The view that porn is inherently harmful seems to be growing. Porn is increasingly described as “addictive” and as a threat to public health. But is this actually true? In today’s show, we’re revisiting an important conversation from the archives in which we explore the truth about how porn affects people.

My guest is Dr. Nicole Prause, a licensed psychologist and sex researcher who founded the sexual biotechnology company Liberos. She is a former Kinsey Institute trainee and has published an extensive body of research on the neuroscience and psychophysiology of sex. She is currently a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Medicine.

Some of the specific questions we explore in this episode include:

• What counts as porn? And how do you measure porn use on surveys when different people have different definitions of it?
• Why are there so many discrepant findings about pornography’s effects in the research?
• Why shouldn’t we think of porn as addictive? How should we think about it instead?
• When people identify porn as a problem in their lives, is porn per se really the issue or is there usually something else going on?
• In what ways can porn potentially have positive effects on people?

Learn more about Nicole by following her at @NicoleRPrause over on X and or Bluesky.

Got a sex question? Send me a podcast voicemail to have it answered on a future episode at speakpipe.com/sexandpsychology.

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Thank you to our sponsors!

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I’m excited to announce a new online course I’m teaching on the topic of fantasies at the Kinsey Institute. Be sure to register for “The New Science of Sexual Fantasies” workshop, which will take place on July 19th, 2025.

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Credits: Precision Podcasting (Podcast editing) and Shutterstock/Florian (Music). Image created with Canva; photos used with permission of guest.