Turned On By Technology: Consequences of Pornography In Culture
Sex-Tech: Image-Based Social & Sexual Dehumanization
Unbridled devotion towards social media, electronic devices and other forms of technology have been known to pave the way for more self-destructive and dehumanizing pathways.
Among these are certain relationships that might be forged between humans and technology.
I think it not unreasonable to say that, in one way or another, we all regale in a devoted security from our versatile technologies.
Of course, this kind of association will denote different meanings to different people—for the mixed-martial artist, a mouth guard is requisite; for painters, a paintbrush; for those living in California's central valley, an air conditioner; for professional basketball players, a specially-designed sneaker; for soldiers, the eventual weapons of war; for a mother-of-four, the pre-set coffee pot; for a charismatic news anchor, the teleprompter; for our corporate CEO’s and opulent carbon-conscious climate-change activists, the private jet; and for those who seek immediate sensual pleasure absent of the touch of a fellow human, the image-based medium.
As readers will probably grasp, it is not uncommon for me to speak of the effects that our image-based mediums have in culture. A sole example of this kind of work that I have taken pains to deliver can be seen here.
But there are yet other ways in which our culture’s image-based mediums can invite change.
My hope is that it might soon become apparent that some forms of change can be more agreeable than others.
It is not difficult to behold how technology befriends us, imparts to us new information, conveys new cultural persuasions, amuses our psyches, and, so we are told, can even guide the lovelorn in finding a companion to whom they might share a profound mental and physical connection.
But what appears to be less recognized is the extent to which technology can effect one’s social and sexual understandings.
Though some readers may find this a difficult subject to encounter, I submit that asking difficult questions, so to speak, might bear the result of producing revealing answers.
This sort of change is transpiring, at least in part, because the mediums of communication at our disposal carry with them the ability to establish new cultural sensibilities.
And this fact is especially true regarding our image-based mediums.
But because so-called sexual technologies have been adopted so hastily and widely in our society without sustained disputation about their consequences, it is possible to overlook the effects they might have in culture, and especially one’s most confidential moments.
Of course, one need not look far to see the degree to which technology can inspire this kind of cultural diversity.
An effective example in illustrating such obvious yet quiet alterations can be seen in digital devices.
Indeed, mobile devices have made quick work of authorizing children and teenagers around the world to regularly and effortlessly send one another sexually-charged text messages or videos, in addition to sharing nude selfies, a trend commonly referred to as sexting.
“It’s one thing when teens of a similar age who are in a relationship agree to share photos—child-development experts say it can even be a normal part of older adolescent relationships, although many parents might balk at that,” detailed Julie Jargon, in an article for The Wall Street Journal. “But it’s another thing altogether when tweens and teens receive photos they don’t want, or feel coerced to share nude photos of themselves. Teens will sometimes use one photo to blackmail another teen for increasingly explicit ones, or leak them for revenge after a breakup or other dispute.”
One girl who spoke to Jargon put it this way: “A guy will send their picture and say, ‘Your turn,’ but you didn’t ask for it.” Jargon further reported how several teens she interviewed said sharing nudes has become a prerequisite for dating.
According to a study from the non-profit Thorn, which works to prevent child exploitation, twice as many children between the ages of nine and twelve reported sending nudes or similar material of themselves in 2020 when compared to the previous year.
As reported by the findings, LGBTQ teens were almost three times as likely to share nude pictures of themselves. As summarized by Thorn CEO Julie Cordua, in a statement to the news website Axios, “Puberty and technology are on a collision course, and kids now face situations online that their parents never experienced, at a younger age than most people would think."
“Technosexuals are joined – as though surgically – to their favourite gadgets,” wrote practicing psychotherapist Lucy Beresford, in an article for The Telegraph. “Whether it’s the ‘ping’ of a message, swiping right, or the seductive, authoritative tones of a cloud-based voice service, their tech fulfils them by mobilising the reward system in the brain and releasing dopamine – the ‘happiness hormone’. The instant activity of using their tech… is like a sexual turn on. This ‘dopamine hit’ happens in all of us but, in technosexuals, something else is at play.”
