In the blink of an eye, human connection has fundamentally changed. More often than not, our relationship to others is facilitated by a screen. Despite this, the discourse on healthy phone usage is so wide of the mark and the reality on the ground. We all know that things on the internet last forever, and we all know that cyber bullying is a huge problem, thanks internet safety education, you did good. But who is teaching us how to navigate anxiety-inducing social media? Who is holding our hands lest we fall down alt-right rabbit holes? Who is willing to have the hard, embarrassing discussions on what lies just a click away? Who understands the impact its having on us? There is a huge disconnect between those who have attempted to set the rules and regulations on phones and social media and us, the generation who never knew life without phones. Older generations never experienced relying on the internet to maintain friendships, to find work, to relax, to fall in love. I really struggle to believe they properly comprehend the societal changes that have occurred before their very eyes. It just doesn’t affect them, so why should they?
I thought my attack on phones was over as I have already focussed on them for an episode. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I last wrote, precisely because of my relationship to my phone. My screentime has no master and knows no bounds. Again, and again, I find myself always the product, never the user. This is a rather embarrassing predicament given my previous attempts to highlight phone usage minimisation strategies. I failed. My relationship to my phone doesn’t fill me with pride, usually a shudder would suffice. I would rather not go through phones again, but I heard something genuinely depressing recently that resparked my anger, so just like herpes, I’m back. I found out that a majority of my students spend more time on their phones than they do sleeping. For context, they’re not allowed to use their phones in school. Let that sink in for a moment. They don’t have access to their phones for 8 hours a day and still they manage to use them more than they sleep. Everyone should find this absolutely terrifying. When I asked one person my classic question of when was the last time they didn’t use their phone for a whole day, they responded, “No phone, no life”. I’m back on this topic precisely because for our generation; no phone, no life.
The reason why I stopped writing was because I became engrossed and addicted to dating apps. What has the internet done to love? What does it mean to have only gone on dates through dating apps? What does it mean to reject hundreds of people with a mere swipe, and be rejected by thousands more? What has it done to us? Well to find out the answer, we have to turn our attention (if we have any fragments of it left) to rats. In a rather famous experiment, rats were given access to a button that, when pushed, released dopamine in their brains. The rats kept pushing the button until they starved to death [1]. They ignored all the hunger cues that they should eat. In the 21st Century, we are the rats. Our sex drives are being fuelled by dating apps and social media and 4k HD porn (wait, who said that?). This is what happens when you have access to porn wherever you are, whenever you want it. This is why you can’t live without it. Sex sells, though be careful, in this world of abundance, you will still starve to death. Lust, loneliness, love, and addiction, all hopelessly intertwined at the touch of a button.
I went through puberty with access to porn on demand, available anywhere with wifi or data by merely switching on my phone. I could see more images in a minute’s scroll than inhabiTated the entire magazine collection of the most perverted of boomers. I had free 4k HD videos incomparable to any VHS tape. I was accompanied by an algorithm which held my hand and gently led me through the titillating debauchery. It felt good. Initially, I used porn when I was aroused. That habit quickly changed and I begun to use porn to become aroused, it became the button I pushed to get access to dopamine. I stopped being aware of arousal, I didn’t need to be, just like those rats unaware of their hunger. Like any addiction, I built up a tolerance meaning that what initially satiated me quickly became boring. Internet porn is endless. There is always something new to explore. I had no interest in going on dates, or having flings. I was no longer aroused by people in real life, was I ever? Instead, I was aroused by porn. In this world of abundance, my sexual identity was starving to death. It never had a chance to develop free from these influences. Blink and I was having dreams not about sex, but about scrolling on my phone looking at porn. I am always reminded of Mirror by Sylvia Plath when I consider that recurrent dream and my phone usage more generally. Whereas Plath found her youth stolen by the mirror, I gave mine up willingly to a different type of black, reflective screen, equally omnipresent, equally malicious.
