Pleasure and Peril: Young Men’s Mental Health in the World of Porn

Abstract

The Harms. Research investigating porn’s negative impact on young men’s mental health has noted several areas of concern, especially in relation to young men being exposed to violent and misogynistic content in their formative years. Links to young men’s mental ill-health, negative body image, harmful sexual attitudes and violence, negative relationship outcomes, and loneliness, all speak to the wide-ranging impact porn can have. Further problematising these links is uncertainty around treatment pathways, with conceptualisations of addiction, and a lack of evidence for abstinence frameworks such as the “NoFap” model, both strongly contested within the field. The Positives. While a sizable mi..