Pornography addiction and its impacts on intimate female partner wellbeing—a systematic narrative synthesis

Abstract

Background and objectives:

Recent years have seen a surge of articles related to compulsive pornography consumption or pornography addiction, with experts warning of potentially detrimental consequences. Whereas much research has focused on the male consumers of pornography, fewer studies have examined the impacts of pornography-linked compulsive sexual behaviors (CSBs) on the wellbeing and experiences of female intimate partners. This paper addresses this gap in the literature.

Methods:

A review of peer-reviewed journal publications was carried out examining pertinent quantitative and qualitative studies.

Results and discussion:

This narrative review concludes that compulsive pornography consumption is commonly identified in the literature as a stimulus for risky and uncontrolled sexual behaviors, which have the potential to spawn addictive behaviors, relationship challenges and cascading adverse societal repercussions. In synthesis, this review points to opportunities for in-depth qualitative empirical research on intimate female partner wellbeing.

Keywords:

• Pornography
• addiction
• compulsive sexual behaviors
• cybersex
• compulsive pornography use

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 NB: It should be noted that references to Pornhub in this review should not be taken to signify endorsement of the pornography content-viewing website, which has been linked both to human trafficking by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),⁷² child abuse, and a range of other publicly documented human rights violations.^52,53