I know I’m not the only one. Porn is a real issue that is either avoided and ignored or treated with a religious persecution. Let’s be real about porn, because too many people are just as fake as porn itself. Porn affects us, as users, but also those who we engage with sexually and romantically. Among adolescents who have accessed porn, 10% report that porn, “reduces [their] sexual interest towards potential real-life partners”, and 9.1% go as far to describe it as an addiction [2]. Ubiquitous porn use is having an influence on us. It changes our views on sex and relationships, and can lead us to be more aggressive [3]. Porn also affects us all differently, with those who are more socially isolated than their peers also more likely to use porn more often [3]. Old people don’t understand the impact of internet porn, they didn’t grow up with it. Telling us not to use something so alluring is ridiculous, and banning it is futile – ever heard of a VPN? Did they show such restraint in their youth?
This is without us even considering the exploitation driven by the porn industry. Whilst there is such a thing as ethical porn, is that really what you are consuming? When you watch porn, it’s easy to forget what exactly you’re seeing. Do you remember that the people on your screens are human not just objects crafted for your sexual pleasure? What do they experience behind the camera? Coercion, trafficking, drug abuse, STIs, physical, mental and emotional trauma, sexual assault, violence, rape, suicide [7]. That’s the reality of what we just can’t stop watching. How capable are the sites at content moderation? How many instances of CP and rape are left untouched for the world to devour one button press at a time? We are complicit.
So, having been broken by porn, how can we possibly hope to form relationships? This is not something anyone can answer; in short, with great difficulty. Instead, I will focus on a different question: how are we attempting to find love? The most common way is via online dating aka dating apps aka tinder, grindr, bumble etc.[4]. Why has this happened? Well, some like to point to the marked decline in third spaces, places where people could hang out and meet spontaneously and naturally [5]. But now that dating apps find themselves in the plurality, do we really have a choice? Everyone else being on dating apps necessitates their use, this is a textbook case of a collective action problem. I didn’t want to start using them – I know they’re addictive – but what’s a man gotta do?
Dating apps (specifically Match group) have monopolised love, literally [6]. Since when do monopolies benefit consumers, as disgusting as it is to say that those simply searching for romance have been reduced to consumers. With this monopoly has come the successful commercialisation of love. It’s not like dating apps exist out of benevolence for their fellow man, they exist to make money. They do this by having tiered systems that encourage us to spend in an effective pay-to-play scenario. They also advertise to us, and sell our data to advertisers. Is it in their best interest for their users, their sole sources of income, to match, message, meet, and live happily ever after? Of course not, they’d lose their income stream if this were to happen. Instead, they’ve gamified the dating process making addicts out of romantics. We get to see more potential mates in a minute than the ancients would’ve seen in a lifetime. There are so many chances to win at this slot machine; new people to swipe on, new likes, new matches, new messages. How could anyone resist?
Do dating apps make us happy? Do they leave us feeling fulfilled? Do they serve a purpose other than maximising shareholder value? According to the famous meme on the internet that it takes two things to succeed on dating apps; 1. Be attractive 2. Follow rule 1. Hmm, maybe that’s why I hate dating apps. Behaviour and experience on these apps is divided starkly along gender lines (assuming for heterosexual matches); men vastly outnumber women, and they swipe more often and have less success. Women swipe less often and have greater success (at least in terms of quantity of matches, quality is another thing entirely…). Really, no one is winning, and it’s easy to see why so many people are becoming despondent and giving up on love. Dating apps are divisive. They turn us against one another. They chew us up, spit us out, leave us dejected and apathetic. It’s no wonder that women view men on these apps as disgusting given the vile messages they have to put up with. And it’s no wonder that some men become filled with hatred, misogyny, and jealously, pushed towards inceldom given their complete and utter failure to meet someone. They might as well just turn back to porn.
But porn, like the internet more generally, is experiencing a metamorphosis, and alas it won’t be as a positive as going from caterpillar to butterfly. There’s a new disruptor in town. We have reached a new realm of content; AI. It will change everything, and it won’t stop changing. If you take an Intro to Machine Learning module, you will quickly realise AI image, and now even video, generation’s capacity for harm. Enough content already exists to train the most in-depth of models. Anyone, anywhere, can unwittingly, and therefore non-consensually, become a “porn star” and be rendered in the most demeaning of depictions. This eruption of content will be unparalleled in magnitude, and it will affect us all. This genie can never be put back into the bottle, is this what we want? Between my first draft and editing, the UK government did ban using someone’s likeness in AI generated porn without their consent [8]. This is a really good step, but I question how enforceable it will be. The perpetrators are borderless, so how do you prevent it?
