In January this year, The Sunday Times published a story about our amicus brief on age verification to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Martin Geissler, senior BBC journalist then invited TRF’s CEO Mary Sharpe to appear with him on the new BBC Scotland Scotcast series as a result of this article.
The discussion took place in the BBC studio in Glasgow and covered the physical and mental harms from porn, the rise in child-on-child sexual abuse, and sexual strangulation as well as the need for effective age verification legislation. Mary also elaborated on the long term defamatory attacks by the porn industry on educators like us who seek to make the health risks known to a wider public. The industry has tried to have us shut down as a charity, attacked our highly successful research and intimidated journalists who have written about porn harms and us.
Physical harms
Harms include the high rates of sexual dysfunction in young men. Little scares a man more than sexual impotence but few are aware of how much problematic porn use is driving it. For instance research shows that 58% of men who started using pornography under the age of 10 years have developed some form of erectile dysfunction later on. That compares with 24% developing ED who started their porn habit after the age of 18 years. Conclusions: This prevalence of ED in young men is alarming high, and the results of this study suggest a significant association with problematic pornography consumption.” (Emphasis added).
Mental health risks
According to research from Italy in 2024, problematic pornography use among adolescents was associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, stress, loneliness, and suicide ideation, as well as lower life satisfaction. Gender comparison analysis revealed significantly higher scores for problematic pornography use and loneliness among men, while women scored higher in stress, anxiety, and life satisfaction.
Impact on relationships
Rape culture is everywhere in schools, colleges and society at large. Sixty percent of rape trials in Scotland involve sexual strangulation. The porn industry euphemistically calls it “airplay” or “breath play”. A simple search for “choke her” returns 30 million videos.
Add to that fact that sexual strangulation is the second most common cause of stroke in women under 42 years of age. According to neurosurgeons, there is no way to gauge how much pressure a person can safely use on someone else’s neck. Strangulation, for even a few moments, can block the blood supply to and from the brain leading to physical harm. Porn culture promotes these dangerous behaviours.
The new legislation will have an important impact but in addition, we have to educate school children about porn impact on health and behaviour.
For those influenced by social media content creators, they need to know the effects and reality of life for porn performers. Most don’t last more than 3-6 months because of the toll on their mental and physical health.
