Porn in the USA

Thanks to the nerds who created the Internet, you no longer need to visit the adult bookstore incognito to get your smut on. But is easily accessible porn a good thing?

"Bob" 31, didn't realize he had a porn problem. Until it cost him his wife.

His fixation began with softcore magazines when he was a teenager, and grew slowly. But it didn't become a full-blown addiction until he discovered Internet pornography, by which time he had already gotten married and had a young daughter. "I started isolating myself-because I wanted to spend time on the computer," he recalls. "My waking hours were ruled by it. Porn dominated my life:

Sometimes he'd pull exhausting all-nighters surfing the Web for raunchy material, leaving him bleary-eyed the next day and barely able to accomplish anything at his job as an Internet marketing specialist in California. Soon Bob became distant from his spouse, and communication started breaking down, putting a strain on his marriage. His wife told him he had a sexual addiction. But he paid no attention ,and she eventually left him.

Bob's case may be extreme, but it's not altogether uncommon. Today, nearly 75% of U.S. households have Internet access. Translation: Three-quarters of American homes can download porn. Roughly one-quarter of all Web searches are porn-related, and porn sites (of which 1,000 new ones are created daily) receive millions of hits each day. Porn itself has become a multibillion-dollar industry.

"Now you can get [porn] in the privacy, of your own home, without sanction;' says Julie Albright, Ph.D., a researcher on Internet sex and a sociologist at the University of Southern California. "Imagine a schoolteacher being seen walking into the town's triple-X bookstore--the ultimate taboo. Now he doesn't have to"

This easy access is making sex addiction much more common, some psychologists say. They claim that adult entertainment can impact society negatively by hindering men's relationships with women and leading to obsessive, self-destructive behavior. A study published in Professional Psychology found that as many as 7.1% of men now say they spend up to 30 hours a week surfing for porn.

Porn-industry sources counter that the rapid growth of porn is merely the result of meeting demand. They also claim that pornography can serve as a healthy release and provide greater intimacy, between men and women.

Both are probably right--which is why the issue can be so confusing.

THE RISE OF PORN

People have craved sexually explicit distractions practically since cave dwellers first took charcoal to a rock wall. In ancient Greek times, they turned to pornographos--"writing about prostitutes: These days, Webster's defines pornography as "sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal."

The current boom in adult entertainment can be traced to the late 1960s and early '70s, when porn was legalized in Denmark and stag movies motivated American men to buy home projectors and hang sheets in their basements. Breakthrough films such as Deep Throat (1972) and Debbie Does Dallas (1978) put X-rated awareness on the mainstream map--and drew the ire of the feminist movement, which argued that adult films objectified women. During the '80s, the advent of video made producing adult movies cheaper and allowed people to watch them discreetly at home. And now, since the popularization of the Web in the mid-'90s, access has never been easier. Broadband Internet and on-demand video have practically made porn an upstanding member of pop culture. Today Jenna Jameson can share talk-show couch time with Jennifer Aniston.

Adam Glasser, a porn star/director known professionally as Seymore Butts, says the reason adult entertainment hit the mainstream is simple: Sex sells. Producers of the stuff are simply feeding demand. "Even on broadcast TV, people are trying to find creative ways to titillate the audience; he notes. "Now you can see Dennis Franz's ass or, on Joe Millionaire, captions like 'slurp, slurp:"

Glasser is regarded as a trailblazer in the "gonzo porn" genre--adult movies with almost zero plot (meaning millions of men no longer have to wear down their fast-forward button). He also stars in Family Business, the Showtime reality show that chronicles his life in the porn biz. "Sex wouldn't be so available if people didn't want it," he adds.

THE PORN IDENTITY

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But it was just such easy availability that ultimately did Bob in. "The Internet was really the downfall for me," he says. "My senses dulled, and I stopped focusing on my day-to-day life. I gave up my interests, my friendships: With his marriage over, "All of a sudden, I woke up and saw my life in ruins."

"Weston, who runs no-porn.com, a Web discussion board for sex addicts that receives more than 1,000 visitors daily, says he, too, found the Internet irresistible. "I even downloaded porn at work," he recalls, "which is professional suicide. I was never fired, or even accused of using porn, but I wasn't as valuable to my company as I could have been."

Written in 2004. Last reviewed: 10/05.

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