How people really search for internet porn

When new research into pornography addiction is announced, I tend to be pretty sceptical. Often the small print tells us that the 'research' was sponsored by 'SafeGuard Internet Filtering' or 'Family Values Campaign' or 'Purity in the Media' or whatever. Then I'm straight out of there.

Here's something a bit different. Neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam pored over the results of 400 million online searches for porn (thanks to AOL releasing huge amounts of anonymous search data). They went looking for clues about how the lower part of the brain - the sexual part - connects to online porn.

There are some interesting insights into how people are really interacting with porn. Truly violent pornography is still extremely rare, and the kind of people who watch it are a clearly identifiable group. Porn isn't training men to become rapists. Internet porn isn't a slippery slope into moral armageddon.

On the subject of porn addiction, the researchers offered this practical observation:

It seems to be less than 2% of people, among the people who search for porn, who have a significantly elevated number of searches.

And there's a [shared] characteristic among these searchers: they search for a really wide variety of porn, which is atypical. Usually, people search for the same things over and over. But these people who search for notably more porn tend to search for [many different things].

Two things tend to show up in these searches, oddly: bestiality and granny porn. There's clearly something different about that group. Having said that, there isn't overwhelming evidence that porn addiction exists. Probably the best way to define whether it's a problem is if you want to stop and you can't.

I'm not sure that bestiality or granny porn are standard indicators of compulsive porn use, but I take the point. People who struggle with porn tend to seek out many different types of imagery; the vanilla stuff just doesn't deliver. Some people find themselves googling increasingly specific porn variations, just to see if it's out there. Often it's the thrill of the chase, spending more time searching than actually viewing.

With image and video search results, this can definitely become a compulsive and time-consuming distraction. As the researchers conclude, it may well not be an addiction but still a problem if it feels beyond your control.

Read more about Ogas and Gaddam's project here.