Shan Boodram: Let's be honest. If you've been on the internet, you've probably seen porn. 

Whether you went looking for it, a friend shoved a video under your nose, or you got a sketchy DM, it's hard not to come across porn in our extremely online world. 

Either way, your first encounter with porn might have piqued your curiosity, or it might have even disturbed you. It's okay. We're going to unpack all of that together. 

Hi, I'm Shan Boodram and this is Crash Course: Sex Ed. 

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Head's up. In today's video, we'll be discussing a sensitive topic, including sexual assault and descriptions of certain kinds of sex acts. So, please keep that in mind and take care when watching. 

We learn about sex from a lot of different sources, but nobody seems to want to admit that for a lot of people, one of the biggest teachers is pornography: videos, films, magazines, and other forms of media that are meant for sexual arousal. 

No matter what popped into your head when I first said porn, the word has a pretty broad definition because what's considered arousing can really vary from person to person. 

In a Supreme Court case about which sexual material was obscene enough to censor, one of the justices said porn was hard to define, but I know it when I see it. 

Whatever it is, porn is a part of our society. Like one survey from 2022 found that 73% of teenagers have seen porn online, despite the rise of age-restriction laws that require viewers to be 18 or older. 

Teen Shan: Well, I definitely don’t watch porn. 

Shan: Girl, I'm you. I know you're lying, but I don't blame you. 

Cuz here's the thing: the way sex classes, and the adults in our lives talk about, porn, if they do at all, is often full of shame. And that leaves people with a sense that they shouldn't ask questions. 

But it turns out one of the best ways to responsibly engage with porn is by getting curious. 

The first thing to know, images that we might consider pornographic today have been around forever. 

Peruvian sex pods sculpted 1500 years ago; Fresco from 1st century Pompeii, 17th century erotic Japanese paintings; images of naked people doing sexy stuff have been around for a long time. 

Although whether an image was considered pornographic generally depended on the viewer's cultural background. European archaeologists were often the ones claiming that these images were obscene without understanding their cultural context. 

And people haven't just used explicit material to get all hot and bothered in 18th century Europe. They also used it to spread illicit information about contraception and women's sexual freedom and to poke fun at the aristocracy. 

Add this to the fact that porn was seen as depraved and you can see why its creators were often punished with jail time. 

But that didn’t stop people from making more. As time went on and photography and film were invented, visual porn became super popular. And these days, the internet is home to more sexually explicit material than your great great great great great grandparents could've ever imagined. 

So yes, porn is not new, but what is new is the sheer amount and accessibility of it that we get from the internet. And that comes with some benefits and some downsides. 

On the positive side, consuming porn and even sexy scenes in regular old TV shows and movies may help destigmatise sex and provide people with a space to explore their sexuality, especially if information about that kind of thing isn't the kind of thing isn’t available in their IRL communities. 

This can be particularly true for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Remember how the Q can stand for questioning? Porn can help those folks figure out what they find sexy. 

In fact, because education about anything but penis in vagina sex is hard to come by, young LGBT+ people often learn the nuts and bolts of sex from porn.

Ultimately, everyone's relationship with porn is different.

But truth be told, porn isn't all fun and games either. One of the main reasons, most of it is not realistic. 

No matter how amateur the footage looks, the vast majority of video porn is staged for the screen, and the people involved are performers. 

But that can be hard to remember if we just accept what happens in those scenes at face value. It can lead us to picking up warped ideas about what sex should look like or what we should look like. 

Multiple studies have found that the usually thin, hairless women and chiselled dudes in porn can make young people feel bad about their bodies, just like airbrushed Instagram models or gym bro TikTokers can. 

And when it comes to the experience of sex in pornographic videos, performers often fake orgasms because again, they're performing. 

Teen Shan: What? They fake orgasms? I mean, I — I wouldn't know. I don't watch porn. 

Shan: OK. Yeah, TJ, they do fake orgasms, and this can give viewers the false idea that everyone's going to respond the same way to certain sex acts and make them wonder if something's wrong with them when it doesn't play out that way. 