She went on to say, “You could be dating a techosexual without even realising it. They are great at screen chat, yet not so great at the face-to-face authenticity required to begin or sustain a relationship. The tech they carry around has become such a handy dopamine stimulator, it’s like having a sex toy in their pocket – human intercourse no longer cuts it.”
The psychotherapist added, “Sex education in schools is failing to prepare our children for having healthy sex lives, focusing primarily on preventing pregnancy and often ignoring the digital landscape in which young people now live. As a result, they have access to tech without having the skills to stop it getting in the way of real human interaction. Without proper education, we run the risk of raising an entire generation who are brilliant at using filters on selfies, but who lack the crucial social skills required to form healthy, loving, fulfilling relationships in adulthood.” She further noted that, “The phone in the pocket or bag becomes like a child’s ‘security blanket’, something to be touched or looked at regularly to provide comfort.”
I should like to recommend here that attention be paid to a particularly troublesome technology called pornography, and the effects that might come to pass through its continued proceedings.
One can reasonably conjecture that the progression of much of our culture’s breakthrough sexual technologies would likely be retarded without the advent of pornography paving the way, for it was none other than the porn industry who had their hand in pioneering VHS tapes, pop-up ads and streaming video.
This is important to grasp because, while inquisitive juveniles under the dominion of an orality, writing and print-based nineteenth century, who might have sought to penetrate the worldly conundrum before them by hiding behind a shrub to secretly catching a glimpse of girls wading in a pond, or harmlessly scanning corset advertisements in a mercantile catalog, stand in sharp deviation from what content a child in the early twenty-first century might set their eyes upon.
Surely, attentive viewers of adult entertainment outlets should show their gratitude to this service by taking the time to laud the internet, as it enabled the explicit material to reach wider audiences than ever before, for it is not uncommon for pornographic websites to dominate web traffic, a true testament to our culture’s desire to utilize technology as its gateway to immediate sexual gratification.
Internet users from the novice to the practiced are all but certain to be aware that the allure of pornography is just a click away, and that it can be accessed with little to no difficulty by both the young and the old with the technological tools that have been handed to the public unrestrained.
Resultantly, it is incisive that online porn use has exploded among the rising generation, effectively normalizing adult entertainment that was very recently considered too matronly for younger viewers.
“In its darkest corners,” as put in an article from The Guardian, “pornography has been shown to trade on sex trafficking, rape, stolen imagery and exploitation, including of children. It can also pervert expectations of body image and sexual behaviour, with frequent depictions of violence and degrading acts, typically against women. And it has become almost as available as tap water.”
Certainly, it is difficult to refute that the widespread and facile access to online porn is contributing to the sexualization of the youth, teenagers and young adults.
According to the French pressure group Ennocence, children now tend to first view porn at eleven years of age. Children are being bombarded with adult images, according to the organization’s president, Gordon Choisel, through internet adverts, enabling children to navigate adult content with little work. “You think your child is watching a cartoon but then a window pops up with porn,” he said.
In 2019, an Irish study found that 52% of boys began using pornography for masturbation at the age of thirteen or under. Other avid social media users note that many porn stars possess accounts on Twitter and Instagram, by which children are exposed to additional explicit material.
One study of university students found that sixty-two percent of girls and ninety-three percent of boys were exposed to online porn during their adolescence.
Another study, from the University of Sydney in 2012, detailed that forty-three percent of the 800 study participants started viewing porn between the ages of eleven and thirteen, while twenty percent of participants said that they preferred the excitement of watching porn to being sexually intimate with their partner. “Gone are the days when you had to go to a shop, pay for the merchandise, and come out with a magazine in a brown paper bag,” observed Dr. Gomathi Sitharthan, of the university’s Faculty of Health Sciences.
