Strengthening the field of pornography research

Below is the executive summary of the white paper, “Strengthening the field of pornography research: Findings, disagreements, and priorities from a research convening.”

For an in-depth look at the existing research on this topic, refer to this landscape scan.

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Pornography is among the most common online activities, and among the least systematically studied. Researchers lack the basic funding and coordination mechanisms that comparable fields take for granted. There are only a few shared instruments for measuring experiences with pornography, no standard unit of exposure, no professional home, no authoritative reference document, and no reliable means to inform policy with evidence. Meanwhile, pornography is changing faster than the research investigating it, as sexually explicit content migrates onto mainstream platforms and AI systems begin generating personalized sexual content and companionship on demand.

In June 2026, the American Institute for Boys and Men convened approximately 40 researchers and experts across roughly ten disciplines in Minneapolis to take stock of the field: the evidence base, the disagreements, and what it most urgently needs to build. This paper synthesizes those two days and concludes with a list of recommendations for funders, researchers, and research institutions to strengthen the field and provide better evidence to policymakers and the public.

Consensus on some claims. Participants agreed that the literature frequently documents correlations between pornography use and poorer wellbeing outcomes, while emphasizing that these associations do not establish causation. Conversations throughout the meeting reflected the desire to address the relative lack of causal evidence for harm while focusing on practical implications for policymakers, clinicians, and educators. Participants converged around several claims: pornography consumption is common, especially among youth; some users experience genuine distress and loss of control, but frequency is a poor proxy for that distress; and pornography literacy efforts are weak and uneven, with little evidence about their effectiveness.
Other claims are probable but inconclusive, as most research consists of self-report and cross-sectional data. A large territory remains genuinely unknown—most notably the effects of use across the lifespan, the benefits of pornography, and the impact of AI-generated content.

Where researchers disagree. The meeting deliberately sought to surface disagreement. Researchers disagree about whether the evidence on pornography and sexual aggression supports a universal causal claim, a causal claim limited to certain people or contexts, or an association explained by other variables. They also disagree about whether problematic use is best understood as addiction, an impulse-control disorder, or moral incongruence; how pornography should be defined for research; and whether age-verification laws reduce harmful consumption or merely shift traffic to noncompliant platforms. Notably, these are specific questions a coordinated research agenda could resolve.

A fragile field. The barriers to producing better evidence and translating it into better policy are as much infrastructural as empirical. Research is weighted toward clinical and psychological questions about effects on individuals, while population-level, institutional, and policy-oriented approaches remain underrepresented. Measurement is fragmented; the reliance on self-reported data is a methodological vulnerability; the career environment is hostile to researchers; funding is scarce and often carries an agenda. The field also lacks a forum for developing a collective voice. In that vacuum, the loudest advocates often become the default interpreters of evidence for legislators, journalists, and the public.

What should be built. The convening produced a clear agenda anchored in two foundational priorities: shared measurement standards and an evidence base that combines self-reported survey data with observational data. The field also needs sustained funding and coordination to pursue longitudinal and developmental research, real-time evaluation of the policies and education programs already being deployed, and greater capacity to study pornography’s benefits, heterogeneity, and the AI frontier. Advancing this agenda requires more coordination through a society for the study of pornography, a measurement standards committee, a living state-of-the-evidence professional reference, and closer collaboration with technology scholars to study AI as it rapidly evolves.

The case for funders. Modest, strategic funding could produce outsized returns in a field where independent funding is scarce. Several of the highest-value wins are concrete and near-term. Researchers can establish shared measurement standards, evaluate policy effects through natural experiments created by staggered state legislation, and build the infrastructure needed to translate evidence for policymakers and the public.

Pornography is widespread and evolving quickly, with potentially high stakes for young people’s agency, relationship formation, and wellbeing. And yet, pornography’s effects remain uncertain and contested. The field of pornography research deserves more investment, coordination, and validation to provide policymakers and the public with better evidence.

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