And one of the most unrealistic parts of most porn videos is that they don't talk about the important stuff. A lot of the time they're just naked people on a bed and they start doing stuff. No consent, no communication about desires, and no protection. 

People with penises often don't wear condoms in porn, let alone have a conversation about wearing one. But in reality, talking to each other is one of the key ways to have good sex. 

Many researchers and educators also raised red flags about the amount of violence and non-consensual aggression on popular porn sites, especially because they can reflect harmful attitudes about women and especially women of color.

In a 2020 study of over 4000 porn scenes, 35-45% showed violence with women being the target 97% of the time. 

Another study showed that Black women were even more likely than white women to be shown as the victims of violence. 

And Black men were shown as aggressors more often than white men. 

And the thing about the internet is you don't even have to click on these videos to see the thumbnails and titles that use racial stereotypes and misogyny. 

Historically, exploitation of performers has been a major part of the industry, too.

This is a complex issue that we won't dive into today, but know that many people who watch porn are getting more interested in how to do so ethically. 

Now, as far as the research goes, there's no conclusive evidence about whether watching violent or misogynistic porn makes someone more likely to act that way offline. 

Som research, including a survey from 2019, found that respondents who viewed violent porn were more likely to have perpetrated sexual violence, but that doesn't necessarily mean one causes the other. 

An emerging research, including one study that surveyed almost 5000 American college students, has found that choking, an act popularised by video porn,  and other media like Euphoria, has increased among young adults, despite the fact that it's not a safe thing to do, even when it's consensual. 

But long-term research is also sparse, and different definitions of porn make it hard to compare findings. And when it comes to misogyny, a lot of studies are at odds. 

Some say that watching porn is correlated with having sexist attitudes, while some say the opposite. 

Also, scientists still don't really know what high exposure to porn does to our brains.

If you want to learn more about the research that does exist, you can visit our friends over at SciShow. 

One way or another, though, porn is still everywhere. So, what do we do with that?

The key is to think critically about what we see in porn and to make smart decisions about it. A little thing called porn literacy.

Porn literacy is part of sexual literacy, the critical thinking skills needed to have good sexual health, and it's not all that different from media literacy.

It involves a lot of the same concepts and skills you'd use to identify the biases behind a news article or figure out if a photo was made by AI. 

It also involves unpacking the assumptions we adopt from porn so that we don't spread misinformation or bring harmful behaviours or ideas into our sex lives. 

Like, if you don’t see people wearing condoms or talking about contraception or STI in porn, what message is that sending you? 

So, here are some questions you can ask yourself when you come across a piece of pornographic media. 

One, how does this make me feel? 

Two, what is this trying to get me to think about sex or people?

Three, what about this might not be true to life?

Four, what's missing from this piece of media?

And five, what sources of information can I trust about the stuff I'm seeing here?

That last question might be the trickiest, but it's an important one. We all know we shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet, but that is where we get a lot of our information. 

And some online sources are better than others. Some reference research from doctors, sex therapists, and scientific journals, while others, well, you probably seen some of those TikToks. 

Also, it's worth noting that these critical thinking skills don't just apply to explicit videos. You can use these questions to analyse any information about sex you encounter, from TV and movies to fanfiction and spicy romance novels, or my personal favourite medium, audio erotica. 

Cuz the thing is, there's nothing wrong with wanting to explore your sexuality or responsibly seek out pleasure. But like anything else, it's important to make sure we do it in a way that’s healthy, safe, and mindful. 

Ultimately, not everybody watches porn on the regular, and it's certainly not a requirement for a happy sex life. 

But for those who enjoy it, it's important to think critically about what's being portrayed because in the end, porn is designed to arouse and entertain, but it's not meant to educate. For that, you've got things like Crash Course. 

Coming up next, we're talking all about orgasms. See you then. 

This episode of Crash Course: Sex Ed was produced in partnership with the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. If you are interested in learning more, visit their website for resources that explore the topics we discussed in the video today. 

Thank you for watching this episode, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis and was made with the help of all these sexually literate people. If you want to keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join the community on Patreon.