According to Dr. Andrew Smiler, a “masculinity expert,” up to one in ten young men are now suffering from erectile dysfunction, a condition typically associated with old men. None other than porn addiction has been attributed to this new wave of sexual dysfunction in culture. “The guys I see,” said Smiler, to the Independent, “most of them are between 13 and 25.”
Further testimony came from Angela Gregory, a sex therapist at Nottingham University Hospitals in the UK, who remarked to the news outlet, “Men are becoming both physically and psychologically desensitized to normal sexual stimulation and arousal with a sexual partner.”
Naturally, adults are not exempt from porn technology’s universal sway.
Separate research by Rachel Anne Barr, a researcher at Canada's Université Laval, suggests that porn can cause users to struggle with their emotions and impulses, in turn leading to compulsive behavior. The study also found that porn erodes and rewires the brain to a more juvenile state. “It’s somewhat paradoxical,” noted Barr, in an article for The Conversation, “that adult entertainment may revert our brain wiring to a more juvenile state. The much greater irony is that while porn promises to satisfy and provide sexual gratification, it delivers the opposite.”
In January 2017, London’s transport system was forced to warn that those who choose to watch porn on busses and trains would be reported to the police.
As detailed by Brad Salzman, founder of the New York Sexual Addiction Center, to the New York Post, there are three striking features of porn that make it addictive, “none of which existed 20 years ago.” He said that, “It’s totally accessible, totally anonymous, and totally affordable — or free. There’s an unlimited supply in any flavor you want.” He added, “People have to realize that internet pornography is not a harmless pastime. It might be the most addictive drug we have today.”
The issues of pornography can also have a substantial effect on who, or what, one might select to be their object of affection. Researchers, led by Dr. Matthew Christman, a staff urologist and program director for pediatric urology at the Naval Medical Center of San Diego, California, reported, at a panel discussion held at the 112th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association, that the more time men spend on free porn websites like PornHub, the less likely they are to be able to connect with a real-life partner in the bedroom.
Intimacy, according to the researchers, can become extremely challenging, while romantic or sexual relationships can be severely damaged as a result. 132 male participants between the ages of twenty and forty were studied, and a close correlation was found between excessive pornography use and sexual dysfunction. As reported by the Independent, the data further showed that men who used porn more frequently experienced a lack of sexual desire, in addition to suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Also resulting from prolonged digital porn use is the issue of free high-definition porn users becoming accustomed to being in full control of their experience, a sharp contrast to real-life relations one might have with a human partner. Furthermore, critics of pornography often claim that normal men can be self-conscious about their own penis size in real life, should they come to compare themselves to their enlarged porn counterparts.
Meantime, the notion of extensive porn addiction in culture seems to be applicable to people across the age spectrum.
As we know, it is not uncommon for pornographic websites to showcase depraved displays of fictitious scenarios in which “step” family members engage in sexual activity with one another.
Another concern one might come across when visiting porn sites are graphic displays of women being subjected to physical violence. To be true, pornography is not only connected to a host of public health harms, including sexual dysfunction and mental health problems, but it also commonly depicts and emboldens sexual violence against women.
It has also been asserted that, for those who maintain a steady consumption of pornography, some men can grow to be unamused by conventional sexual imagery, and thus stand at a heightened susceptibility to becoming addicted to extreme porn.
It should come as no surprise that few women are willing to endure in real life these exorbitant sex acts that are depicted on film, which can carry the consequence of leaving porn-devotees tedious by the standard sex real life partners usually offer.
It is also interesting to note that some personal accounts on the matter appear to back up the litany of troubling evidence.
On December 13, 2021, the music artist Billie Eilish remarked during “The Howard Stern Show” that she began watching pornography when she was eleven years old. “I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she commented, adding, “It got to a point where I couldn’t watch anything else unless it was violent, I didn’t think it was attractive.”
The singer further described how she was lead to watching abusive porn, which, as a result, causes her to suffer from night terrors and sleep paralysis. She went on to say that, “The first few times I had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It was because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to.”
