International behavioral experts have developed a new test to measure whether a person is watching “too much” porn.
Psychologists developed the scale after becoming concerned about growing evidence that excessive use of adult material can significantly harm health.
It helps therapists diagnose problematic pornography use (PPU), when someone has difficulty controlling their need to masturbate to porn, even when it negatively affects their life.
Doctors insist that pornography consumption can be part of a functional sex life.
However, experts fear that PPU is on the rise and has been linked to a number of conditions including erectile dysfunction, anxiety, depression and withdrawal symptoms.
The phenomenon has emerged alongside the proliferation of streaming pornography on the Internet, which can be easily accessed from personal computers or smartphones.
The UK has the second highest incidence of internet porn searches in the world, with an average of 16,600,000 porn searches each month.
Nine in ten adults now admit to having watched adult material.
Meanwhile, two-thirds of young people now regularly use online pornography, according to Paracelsus Recovery, a leading mental health and addictions clinic.
A quarter of 16- to 21-year-olds saw pornography on the Internet for the first time when they were still in primary school. By the age of 13, 50 percent had been exposed to it.
Some research suggests that one in ten adults may currently suffer from some degree of PPU, with higher numbers among young people. They can watch pornography up to 12 hours a week.
International experts, including academics from Nottingham Trent University, created their Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale by questioning hundreds of pornography users, of both sexes.
The UK has the second highest incidence of internet porn searches in the world, with an average of 16,600,000 porn searches each month.
Some research suggests that one in ten adults may currently suffer from some degree of PPU, with higher numbers among young people. They can watch pornography up to 12 hours a week.
The result was an 18-item questionnaire that can be taken at home and is presented here.
The developers claim that the result is 98 percent accurate in determining whether a person suffers from PPU.
Men were found to be more likely to obtain high scores than women, regardless of their sexual orientation.
According to experts, approximately four percent of study participants were in the “at risk” category for PPU.
Problematic pornography use has six core elements, around which the questions were developed.
The first is prominence — referring to the importance of pornography in a person’s life and the extent to which it dominates their thinking, feelings, and behavior.
The second component refers to mood modification – how much they use masturbation in porn as a way to make them feel a certain way.
This could be exciting or relaxing.
The third is conflict – how much masturbation to porn impacts significant others, whether it interferes with work or educational commitments.
This also refers to internal conflicts: a person who knows that the activity is causing problems but feels unable to reduce or stop it.
The fourth component is tolerance – the way in which increasing amounts of activity, in this case from masturbation to pornography, are required to achieve the desired mood-altering effects.
This not only means more time spent watching, but also the consumption of more diverse and extreme phonographic content.
The fifth dimension is related to relapse — attempts to abstain and then return to problematic behavior patterns.
The sixth and final factor is withdrawal: unpleasant feelings and emotional states that occur when a user tries to quit pornography.
Earlier this week, MailOnline reported that regular porn users who try to quit suddenly can suffer withdrawal-like physical symptoms such as headaches, chills and even nausea.
Recognizing that many of these “symptoms” were similar to those reported by drug addicts, a team from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, set out to investigate whether PPU was also linked to other health problems.
They found that, as with drugs and other compulsive behaviors such as gambling addiction, PPU could trigger physical withdrawal symptoms.
After reviewing 14 separate studies, they concluded that yes; in fact, 72 percent of people with PPU experience withdrawal.
One study found that 57 percent of participants experienced “cravings,” while 52 percent also experienced intense emotions, difficulty concentrating, and nervousness.
A smaller number (about one in 20) reported difficulty sleeping, headaches, sweating, chills and nausea when they tried to quit porn.
Other studies also found that participants refrained from symptoms such as depression, “brain fog,” feelings of loneliness, and restlessness.
Researchers found that in most cases people had “intense cravings” to masturbate to pornography that caused them to relapse.
They noted that several of these withdrawal-like symptoms were seen in regular porn users who were not classified as severe enough to have PPU.
Following the review, the authors called for further research to investigate the occurrence, characteristics, duration and proportion of withdrawal-like symptoms.