What Jewel Beetles Can Teach Us About Porn, Men, and Marriage

In 1983, biologists Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz discovered that the number of Australian jewel beetles was declining. They found that this was because male beetles were copulating with empty beer bottles left by humans. The ridges of the bottles were highly attractive to male beetles because the bottom of the containers had tiny ridges that looked like the bumps on a female jewel beetle. The biologists decided to put some empty bottles on the ground and watched as male beetles crawled out of the woodwork to mount them.

The bottles were easier to mount than female beetles, and more attractive as they were a type of “supernormal stimulus.” In their paper, the researchers concluded, "improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and ‘visual’ hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species.” 

Indeed, biologists have termed this type of behavior an “evolutionary trap,” meaning an adaptive trait that is hijacked by artificial cues in the environment, which leads to the possibility of species extinction.

This example came to mind recently, when I was a guest on the Freedom Pact podcast and the host asked me if I thought porn was harmful. He described an online challenge in which a large group of men and women agreed to not watch porn for 90 days. He said only a few men and zero women were able to complete the challenge. His story reminded me of the strange effects of porn. Some years ago, I was at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco and watched Marc Maron perform a great bit. He said that he was getting “porn brain.” Maron told the audience to imagine walking down a long hotel hallway with all of the room doors open. In each room, different people are performing different sex acts. He said porn is like walking down this hallway and peeking his head into different rooms while masturbating. Then he said that the last time he was getting ready to have sex with a woman, he was confused that he had to partake in the interaction. As the woman was getting undressed, Maron said he was thinking “Okay, so where’s the guy?”

Thinking about this comedy bit, I told the podcast host that porn could be having unintended effects, at least for young men. One effect might be that it is teaching them to associate pleasure with watching other people have sex rather than engaging in the interaction. My friend’s younger brother told me he has had difficulties with partners because he spent most of his sexual experience in front of a screen. In fact, some guys say they’ve lost interest in women because of porn. I sympathize. If I’d had access to streaming websites when I was 13, I don’t think I would’ve left my bedroom. Fortunately, back then we only had one computer in the house with a dial-up connection. 

Still, some research suggests that there is a positive correlation between porn viewing and having a higher number of sexual partners. A systematic review led by Emily L. Harkness at the University of Sydney found that, “overall results suggested that there is a robust association between pornography use and a higher number of sexual partners.” This may be because men who watch lots of porn generally have a high libido, and seek satisfaction in a variety of ways. These findings seem to overturn the idea that guys resort to porn because they can’t find a partner.

These results parallel the disconcerting finding that men who use sexual coercion have more partners than men who do not. A popular idea is that men who are desperate or deprived of chances for sex will be more likely to use coercion. This is known as the “mate deprivation hypothesis.” However, research suggests the opposite is the case. Men who have more partners actually report higher levels of sexual aggression compared to men with fewer partners. Furthermore, men who predict that their future earnings will be high also report greater levels of sexual aggression relative to men who predict that their future earnings will be low.

In other words, our intuitive ideas about sex and behavior are not always correct. In their review, Harkness and her colleagues found that viewing porn is related to having more sex partners, not fewer. But in the very next sentence, the researchers write, “No studies specifically examined Internet pornography in relation to this variable.” These 10 studies did not look at digital porn. Their participants weren’t walking down Marc Maron’s hotel hallway. They were hanging out near the concierge flipping through old magazines.

Fortunately, economists Michael Malcolm and George Naufal have investigated a related question. In a research paper titled, “Are Pornography and Marriage Substitutes for Young Men?” they examined whether use of Internet pornography was related to marriage among young adult males. They hypothesized that young men, who in the past would have sought marriage to obtain sexual fulfillment, may be redirecting their desires toward an inexpensive and widely accessible alternative: Internet pornography. Looking at data from 1,512 males ranging in age from 18 to 35, the researchers found a negative association between use of Internet pornography and marital status. That is, for each 1% increase in the propensity to look at online pornography, there was a 0.6% drop in the likelihood of being married. Interestingly, they also found that participants who used the Internet to visit other kinds of websites, such as those with religious content, were more likely to be married. Such results indicate that porn might be a substitute for marriage, at least for some young men. 

Indeed, another study about pornography and marriage from sociologists Samuel L. Perry and Kyle C. Longest suggest similar conclusions. They analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of people who responded to surveys over multiple time points. Participants responded to questions about their porn viewing habits in 2007, when they were between 18 and 23 years old. Then in 2013, when the participants were between 23 and 28 years old, participants responded to questions about their relationship status. Perry and Longest found that after controlling for income, education, religious belief, and other family factors, male respondents who did not view any pornography were subsequently less likely to be married than moderate viewers. The researchers speculate that this may be due to non-viewers’ lack of interest in intimate relationships. However, men who reported watching a high level of pornography in 2007 were 31% less likely to be married in 2013 than moderate viewers.

These two studies suggest that for young men, consuming pornographic content reduces the likelihood of entering romantic relationships. Yet it also appears that porn consumption disrupts relationships that have already formed. In a study about the effects of porn viewing on relationship breakups, researchers looked at data from a nationally representative panel survey of 969 respondents. Participants responded to questions from two different time points—first in 2006 and then in 2012. In 2006, participants were asked whether they viewed pornographic content and, if so, how frequently. In 2012, the same participants were asked about their relationship history over the previous six years. After controlling for family and geographic factors, ethnicity, education, income, religious belief and conservatism, researchers found a positive relationship between viewing any amount of porn and subsequently experiencing a romantic breakup. They also found that the amount of porn-consumption was also positively associated with likelihood of a romantic breakup. This association was especially pronounced among men. That is, men who consumed porn were subsequently more than 3.5 times more likely to experience a breakup than non-consumers (read more about this research from the lead researcher here). The researchers conclude that, 

earlier pornography use significantly predicts relational instability, particularly for men...Put simply, the more often someone viewed pornography in 2006, the more likely they were to experience a romantic breakup by 2012.

In sum, evidence indicates that men who watch porn are less likely to get married and far more likely to experience romantic breakups compared to men who do not watch porn. These findings suggest that digital porn might be a kind of “supernormal stimulus” (like the male beetles’ example) that replaces sex with a real woman for some men. In the near future, technology will reach a level where virtual reality will be indistinguishable from real sexual intimacy. Unfortunately, the result may be that many of the young men in our lives will begin to disappear, vanishing into the machine. A clever name for this future device might be the “Jewel Beetle.”

Rob Henderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge, where he studies as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. He obtained a B.S. in Psychology from Yale University, and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force.