Pornography “completely ruined my life,” recounted one man, Gianfranco Martinez, to the New York Post. “I wasn’t really motivated to actually pursue a real relationship or even talk to women because I was just getting my fix [through porn],” he remarked, adding, “It was impacting me socially, it was impacting me in my relationships.” As put by the paper, Martinez “is one of a growing number of Gen Z and Millennial males who grew up consuming internet porn from a young age only to experience ‘porn-induced erectile dysfunction.’”
Another victim of porn, who first observed it at age eleven, detailed that, “I feel like the porn industry took my ability to love earnestly, and that’s the most despairing feeling I’ve ever felt,” adding, “It was so intense, I had to search for a more vanilla video than what they were showing me on the front page of PornHub — most of the things disgusted me. But I’ll never forget the dopamine high that came the first time I watched it.”
The person told The Post that within a matter of months, watching porn became “like a ritual” that he engaged in at least once a day. “In my first serious relationship, I really wanted to be fulfilled sexually by the woman I loved, but I needed porn to be aroused and felt so guilty for it,” he said. “My mind had been so captivated by needing intense porn at all times to maintain arousal.”
He went on to say, “Even if I deeply cared about the woman I was having sex with and loved her in every sense possible, her body was not enough. It got to the point where the most beautiful woman could walk into the room right now and tell me she wants to sleep with me, and it would do nothing for me.” According to Martinez, porn “distorted my view on what the real thing actually is,” adding that, “When you’re inexperienced, your brain can literally rewire itself to think a video of two random people is the real thing.”
Following this line of thought, one would also be justified in cogitating on the reasoning behind the wife of Bernd Bergmair, the majority owner of MindGeek, the company behind Pornhub, who was moved to request that her husband part ways with the pornographic website.
My aim here in taking up the subject of pornography is not to call for the restriction of sexualized content in culture, or to seek legislation that might prohibit legal citizens of viewing such material, or to condemn those who seek out such risqué substance for their own purposes, for in a free society there is a great deal one may wish to do within the confines of their home.
I am merely inquiring into how the technology of pornography might impact one’s emotional and physical relationships with both man and machine.
It may be worth specifying that I have not forgotten that which is evident in the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah, that the ability to corrupt man has existed long before the introduction of computer technology.
What I am saying is that technology carries with it a unique capacity to awaken cultural change in a reserved fashion, that this is a fact worth comprehending, and that the subject is worthy of further examination.
“Pornography,” as put by the Family Research Council, “is an addictive fixation that haunts more than 40 million Americans each year. It targets women and children as the central victims of violence and exploitation. Although anyone can become a consumer of pornography, men are most frequently victimized by pornography through experiencing the negative mental and physical impacts of sexual addictions. Pornography undermines marriages, destroys families, and steals the innocence of children, who can rarely avoid being exposed to explicit material in the digital 21st century.”
Naturally, there is much more to this situation than pornography in regards to this reorientation of human sexuality in culture, for there are many factors in the past several decades that have led to porn’s widespread normalization, as well as various elements in society that have resulted from it, such as revenge porn, smart sex toys, sex dolls and sex robots.
The point is that what seems to be coming to pass is a growing faction in culture who subscribe to robophilia, a term I borrow which generally means an unnatural attraction to robots and other technological components like pornographic websites, virtual reality experiences, sex robots and other sex-based technologies.
We might also call these persons “digisexuals,” a term coined by experts at the University of Manitoba as a term for men who are turned on by things you can turn on.
But one’s lust for direct carnal satisfaction through technology can carry with it consequences that can be useful to grasp.
And if that is true, then it is also true that technology provides at least some of the momentum stirring such change.
Which, for new readers who have not yet been advised of this fact, is often the case.
Thank you for this well-articulated and researched essay. It's discouraging and disturbing what is happening and how unavoidable it is (especially for children).