A Public Health Crisis: America Hijacked by Porn?

WASHINGTON – Experts are hoping recent national gatherings will help the country as a whole begin to recognize that pornography is – as they put it - a "public health crisis."

Warnings from therapists to researchers to social workers focus on how porn takes violence to a frightening new level.

"The content is so much more violent; it's much more about violence than sex," therapist Cordelia Anderson told CBN News at a recent anti-porn symposium held on Capitol Hill.

"What we are talking about is mainstream pornography that is violent, is abusive and is basically based on the torture of women," said Dr. Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, to the crowd gathered at that symposium. 

"That is the mainstream pornography that your average 11-year-old will get to within 15 seconds of typing 'porn' into Google," she said.

And it's coming to America's kids.  Dr. Sharon Cooper treats sexually exploited children.

"Research has shown that the average age that a child, usually a boy, first accesses pornography is at 11," Cooper told CBN News.

"So you're seeing a very different content at a much younger age when our brains are still under development," Anderson said, warning that "our brains are still under development into our mid-20s."

Porn = Internet = Addictive Danger

The fact that so much pornography is now omnipresent on the Internet severely magnifies the impact and damage porn can do.

"Because it's on the Internet, which in and of itself has a relative addictive nature, when you add that to the content of sexually abusive images, then we become very, very concerned for youth," Cooper said.

Dines pointed out how porn is an everyday presence now for many people. 

"Thirty-six percent of the Internet is porn," she said.  "Porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined."

Anderson added, "So the message is 'this is what everybody's doing.  This is just normal sex.  This is what I'm supposed to be aroused by.'  All of that is problematic when you're shaping arousal to the kinds of degradation that are depicted in pornography."
 
"As adults we have done incredible harm to our children because we have given our children up to the porn industry," Dines charged.

Dr. Melissa Farley of the organization Prostitution Research and Education has seen the damage done to children and women used in porn, which is increasingly blending in with the world of prostitution and sex trafficking.

"For sex industry entrepreneurs, it's a matter of what makes the most money," Farley stated.  "Today, 90 percent of prostitution is online." 

Prostitution with a Camera

Farley told CBN News that pimps often use Internet porn as advertisements, but she considers the porn shoots themselves as acts of prostitution.

"The only difference between pornography and prostitution is that a camera's in the room," Farley suggested.  "As a survivor said, 'Prostitution is legal if you've got a camera.'"

People often face jail time for doing in private life what pornographers do professionally.
 
Farley stated, "If you understand what sexual abuse is, what humiliation is, what rape and intimate partner violence are – imagine if people get paid and are generating profits from those activities.  That's what the sex industry is."

More Fizzle Than Sizzle

These experts then point out the final insult: therapists like Anderson are hearing from more and more users that porn actually makes sex with a real person worse, not better.

"This is supposed to be a sex enhancer, but instead it's harmful. It's the same lies the tobacco industry used," Anderson contended. "That this would help you with your anxiety, make you look sexy."
 
Anderson told CBN News that instead, "They're finding out that it's deadening their arousal.  It's hampering their ability to be intimate with the person they love and care about.  And it's affecting their sexual functioning."

She's heard these words from porn addicts: "I'm looking at that and I'm getting aroused by that and I suddenly find I can't be aroused by the real thing, by the real person."

Fighting Back

Organizers came to Capitol Hill for this particular symposium to convince Congress that stronger laws and more financial help can go a long way in fighting porn and illegal aspects of the sex industry. 
 
"We are grateful for more funding that has been allotted to curb child pornography and child sexual abuse," Dawn Hawkins of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said.

But Hawkins and her allies believe laws aren't enough to win this war.

Anderson explained, "We so often go after social problems only through a criminal justice lens.  And that's 'what do we do after harm?'"

"We want to get people to think about 'what do we do to prevent the harm upfront?' and to recognize that this is an issue that affects the health and wellbeing of all of us," he said.

These porn-fighters are trying to spark a massive campaign like those that have stigmatized smoking and drunk driving.

They want to shame major businesses that have aided the sex industry to stop that aid.  They're encouraging families to put filters on all their computers and not give kids phones with Internet access.

And these Americans are intrigued that British Prime Minster David Cameron was able to get United Kingdom Internet service providers to voluntarily take action.  These ISPs automatically block all porn-related websites, and only make them available to adults who opt out of this "default filtering."