Are you addicted to porn? New study highlights ‘compulsive’ users

The world’s leading pornographic website, Pornhub says that its users viewed 4.6 billion hours of porn in 2016 – with 12.5 videos viewed for every person on Earth.

But there is such a thing as a ‘problem’ porn user, researchers say – and a new test aims to find ‘distressed’ and ‘compulsive’ users, who are doing themselves emotional harm by watching porn.

Most people watch porn ‘recreationally’, viewing a mere 24 minutes per week – and this makes up 75% of users.

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But ‘distressed’ users – who watch 17 minutes a week – feel shame, self-disgust and self-punishment after watching porn.

And compulsive users – mostly men – watch 110 minutes of pornography per week, and are ‘intense’ about their hobby.

The questions used by the researchers to highlight ‘compulsive’ users can be found here.

Researcher Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel of the University of Montreal said, ‘Pornography use seems to be problematic for sexual well-being in two groups of users: a group of high-frequency compulsive users and a group of low frequency users who report significant emotional distress mostly expressed through shame and self-disgust.

‘However, pornography use does not unequivocally lead to adverse sexual outcomes given that, for 75% of our sample, no negative sexual outcomes were observed. Thus, the number of recreational users was high.’