> Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction.

I've heard this before, but I've never, not even once, gotten an evidence-based approach to if this is true.

I've only ever gotten morality-based arguments, which, IMO, aren't arguments at all and aren't worth mine, or anyone else's, time.

We cannot just act like pornography being harmful is a foregone conclusion. No, we need to prove it. We should not be legislating things, and giving up our privacy and freedom, before even defining a problem.

Intuitively, sure, it makes sense that porn is bad. It depicts sex, and in western puritanical cultures, that's bad. If people are exposed to sex, surely they're at greater risk of teen pregnancy, or STIs, or whatever.

But is this actually the case? In the past 20 years, teen pregnancy has fallen off a cliff. Rates of STIs are lower, too. In areas that teach abstinence-only education, they actually have higher teen pregnancy. Taking a more puritanical approach does not guarantee better outcomes, and based off the real-world statistics, it seems to do the opposite.

In addition, I have zero reason to believe porn addiction is even real. There's a lot of dispute among psychologists, with most not recognizing it as an addiction. The problem here is that an addiction is not a compulsive action. An addiction needs to impair your everyday life. That's the clinical definition of an addiction.

We're not seeing a lot of bad outcomes or impairment from pornography. It is exceedingly rare that someone who is consuming pornography is doing it to a degree where it negatively affects their lives. Sure, it's possible, but for the vast, vast majority of people this just does not appear to be the case.

Now, to get ahead of the curve because I've already had this conversation a hundred times - no, I am not addicted to pornography and I very rarely consume it. I have a happy and healthy sex life. I just reject the idea that it's harmful with no evidence provided, and I reject moral arguments in general.

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pyman 3 days ago | parent [-]

Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction.

What I mean by porn addiction:

In 2025, the average person watches around 6 hours per week of pornography. That's from recent industry and survey data. In 2005, the average was roughly 1.7 hours. So porn is clearly becoming more addictive.

Sex work has exploded online, especially with webcams and platforms like OnlyFans. In 2020 there were over a million sex workers. Now, there are over 4 million. And that doesn't include the many who are pushed into cam work just to survive.

This isn't just about kids spending money to watch their crush undress on a porn site. It's also about the workers, many of whom are exploited because the demand keeps growing.

This industry needs regulation, not to censor it, but to make it safe for everyone.

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const_cast 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction.

You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them.

Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "demand" for sex work makes people become sex workers. People become sex workers because they enjoy it, or because they're fine with the outcome in exchange for the money.

The actual "harm" done by being a sex worker varies based on each person's moral beliefs. Some people don't care about that kind of stuff, so they're fine doing it. And, especially if you do solo work, there's very little real risk. There's only social risk, which again, is a different thing aligned with morality.

In terms of actual, real, tangible harm - what is the harm of sitting in front of a webcam and stroking it? Nothing. The answer is nothing. This is moral plight bullshit. I understand you don't like it and you think it's the downfall of the nuclear family or some other equally stupid bullshit - but the reality is nobody actually cares what you think. We care about outcomes.

And, right now, I'm not seeing the outcomes which align with this being compared to fucking tabacco. And I used to smoke.

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pyman 2 days ago | parent [-]

First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking.

> People become sex workers because they enjoy it

Ignorant.

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const_cast 2 days ago | parent [-]

> First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking.

No, I don't actually. Why not? Two major reasons:

1. You cannot naively equate things for free. You cannot claim porn is like narcotics without proving that first. I simply do not need to prove narcotics are good to show porn is fine.

2. When it comes to rights, we never, ever, take an approach of "it's bad until it's proven good". Ever. For example, I need not prove every single potential piece of speech is okay to advocate free speech. We take the inverse approach - all speech is fine, until it's not and we can prove it's not. I don't need to ask permission first. For example, yelling "fire!" in a theater isn't okay, but we reach that conclusion by proving it's bad - NOT by proving everything around it is good. Does that make sense? It's a sort of innocent until proven guilty approach.

We do not restrict rights without first proving doing so will be good. You are, implicitly, granted a right to do whatever - EXCEPT the stuff we've taken the time to blacklist.

So, if something is bad, that's something you need to prove if we want to restrict that right. I don't need to prove it's good, I implicitly have the right. For example, in practice, there's a lot of bad stuff I can do that I have the right to do. I have the right to watch a scary movie that will keep me up at night. I don't need to prove anything is good, and we don't need to write a law like "scary movies are good". YOU would need to prove they're bad, and then write a law like "scary movies are bad, no more scary movies".

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pyman 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

You said there are no sex workers or people paying for sex in the US. I said, prove it. You can't because you're just talking nonsense.

> because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them

	▲	const_cast 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> You said there are no sex workers or people paying for sex in the US. I said, prove it. You can't because you're just talking nonsense. Well, that's not what I said, it appears you're trying to be dishonest. You said there's people who "spend all their money" on porn and that daughters are increasingly becoming sex workers. I said this is rare, which is true. What you're trying to do is say porn is bad by appealing to a worst case scenario. It's a common argumentative tactic people who don't really know how to argue use. For example, cars are bad because people fly through windshields and paint the freeway with their brains. This is true, and does happen, but without a qualifier for how often it happens, it's worthless. This statement says absolutely nothing about how good or bad cars are. But, to be clear, even if it did, that alone would not be enough to sacrifice any and all privacy and security. See, the problem here is you're making multiple levels of arguments, of which you cannot even justify the lowest level. Making the argument that porn is bad is one argument, making the argument that this means we should sacrifice privacy or security is another argument, and a much more difficult one. You haven't even proved the more fundamental argument, so certainly you're a long way away from proving the more stringent one.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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