Although there are dozens of studies examining the drivers of desire to watch pornography, the reasons for this habit increase with the emergence of new research.
From satisfying curiosity and avoiding boredom to self-exploration and stress reduction – there can be many reasons why people turn to pornography.
In the opinion of a consultant psychiatrist and addiction, Muhammad al-Maqhawi, porn addiction is on the rise worldwide. He told Al-Hurra that “global statistics indicate an increase in porn addiction, and the Arab countries are part of the world.”
3 thousand people around the world watch a pornographic scene per second, according to the coffee shop, which confirms the escalation of this phenomenon globally, after the number of visits to pornographic sites was 43 billion in 2016, it has become 91 billion visits in 2018.
Reasons and motives
A new study published in a scientific journal called “Sexual Health and Compulsive Behaviors,” found that excessive viewing of pornography is a problem when it leads to negative consequences in various areas of life, such as work, school and personal relationships, and becomes difficult to control.
According to the study’s lead researcher, Christopher Hand, the results reveal a strong relationship between those who suffer from problems in their lives due to frequent viewing of pornography, and suffering from obsessions, such as feeling the need to resist immoral thoughts, and their fear that they are evil and immoral.
There are no sources that reveal the statistics of visits to porn sites in Arab countries, especially since most of these countries ban such sites, so it is difficult to determine whether they are an Arab phenomenon or not, according to Rasha Al-Jundi, a professor of mental health at Beni Suef University.
In her interview with Al-Hurra channel, Al-Jundi believes that there are 4 main reasons for addiction to watching pornography.
She told Al-Hurra TV website that the motives behind watching these materials start with curiosity in adolescence, when this sense is high. “Secondly, there may be the pent-up desires of an unmarried person or a young teen,” she added.
And on the third reason, Al-Jundi said that “excessive repression, such as depriving the parents of the son of everything, generates a desire within the person to reach anything,” while noting that “excess openness” is also a fourth reason for this habit, given that the matter for this category is normal. .
Getting rid of addiction
Al-Jundi believes that getting rid of pornography addiction can only be achieved gradually, as is the case of drug addicts who are gradually withdrawn from their bodies.
She said that addiction means that it is “impossible to dispense with these substances even for one day”, and this is what makes “dispensing with it difficult and getting rid of it cannot come in one stage.”
She pointed out the importance of determining the main cause of exposure to these substances, according to each case, adding: “We must know the cause and give it alternatives according to its circumstances and age. Work must be done to treat the disease, not the symptom.”
Adverse effects
Previous studies have linked viewing pornography over the past decades to a wide range of harms including mental health problems, gender-based violence, unrealistic expectations, problems with body image, bad relationships, sexual coercion, and more.
The harms vary according to different studies from previous decades, but one study estimated that pornography addiction affects approximately three to six percent of adults.
However, a huge new study concludes that previous research into pornography is contradictory, incomplete and often biased, according to the newspaper “The Guardian”.
Porn researcher Professor Alan Mackey, chair of the School of Arts, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, has teamed up with three other researchers to scrutinize 50 years of academic papers on the topic, comprising thousands of studies in a range of disciplines.
The findings were published in a book called What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research? “The impact of porn is really a big issue for a lot of people, policy makers, journalists, parents,” Mackie says.
He added: “What bothered us was that when you look at the academic research, it’s fundamentally contradictory… We know very little about the relationship between exposure to pornography and healthy sex.”
To help young people browse and stop using pornography for sex education, we need to provide better sex education focused on consent, pleasure, respect and equality, Mackey says.
“We assume that when young people reach puberty, they may surf the Internet because their parents or schools don’t tell them what they want to know.”
He suggested one solution to problems with both porn research and sex education simultaneously: “Break the patriarchy,” saying, “You don’t want pornography to be your child’s only source of information about sex.”