Pornography Use and Loneliness: A Bidirectional Recursive Model and Pilot Investigation

ABSTRACT

Sexuality is presumptively and observably a powerful core element of the human pair-bond relationship. Technological advances of the last half-century have made media a dominant cultural and developmental presence, including scripting sexual relationship attitudes and behavior. Theoretically and empirically, we examine loneliness as it relates to pornography use in terms of pornography's relational scripting and its addictive potential. Empirically, we examine the associative nature between pornography use and loneliness using a measurement model and two structural equation models where pornography use and loneliness are regressed on each other, respectively. Survey data were collected from a sample of 1,247 participants, who completed an online questionnaire containing questions on pornography use, the University of California–Los Angeles Loneliness Scale (UCLALS), and other demographic variables. Results from our analyses revealed significant and positive associations between pornography use and loneliness for all three models. Findings provide grounds for possible future bidirectional, recursive modeling of the relation between pornography use and loneliness.

Notes

1 While the current DSM (5th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) has opted to replace the term “addiction” with “use disorder,” we prefer and adopt the language our clients use (“addiction”) to characterize their experience of behavioral compulsivity surrounding pornography use and associated sexual behavior.

2 Just as the examination of the relationship between media and tobacco, alcohol, and illicit substance, particularly among young people, becames a point of societal concern and action due to an awareness of the negative health impact of these behaviors, so also given the pervasiveness of sexual media and the real possibility of negative outcomes of the sexual script it provides, the time has come to examine sexual media as a potential public health issue.