AI won’t just revolutionise porn creation, it also will change its consumption. There will be no need to search for porn. You will be able to sit back and let algorithms do all the driving. Just as the necessity for search gave way to recommended content, porn on demand will turn into personalised fantasy lands. AI will be capable of generating your wildest dream before you even knew you dreamt it. This may sound incredible, and that’s because it is. You won’t know what’s hit you, why ever give it up? We are the rats.
What to do? What to do? This is usually the part where I attempt to deliver a rousing conclusion that gives some achievable outcome for us to work towards, but I’m finding it difficult. Yes, there have been some wins recently. The problem of revenge porn was identified and made illegal in certain states in the USA and countries in the EU [9]. Mounting pressure has led to companies like PornHub taking their moderation responsibilities more seriously [10]. And of course, there has been the aforementioned ban on AI porn in the UK. But I still feel angry, and I don’t know if my anger will be enough. Firstly, dating apps’ monopoly on love, and Match Group’s monopoly on dating apps must be ended. The addictiveness of their apps must be challenged. I think this is doable, maybe. The potential impact of AI porn, well that’s where I’m less optimistic. We will never solve the challenges posed by online porn, let alone what happens when it becomes fuelled by AI, if we cannot discuss our own fraught relationship with porn. So, so many problems stem from our reluctance to speak about this incredibly delicate, embarrassing topic, but we’re going to have to. If we cede the territory of the discussion, nefarious actors will seize it. I never wanted to say these words, but I have. If you have a problem with porn, please talk to someone about it.
[1] So my initial understanding of this experiment came from “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman who refers to it. Unfortunately, he does not give the name of the study. The best experiment that I could find fitting his description is:
“Effects of the availability of rewarding septal and hypothalamic stimulation on bar pressing for food under conditions of deprivation.” Aryeh Routtenberg, Janet Lindy, 1965, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1965-14558-001
Not quite sure whether the rats starved to death in this experiment, but they did exhibit self-starving behaviours when able to get direct electrical stimulation instead.
[2] Pizzol, Damiano, Bertoldo, Alessandro and Foresta, Carlo. “Adolescents and web porn: a new era of sexuality” International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, vol. 28, no. 2, 2016, pp. 169-173. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2015-0003
[3] Owens, E. W., Behun, R. J., Manning, J. C., & Reid, R. C. (2012). The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents: A Review of the Research. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 19(1–2), 99–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2012.660431
[5] Reddit. Reddit almost incessantly discusses the decline of the third space as a reason that one cannot meet people irl. Is it that third spaces no longer exist, or that they are no longer used? It’s realistically a vicious cycle where physical spaces have been replaced by online ones, so less people use them and therefore there is less investment in them, both economically and simply by people willing to spend their time there if no one is. The point of a third space is to meet people, they become irrelevant if there is no one to meet.
[6] The figure given here is Match Group with a 60% share of the UK online dating market, and Bumble Inc with 30%. This is a duopoly.
Boyles, S., (2024) The Guardian. “Addicted to love: how dating apps ‘exploit’ their users”
[7] These are some big claims I must admit. It is important to acknowledge that the porn people consume is coming from multiple sources: organised porn industries, and user generated content. It is easier to research an industry, meaning there is much more evidence on the abuses faced by those “working” in the porn industry. There is also evidence of user generated content depicting rape, assault, sometimes of children. Frustratingly, among the actual research, are lots of results from zealots who source and cite each and can prove little of their claims beyond an issue of morality.
STIs, physical, mental, and emotional trauma, violence, drug abuse:
STIs:
Trafficking:
Hughes, D.M., 2005. The demand for victims of sex trafficking. Women’s Studies Program, University of Rhode Island, 26. Accessed at: http://atzum.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Demand-for-Victims-of-Sex-Trafficking.pdf
“Hundreds of people identified as victims of sex trafficking”
It’s hard to find concrete evidence on suicide rates. Individual cases of suicide have been reported.
In sum, when you watch porn, this is what you are consuming.
[8] The Guardian (2024) “Creating sexually explicit deepfake images to be made offence in UK”
[10] https://www.vice.com/en/article/pornhub-suspended-all-unverified-videos-content/
The Angry Generation 
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