A new test to measure whether a person is watching ‘too much’ porn has been developed by international behaviour experts.
The psychologists developed the scale after becoming concerned by mounting evidence that over-use of adult material can significantly harm health.
It helps therapists diagnose problematic pornography use (PPU), where someone has difficulty controlling their urge to masturbate to porn, even when it negatively impacts their life.
Doctors insist that porn consumption can be part of a functional sex life.
However PPU is on the rise, experts fear, and has been linked to a raft of conditions including erectile dysfunction, anxiety and depression and withdrawal symptoms.
The phenomenon has arisen alongside the proliferation of internet streaming pornography, which is easy to access on personal computers or smartphones.
The UK has the second highest incidence of internet porn searches in the world, with an average of 16,600,000 searches for porn taking place each month.
Nine in ten adults now admit to viewing adult material.
Meanwhile, two thirds of young people now regularly use online pornography, according to Paracelsus Recovery, a leading mental health and addiction clinic.
A quarter of 16 to 21-year-olds first saw pornography on the internet while still at primary school. By the age of 13, 50 per cent had been exposed to it.
Some research suggests one in ten adults may now suffer a degree of PPU, with higher numbers in young people. They may watch porn for up to 12 hours a week.
The international experts — including academics from Nottingham Trent University — created their Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale by questioning hundreds of porn users, of both sexes.
The UK has the second highest incidence of internet porn searches in the world, with an average of 16,600,000 searches for porn taking place each month
Some research suggests one in ten adults may now suffer a degree of PPU, with higher numbers in young people. They may watch porn for up to 12 hours a week
It resulted in an 18-point questionnaire which can be carried out at home — and is featured here.
The developers claim the result is 98 per cent accurate in determining whether a person suffers PPU.
Men were found to be more likely to score highly than women, regardless of sexual orientation.
Roughly four per cent of the participants in the study fell into the ‘at risk’ category for PPU, the experts claimed.
Problematic pornography use has six core elements, around which the questions were developed.
The first is salience — referring to how important pornography is in the person’s life, and to what it extent it dominates their thinking, feelings and behavior.
The second component refers to mood modification — how much they use masturbation to porn as a way of making them feel a certain way.
This could be either arousing or relaxing.
The third is conflict — how much masturbation to porn impact on significant others, whether it gets in the way of work or education commitments.
This also refers to internal conflicts — a person knowing the activity is causing problems but feeling helpless to cut down or cease.
The fourth component is tolerance — the way in which increasing amounts of the activity, in this case masturbation to porn, are required to achieve the desired mood modifying effects.
This not only means more time spent watching but also the consumption of more diverse and extreme phonographic content.
The fifth dimension is related to relapse — attempts to abstain and then returning to the problematic behavior patterns.
The sixth and final factor is withdrawal — unpleasant feelings and emotional states that occur when a user tries to quit porn.
Earlier this week MailOnline reported that regular porn-users who try to stop suddenly can suffer physical withdrawal-like symptoms such as headaches, chills and even nausea.
Recognising many of these ‘symptoms’ were similar to those reported by drug addicts, a team at Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil, set about researching whether PPU was also linked to other health issues.
They discovered that, as with drugs and other compulsive behaviours such as gambling addiction, PPU could trigger physical withdrawal symptoms.
After reviewing 14 separate studies they concluded that it did — in fact, 72 per cent of people with PPU are hit by withdrawal.
One study found 57 per cent of participants experienced ‘cravings’, while 52 per cent also experienced heightened emotions, difficulties in focus and nervousness.
A smaller number — roughly one in 20 — reported sleeping difficulties, headaches, sweating, chills, sickness when they tried to quit porn.
Other studies also found participants abstaining self-reported symptoms such as depression, ‘brain fog’, feelings of loneliness an restlessness.
The researchers discovered that in most cases people had ‘intense cravings’ to masturbate to porn that caused them to relapse.
They noted that several of these withdrawal-like symptoms were seen in regular users of porn who weren’t classifies as severe enough to have PPU.
Following the review authors called for further research to investigate onset, characteristics, duration and proportion of withdrawal-like symptoms.
