The Panic Over Porn

Anti-porn advocates sometimes try to pass off a moral argument as a public health one. The evidence does not support their claims.

Concerns about pornography have ebbed from their heyday in the 1980s, with the Reagan administration’s much maligned “Meese Commission,” but they persist today, with apprehensions that porn can increase sexual aggression, lead to erectile dysfunction, or addiction. The evidence shows these concerns are overblown.