The results of a study published a few months ago, revealed that men who use pornography are less likely to get married, as its ease of accessibility on the Internet has become a substitute for seeking a marriage partner for males between the ages of 18 and 35.
The authors of the paper, Michael Malcolm of the University of West Chester, Pennsylvania, and George Naufal of Timberlake Consultants, that was published in the Institute
for the Study of Labor, found that “Substitutes for marital sexual gratification may impact the decision to marry.” Read below the abstract of their investigation on the effect of Internet usage, and pornography consumption specifically, on the marital status of young men:
“We show that increased Internet usage is negatively associated with marriage formation. Pornography consumption specifically has an even stronger effect. Instrumental variables and a number of robustness checks suggest that the effect is causal.”
“It certainly gives us something to think about. Does porn use delay or prevent marriage initiation? My guess is it may play a part, but it is a part of an overall changed social milieu that is more sexually oriented than what we had 30 to 40 years ago,” said Steve Harris, Couple and Family Therapy program director at the University of Minnesota.
“Given that pre-marital sexual relations are far more common today (higher rates of cohabitation and single parenthood is clearly documented) than in the past, it is easy to see that people no longer feel they have to get married in order to be sexual with a partner.”
Malcolm and Naufal used data from the General Social Survey taken in 2000, 2002 and 2004 for male demographic with ages ranging between 18 and 35.
“It is not surprising that the negative association between marriage and pornography specifically is stronger than the association between marriage and web usage generally since viewing pornography is a strict subset of Internet usage,” continued the paper.
Patrick A. Trueman, president of the anti-pornography group Morality in Media, also said in a statement that the paper clearly showed how pornography can harm the society.
“Pornography is a marriage killer and thus it has monumental negative ramifications for society’s future,” said Trueman. “Research has shown for some time that porn use in marriage destroys the marital bond, but now we can see that porn use destroys even the desire to get married.”
This paper is not the only study that has been released this year to show the negative impacts of pornography usage on marriages in the United States. In April, Psychology of Popular Media Culture published a research that also looked at the link between extramarital sex and porn usage.
“Consistent with a social learning perspective on media, prior pornography consumption was correlated with more positive subsequent extramarital sex attitudes,” read the abstract. “Contrary to a selective exposure perspective on media, prior extramarital sex attitudes were unrelated to subsequent pornography consumption …”
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