Over 100 quick stats and findings from an ever-growing body of research that details the effects of porn for individuals, relationships, and society.
83% of active 2020 sex trafficking cases involved online solicitation, which is overwhelmingly the most common tactic traffickers use to solicit sex buyers.
The Internet Watch Foundation recently reported that during 2020, approximately 44% of all child sexual abuse material reported to the IWF involved self-generated material. That’s a 16% increase from 2019 when only a third of reports involved self-generated imagery.
Research suggests that pornography can make young people more sexually illiterate —in other words, it’s actively spreading harmful misinformation about sex.
According to a report of prosecuted sex trafficking cases in the U.S., the majority of coercive tactics used by traffickers (59%) were non-physical, compared to 41% of tactics involving physical coercion.
Despite porn’s promise of improving consumers’ sex lives, research shows that consuming porn is associated with decreased sexual satisfaction.
Research shows that women are almost always the targets of violence or aggression in porn —about 97% of the time.
Research suggests that frequent porn consumers are more likely to express an intent to rape.
Some experts have determined four major brain changes common to addicted brains—sensitization, desensitization, hypofrontality, and a malfunctioning stress system— all of which can be found in cases of pornography consumption.
Longitudinal, qualitative research has found that young people's narratives surrounding anal sex often encourage coercion, pain, and other risky behaviors, and that they often attribute these narratives to pornography, as it can normalize sexual behaviors and attitudes.
Nearly 1 in 5 sexually active 16- to 17-year-olds said they had either asked or been asked to incorporate acts from porn into their sexual experiences, according to a 2020 report from the UK.
Research suggests that frequent porn consumers are less likely to intervene during a sexual assault.
While not all porn features physical violence, even non-violent porn has been shown to be associated with negative effects like increased sexual aggression
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