What happens when regular porn watchers abstain for a week?

A team of psychologists based out of Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom and HELP University in Malaysia explored whether regular pornography users experience withdrawal symptoms when asked to abstain for one week. Their paper detailing this effort was recently published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

No porn for you

The researchers recruited 176 psychology undergraduates in Malaysia, about two-thirds female, to take part in the research. They received class credit and $7.00 for fully participating. All were regular porn consumers, viewing sexual content at least three times per week. One-half of subjects were randomized to an abstinence group — that is, they were asked to refrain from viewing pornography for seven days. The other half was assigned to a control group and told to continue their habits as usual.

For the duration of the study, participants took daily surveys to assess their mental state and porn use, and to measure any withdrawal symptoms typically observed when halting addictive behaviors, such as depression, mood swings, anxiety, fatigue, headache, irritability, stress, and decreased motivation.

What did the researchers find? “There were no significant main effects on craving, negative affect, positive affect or withdrawal symptoms during the experimental period, controlling for baseline scores,” they reported.

This finding is noteworthy, because the internet and even the scientific literature are full of self-reported accounts from pornography viewers avowing that they experienced harsh withdrawal symptoms when going without watching sexual content. The current study — the first randomized, controlled trial to attempt to measure any such deleterious effects — didn’t find any.

Limitations and lessons

The research does have a few notable limitations, however. For starters, it didn’t break down the results by sex. Men are known to be more frequent consumers of pornography compared to women and are often the loudest to complain of withdrawal symptoms. Moreover, women often tend to have a healthier use relationship with pornography.

Second, the research was conducted on undergraduates in Malaysia, a sexually conservative country where pornography use is frowned upon and even frequently restricted. Thus, the experiences of this sample group may not broadly apply to others.

Third, a little under half of the subjects in the abstinence group reported viewing sexual content more than once during the week despite being instructed to refrain from doing so. This suggests either that they weren’t taking the research seriously, were incapable of halting their pornography viewing, or inadvertently viewed sexual content while watching other media. Regardless, this inability to follow directions, while certainly realistic for anyone attempting to halt an addictive behavior, could have blunted any potential withdrawal symptoms.

The researchers sought to place their results in a proper context. “These null findings… provide preliminary evidence that the average regular pornography user who uses pornography somewhat regularly (i.e., a few times a week) generally does not experience withdrawal-like symptoms while trying to abstain from pornography for a 7-day period.”

Thus, the current finding may not apply to a heavier user. To settle debates raging across the internet about pornography’s potential harms (and benefits), more randomized, controlled trials like the current one should be conducted with larger, more diverse sample groups.