Fifteen Minutes: What are some of the challenges that come with the study of pornography?

Donald L. Hilton: A big one is the difficulty of finding a control group—few men have never seen porn. Also, because the topic is tied to ideological assumptions, people assume that if you show porn is bad, you must be a religious fanatic, making it hard to be taken seriously. Although, people are beginning to recognize it as a legitimate addiction.

FM: Tom Wolfe once said, “The bigger pornography gets, the lower the birthrate becomes.” Is there any truth in this?

DLH: Pornography emasculates men—they depend on porn to get sexually excited and can no longer get off by having sex with their women alone. What happens when you are addicted to porn is that you crave it. Real sex even becomes a poor substitute for porn, and you lose interest. This in turn contributes to the decreased fertility rate—making porn a kind of environmentally friendly population control. Although, the benefits gained from population control are vastly outweighed by the damage addiction does to families and individuals.

FM: When a species is endangered, scientists often look for environmental reasons. You claim that porn is causing the endangerment of the “real man”: what do you mean by this, and what are the environmental causes?

DLH: What it means to be a real man varies across time and space: for example, growing up in Southeast Texas it meant playing football, but for many it means to provide for your family and to be a caring husband. When you are addicted you can’t help but feed your addiction at the expense of everyone around you. Porn is fast, cheap, and easy—three things that emotionally involved copulations with a partner are not, so men are foregoing the latter for the former.

FM: What is going on neurologically in someone who is addicted to pornography?

DLH: What we see in people addicted to porn is the same as what we see with people addicted to drugs such as cocaine, supporting the theory that addiction to porn really is an addiction, and not merely a bad habit. The most significant areas of change are in the control and pleasure centers of the brain. Additionally, when we orgasm, we release a neurotransmitter called oxytocin which causes bonding, so we are literally bonding to porn when we use it to get off—making breaking the addiction that much harder.

FM: How widespread is porn use?

DLH: Over the past five years, the world pornography revenue was $97 billion annually. Every second, $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography. The only reason these numbers aren’t higher is because so much porn is available for free! Every second 28,258 internet users are viewing porn. Eighty-seven percent of college men and 31 percent of college women admit to watching porn. Twenty percent of college men watch porn daily—suggesting a possible addiction. Porn is used more by men than women because men have the ability to engage more quickly, and more porn is geared toward men than women.