Men and women have been consuming explicit sexual content since the world entered the internet. Now, a new study focuses on how the consumption of pornography could affect marriage. The research, which was presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association , suggests that men and women who begin consuming pornography midway through their marriage are more likely to divorce than those who do not.
Previous studies on this topic have already suggested that the consumption of sexually explicit material is not good for marital health ; however, many of these studies were quite limited. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Oklahoma (USA) has been able to analyze the way in which pornography influences marriage for several years.
The new document has examined data from the General Social Survey from 2006 to 2014 , a poll that asks thousands of Americans for their opinions on a wide range of topics. Precisely because the same people participated in these surveys for several years, the experts were able to track how attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles changed over time .
To measure pornography use, the 5,698 respondents – who had previously stated whether or not they were married – were asked if they had seen a porn movie in the past year. 1,681 people said they had seen a pornographic film, reporting that it was also the first time they had seen it during the survey period.
Analysis of the data found that people who started watching porn were more likely to divorce their partners during the study’s follow-up time . For men, the chance of divorce increased from 5% to 10% . For women, the figures ranged from 6% to 18% . Mind you, when women stopped viewing pornography, divorce rates dropped from 18% to 6%. This figure was not so striking among men.
Is it the consumption of pornography that causes the problems or is it a symptom of an unhappy marriage? Samuel Perry, leader of the work, thinks that the data shows causality : “We are pretty sure, based on the statistical analysis we did. We are getting closer to where we can say there is a directional effect. “
