Štulhofer, A., Tafro, A., & Kohut, T. (2019). European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1-13. Link to web
COMMENTS: A study by “Real” Your Brain On Porn site members Taylor Kohut and Alexander Štulhofer. First, the data are included in the above Kohut & Štulhofer study, so we can view these 2 studies as two halves of a single study. Second, the average age was 16 (Croatians only). It’s important to note that the negative effects of continual porn use often manifest much later (twenties and thirties). Third, and importantly, the Alliance’s summary omitted key findings:
“a significant negative association was found between female adolescents’ pornography use and psychological well-being at baseline”
“the lowest levels of depression and anxiety were found among male adolescents who reported the lowest frequency of pornography use at baseline”
Put simply, more porn use was related to poorer psychological well-being in females, while lowest frequency of porn use was related to the lowest levels of depression and anxiety in males. Štulhofer & Kohut’s findings represent a cherry-picked outlier finding, as over 75 studies link porn use to poorer mental-emotional health & poorer cognitive outcomes.
Why is it that Štulhofer’s studies seem to find few problems related to porn use, while the preponderance of the research does find problems?
NOTE: At long last, porn addiction deniers openly function as an agenda-driven collective. They created a trademark infringing website, prominently featuring their pictures & bios (Real Your Brain On Porn “experts” page.) We must assume the RealYBOP “experts” fully endorse the tweets posted by the RealYBOP Twitter account (https://twitter.com/BrainOnPorn).
RealYBOP experts published their very own research page, containing a few cherry-picked outlier studies. This page goes section by section, paper by paper ,exposing RealYBOP expert’s egregious omissions, misrepresentations, and deception: Porn Science Deniers Alliance (AKA: “RealYourBrainOnPorn.com” and “PornographyResearch.com”).
As for its Youth Section (studies about adolescents) RealYBOP experts provide only a handful of outlier studies or fillers to delude journalists and the public that porn use is harmless for adolescents. As with the other sections, RealYBOP provides no reviews of the literature or meta-analyses. Why did RealYBOP experts omit these 13 literature reviews on pornography and “Youth” (adolescents): review#1, review2, review#3, review#4, review#5, review#6, review#7, review#8, review#9, review#10, review#11, review#12, review#13?
Why has the RealYBOP experts omit all 250 studies in this comprehensive list of peer-reviewed papers assessing porn’s effect on adolescents? The answer is clear: the reviews, as with the vast majority of individual studies, fail to align with the RealYBOP experts pro-porn agenda.
Abstract
Despite increasing concerns that pornography decreases adolescents’ well-being, existing empirical support for this position is largely limited to cross-sectional studies. To explore possible links between adolescent pornography use and psychological well-being more systematically, this study focused on parallel dynamics in pornography use, self-esteem and symptoms of depression and anxiety. A sample of 775 female and 514 male Croatian high school students (Mage at baseline 15.9 years, SD 0.52) from 14 larger secondary schools, who were surveyed 6 times at approximately 5-month intervals, was used for the analyses. The longitudinal data were analyzed using latent growth curve and latent class growth modeling. We observed no significant correspondence between growth in pornography use and changes in the two indicators of psychological well-being over time in either female or male participants. However, a significant negative association was found between female adolescents’ pornography use and psychological well-being at baseline. Controlling for group-specific trajectories of pornography use (i.e., latent classes) confirmed the robustness of findings in the both female and male samples. This study’s findings do not corroborate the notion that pornography use in middle to late adolescence contributes to adverse psychological well-being, but do not rule out such a link during an earlier developmental phase—particularly in female adolescents. The findings have ramifications for educational and adolescent health specialists, but also for concerned parents.
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