I/O
Porn Sites Try a New Service for Users: Therapy
Q&As and livestreams about addiction are now part of the package for Pornhub and Stripchat
--
As internet pornography has become more widespread, so too has hand-wringing about its potential harms. In 2016, a Time cover story examined pornography as “a threat to virility.” And many people take the very idea of porn addiction as a given — even as academic and medical communities remain largely undecided about how to diagnose or treat such an addiction or whether excessive consumption of pornography can be considered an “addiction” at all.
For porn consumers — particularly young ones who are still learning about healthy sexual habits — the current state of the conversation around porn addiction can feel decidedly one-sided. If you find yourself struggling with anxiety over your own porn habits, a Google search is likely to lead you to an anti-porn resource like Fight the New Drug, a Utah-based nonprofit founded by a group of Mormons, or Your Brain on Porn, a site run by self-identified recovering porn addicts, where total abstinence from adult content is presented as the only healthy solution.
Many sexual health professionals see that message as troubling. While it’s true that a small number of people have unhealthy, compulsive relationships with adult content, moderate consumption of porn can be a perfectly healthy part of someone’s sexual experience. What’s more, abstinence-only messages sometimes do more harm than good, upping anxiety and shame around sexual behavior rather than encouraging the formation of healthy attitudes toward sex.
In an attempt to push back against this one-sided discourse on porn consumption, some sexual health professionals are teaming up with porn platforms to bring a message of reduced shame and moderate consumption directly to consumers. At Pornhub, sex therapist Laurie Betito manages the Pornhub Sexual Wellness Center, where visitors can find answers to all manner of queries ranging from what happens when STIs like syphilis are left untreated to how to perform a prostate massage, and, of course, how much masturbation is too much masturbation (a question that, perhaps unsurprisingly, has come up more than once).
