As a young girl, I (Kortney) loved going to the grocery store so I could sit by the checkout stand and flip through the fashion and gossip magazines. Being young and impressionable, I thought these magazines were the ultimate compass to navigate life. As a teen, I started noticing more articles on sexual empowerment, including using pornography. These were my earliest experiences with the promotion of pornography, but not the last. During a high school sleepover, a group of my friends got into a discussion about porn. One girl stated that everyone watches it, and that it was a great way to show “self-love.”
While not everyone watches porn as my friend suggested, one 2018 study found that 57% of girls ages 14-18 reported viewing pornography. Since we often speak of pornography users as men, the female demographic often goes unnoticed. While it is true that men are the main demographic of porn users, it is important to acknowledge that women are also consumers and that the number of women viewing porn is increasing. In the beginning of 2017, 26% of Pornhub consumers were female, but by 2021 it increased to 35 percent. That is a 9% increase in just four years, a trend that doesn’t appear to be slowing down. From these numbers it’s clear that women need to be included in discussions about the harms of porn. Thus, we should be asking ourselves, what are the effects of porn on women? Does it really increase love of self, as Kortney’s friends suggested?
The term “self-love” has become popular, especially in discussing pornography. But what we mean by this term matters to this discussion. One definition of self-love is a recognition of your value, which leads a person to respect herself. With that definition in mind, does pornography help women understand their value and increase self-respect?
To answer this question, it is important to understand how women develop an inner sense of worth. Self-esteem is a confidence in one’s own worth and is best developed from the inside-out, rather than from outside sources. In other words, self-love is harder to achieve when looking for it in validation from others. Several peer reviewed studies on this topic have found that watching porn has been correlated with a negative body image and overall lower self-esteem. This also matters because a recent study showed that lower self-esteem in women is correlated with lower sexual desire. Tragically, women’s porn consumption has also been connected to mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.
For some girls, a curiosity in porn can begin with an attempt to figure out what young men find attractive. According to research, girls in their early teens already suffer from low levels of self-esteem. Thus, these girls are particularly vulnerable to using pornography as a coping mechanism to cover feelings of self-loathing. The problem with this approach is that rather than healing a girl’s heart, it appears to only poison it.
We can see further evidence of these research findings when looking at the experience of singer Billie Eilish, who has openly admitted to watching porn at a young age. “As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace… I thought that’s how you learned how to have sex,” she told Howard Stern in 2021. “I was watching abusive porn, to be honest when I was like 14. I thought I was one of the guys and would talk about it and think I was really cool for not having a problem with it and not seeing why it was bad. I think it destroyed my brain.” Her experience highlights a common reason girls turn to porn, to learn about sex with the hopes of increasing their value to men. But true self-love is knowing your own value regardless of “performance” and regardless of what men think; this is not the message porn teaches.
In the same interview, Eilish explained that viewing pornography didn’t just change how she saw herself (i.e., self-love), but also her romantic relationships. She shared how because most of the porn she viewed was violent, “It led to problems where the first few times I had sex I was not saying no to things that were not good because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to.” She also talked about the effects on women: “Women are like oh I have to like being hurt to be thought of as good in bed.”
The effects of watching porn can go beyond just a struggle to say “no,” like Eilish mentioned, to damaging the connection with a partner. That’s because with increased use of pornography, some research has shown that users begin to develop a preference for masturbation to pornography over sex with their partner and to experience decreased sexual satisfaction with their partner. This might be the case because over a third of 11–16-year-old girls in a UK study reportedthat they thought porn was a realistic depiction of sex. So many girls are wrongly learning what love and sex look like and how they should be treated. But loving yourself means having the self-respect to say “no” to things that are harmful and uncomfortable out of an understanding that you are a person to be loved rather than an object to be used.
Each girl deserves to experience true self-love, and many young women are looking for it. Just as I (Kortney) saw as a child flipping through magazines, our society teaches that self-love is discovered through sexual experiences, including porn. However, it is clear from countless studies and the experiences of women such as Billie Eilish that this is not the case.
I (Kortney) have learned to love myself through giving love to others in service. Similarly, much of my self-worth has come from my family. As a teenage girl, I didn’t always make the best choices, and my parents could get frustrated with me. But I knew my parents loved me unconditionally and this modeled for me how I should love myself. The role parents play in helping children discover their worth cannot be overstated. This is especially true of father-daughter relationships. Fathers have been called a girl’s “first love” as he has a significant impact on her romantic relationships with men, her mental health, and self-esteem.
Many young girls are desperate to know who they are and if they are capable of being loved. Every girl has significant value and deserves the utmost respect. When we promote porn as a means of discovering self-love, we are only drawing young women further away from experiencing true love. Instead of the culture’s message that porn is harmless and even beneficial, every young woman deserves the facts about the harms of porn on individuals and relationships and needs to hear that she is worthy of being loved, cherished, and respected, rather than objectified.
Kortney Candland is a student at BYU-Idaho studying family and marriage studies. She is pursuing a career in marriage and family therapy.
Timothy Rarick, PhD, is a professor and the program director of Marriage & Family Studies at BYU–Idaho. Dr. Rarick also serves as the Chairman of the Board for the Idaho State Department of Health and Welfare.
*Note: For those who have developed a pornography addiction or habit, there are resources available to help. Websites like psychologytoday.com allow you to find a licensed therapist and 12-step addiction recovery programs near you. Additionally, platforms such as Fortify and Relay can support you on your journey, or Fight the New Drug, an organization that educates on the impacts of pornography.