has affected society.  But there are many, less extreme, and probably more relatable consequences to what porn does to, say, the average high school kid. If you watch porn, this is not a shame-on-you speech. You are not a monster. Pornography is disguised as a normal part of growing up, and a justified thing to do. Its consequences, however, on your brain, behavior, culture, and society, are begging for your attention.

They say the first step to ending a problem is to first acknowledge there is, in fact, a problem there. The truth of the matter is that porn is destructive and offensive. It’s a monster dressed up as a princess and needs to be recognized as such.

Statistics and Facts

Every second, the porn industry makes $3,000. One Mississippi. Three thousand dollars. Two Mississippi. Six thousand dollars. A study done in 2010 by the journal Violence Against Women, showed that in this same industry, 88.2% of the leading scenes of pornography display physical aggression and 48.7% show verbal aggression, and out of these percentages, 94.4% is directed at women and girls. That’s right, girls. It’s been found that more and more people are becoming attracted to porn with under-aged girls, which is leading to the victimization of teenagers and even children in many criminal cases. The U.S. is the top consumer of both illegal child pornography and obscene pornography, which is becoming more popular now that soft porn is almost a thing of the past. It seems to be not exciting or thrilling enough to feed the astoundingly high number of addictions while people are in desperate desire of the next best thing. Where will the industry stop to meet their cravings? Chains, blood, violence? It seems to be nowhere. And from that, rolls in the $3,000 every second.

From a neuroscience perspective, according to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, pornography consumption is directly linked to “aggressiveness, poor judgment of future consequences, [and] inability to inhibit inappropriate responses that are similar to those observed in substance abusers.” This can be explained by the damage of the frontal systems in the brain that can occur over time, as it does with all addictions. Alcohol and even cocaine addictions, for example,  display some of the same results on your brain as a porn addiction would. And when porn is discovered by someone at a young age, this change in the brain goes on while their brain is still developing.

Additionally, a study was done in 2011  to prove that porn was feeding rape culture on college campuses. Inside a fraternity, it was discovered that 83% of those college men that regularly viewed conventional pornography, expressed intent to commit rape if they would be guaranteed to not get caught. After all, rape might seem morally OK to someone whose view on sex is that women respond pleasurably to physical and verbal aggression, which is the same view on sex being expressed in mainstream porn at this very moment.

Students Open Up About Pornography Addiction and Struggle

“It started in eighth grade, and it was something I really struggled with.”

A sophomore at Olathe West opened up about his struggle with porn addiction and how it affected his life.

“At the time when watching porn was a big part of my life, I didn’t respect girls at all. I saw them as toys I could use to have fun. No respect,” he said.

He went on to explain the point in his life where he knew something had to change.

“I realized I needed to stop, and that it was affecting me. So I decided OK, we’re going to need to quit. So I started lowering the watching time every day until it was barely any, and I realized like okay I don’t need this.”

Interestingly, he explained that he didn’t like the version of himself that watched porn on a daily basis. He felt very strongly that porn made him a much more aggressive person and lead to almost an obsession with dominance.

“I think when you start to see other people as toys, it becomes easier to treat them any way you want. Like when you see them as just bodies and don’t have emotional connections to them you get arrogant and it’s like you’re above them,” he said. 

Other students at West, who asked to remain nameless, shared similar feelings about how porns distortion of reality affected their mindsets.

“It’s not reality. It portrays women as always wanting to have sex when they don’t,” one said. 

All agreed that porn does one major thing, it changes the way you think.  And when it’s introduced at a young age, as it almost always is, it can be fatal. Imagine the consequences of a society that views women as always “wanting it”.

What is displayed in pornography’s many scenes is a gateway to a warped mindset that dramatically influences rape culture, and is only getting worse. Every click on Porn Hub is a click supporting negative outcomes for our culture and society, especially women.

Dawn Hawkins from Huffington Post says it all.

“It’s time to take a stand for the safety and dignity of women, and to denounce pornography as the cornerstone on which the hideous edifice of rape culture stands.”