Porn is not sex

Pornography can be a controversial topic. We all have different emotional relationships with sex , and while some may have complicated feelings about pornography, others see it as liberating. However, there's one thing that everyone should keep in mind: It's recorded and—to some extent—staged. Like other kinds of movies, porn bears about as much similarity to our real sex lives as a romantic comedy does to our daily lives which is to say, not very much.

If, like the UK government , you read the Daily Mail and have absolutely no sex, you probably think that porn is bad for you — that it causes erectile dysfunction , negatively impacts body image , and decreases sexual satisfaction. In fact, studies have often proved the opposite. Particularly in women in the study, porn use was actually a good thing for both the porn user and her partner. The survey also assessed their mental wellbeing, sexual and body satisfaction, as well as sexist attitudes towards both men and women. The authors identified one key variable as the perceived realism of porn — basically: if a person thinks what they see on adult sites is reflective of IRL sex, are they more likely to be negatively impacted by it in their actual sex lives? Unsurprisingly, results showed that 79 per cent of respondents had watched porn in the last three months, while 85 per cent had in their lifetime. The study found no significant link between porn use and mental health, sexual satisfaction, body image, or sexism.

Today most U. But how does such exposure affect them? Scientifically, it is difficult to tease out the effects that porn use has on adolescents; some of the correlations may not be causations.

How did you learn to have sex? Maybe you worked it out bit by bit with a partner. Maybe you talked about it with friends and got tips and tricks from them. Or maybe you watched porn. If you're under 35, it's almost certain you've watched porn at least once, with surveys such as triple j's annual check-in with young people finding 93 per cent of men and 58 per cent of women do.