UNITED KINGDOM—A documentary by Martin Daubney (pictured), the former editor of Loaded magazine airs this evening on Britain’s Channel 4. Titled Porn on the Brain, the piece has already garnered a lot of media attention previous to its airing, mostly by the U.K. press, which for the most part has been dutifully exposing its various states of editorial erection over the subject of online porn, which has been under government assault of late.
Daubney’s message has fit in nicely with the new British theme equating porn use with addiction to hard narcotics and the watching of reality television. Once the editor of a raunchy lads mag, he reportedly saw the light when his young son started creeping toward age 4, and decided that what the world needs is another documentary warning about the evils of online porn, only this time he’s added in neuroscience research to back up the claim that porn actually changes the brain.
An early review by The Guardian’s Chris Chambers, who was also an unpaid consultant for the film, describes it as “intriguing if mixed in quality: an edgy blend of neuroscience, interviews with porn-addled teens, and opinions dressed up as facts.”
The centerpiece of the documentary, writes Chambers, is “an impressive neuroscience study involving Channel 4 and Dr. Valerie Voon from the University of Cambridge. In it, Voon conducts a functional MRI experiment to test whether a group of men who admit to being compulsive porn users show different patterns of brain activity to a control group.”
Not peer-reviewed yet, Chambers says the study resulted in “heightened responses to porn-related images within brain networks that mediate reward and motivation” by compulsive viewers of porn, though he’s also quick to admit, “Of course, showing a pattern of brain activity similar to that seen in substance dependence doesn't make porn a drug, and it doesn't mean compulsive porn users are 'addicted' in the same way drug users can be.”
In fact, the study of neuroscience to prove such connections is in its infancy, and few researchers are willing to make the claims sites such as YourBrainonPorn.com regularly float to the mainstream press. Chambers is honest enough on that score to include a quote from the movie by a psychologist, who states when asked about porn use and addiction, who says, “Like anything people find pleasurable, whether it's chocolate or running or playing video games, internet porn can be addictive. But whether there is anything particularly interesting or special about porn remains to be seen."
Chambers also notes the perhaps inescapable hyperbolic tone of much of the documentary, especially when it addresses “the link between porn and sexual violence. Here the show completely abandons the evidence, which supports at most a very weak association between porn and violent sexual attitudes, and doesn't support at all the conclusion that sexual imagery causes aggression or sex offending.”
Of particular note, “Daubney strives valiantly to extract clear answers from Professor Gail Dines, an anti-pornography campaigner, and Dr. John Woods, a psychotherapist at the Portman clinic. But when asked directly whether violent porn causes violence toward women, Dines and Woods resort to anecdote and weasel words. At one point, Woods says: ‘We have a great difficulty in proving the connection between this violent imagery and violent behaviour, but clinically it's clear that there is a connection.’ Say again?”
Indeed. We had much the same reaction when Dines testified as an expert witness during the recent 2257 trial in Philadelphia. Short on substance, but long on exaggeration, we wondered how this person could have ever been approved as an expert. The answer, sadly, is that the federal government picked her, and the court approved her.
“Because of these shortcomings,” Chambers concludes, “Porn on the Brain is bound to divide public opinion along established lines, fuelling confirmation bias on both sides," and adds, “we simply need more research on porn use before leaping to ignorant conclusions about its addictive or harmful effects.”
Here, here.
Image: Martin Daubney sits in front of an MRI scanner.
