Daily pornography use among young adults correlates to higher rates of depression and loneliness, a new study has found.
According to a study from the Institute for Family Studies, 32% of daily pornography consumers under 40 experience depression, and 36% experience some form of loneliness. In contrast, among individuals in the same demographic who do not view pornography with any regularity, only 20% describe themselves as lonely and 19% say they are depressed.
The results of this study come as little surprise. Viewing pornography is an inherently isolating activity and one that severely damages a person’s ability to maintain a healthy romantic and sexual relationship by creating the illusion of personal intimacy, which then becomes a crutch and gives way to a vicious cycle. More pornography use leads to more loneliness, and more loneliness leads to more pornography use.
In study after study, young people consistently report higher rates of general unhappiness and loneliness. At the same time, the age of first exposure to pornography is so low that a large number of children are exposed to sexually explicit content before they finish elementary school, raising the risk of addiction to online pornography from an early age.
It is no accident then, that the more accessible and available that pornography is, the more lonely and isolated people will feel. Pornography sells a fantasy world of sex that is not replicable within healthy and selfless relationships. And its widespread proliferation online and in other media has essentially made it an inescapable fact of life.
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If policymakers, psychiatrists, and cultural and religious leaders want to address the epidemic of loneliness that is plaguing young people all over the nation, they should start by enacting a widespread public awareness campaign of the social and psychological damages of viewing pornography that rivals the government’s anti-smoking campaign during the later years of the 20th century.
Otherwise, the number of lonely and depressed people will only increase.