Airing this week on Canada’s CBC will be a documentary, Porndemic, which focuses on the effect that the internet porn industry has on society as a whole.  With sex addiction ranging in the millions worldwide, one of the things that CBC’s Porndemic set out to explore was the possible future threat that internet porn could have on youths.  For example, Porndemic looks at things like the reality of regulation in print porn, such as the covering of a nudy-magazine’s jacket for the protection of pre-teens, while currently no such stipulations exist for internet porn.

One of the experts interviewed in CBC’s Porndemic is psychosexual therapist, Frances Emelius, who holds that internet porn is a danger to any teens and pre-teens because it has shown to cause alienation that could eventually lead to violence and marital breakdown.  She told the documentary’s host during her interview, “If we don’t bring the feeling back into relationships we are going to lose a whole generation of relationships.”

However, many would argue that internet porn is beneficial to society.  For example, in a study conducted by Todd Kendall of Clemson University in 2006, he found that: “The arrival of the internet caused a large decline in both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of accessing pornography.  Using state-level panel data from 1998-2003, I find that the arrival of the internet was associated with a reduction in rape incidence.”

Other experts like University of Alberta researcher, Sonya Thompson, are more interested in studying the effects that internet porn has on teens and pre-teens in an objective way.  However, to date, any such study she has proposed has been met with staunch resistance by government officials and educators because of a concern that the very act of surveying teens and pre-teens about internet porn will cause them to seek out internet porn.