final_assignment/a.tex

   1 %&a
   2 \begin{document}
   3 \maketitleru[authorstext={Author:},
   4         course={Philosophy and Ethics of Computer and Information Sciences}]
   5
   6 \section*{Introduction}
   7 Ever since the dawn of human beings we have been prone to addictions and we
   8 must actively inhibit certain urges.  Genetically the body has been evolved to
   9 indulge itself into seemingly scarcely available activities. It seems that this
  10 behaviour is wired into every animal thus also including humans. In the 1954
  11 Olds and Milner took a different turn on the classic Skinner experiments in
  12 which a \emph{Skinner Box} is used to train animals on exerting certain
  13 behaviour. Olds and Milner made a system in which rats could press a button to
  14 stimulate parts of the brain that make you feel
  15 pleasure\cite{olds1954positive}. The results were horrific, the rats pressed
  16 the button over $6000$ times per hour. In later experiments it was found that
  17 rats would starve themselves, ignore female species and even endure pain via
  18 electrical shocks just to give them the pleasure of pressing the button to get
  19 the brain stimulation. Moreover, years later, very controversial experiments
  20 have taken place resembling the Olds and Milner experiments with a human
  21 individual with strikingly similar results\cite{Moan1972septal}.
  22
  23 Luckily for us and other animals this kind of hyper stimulation is not readily
  24 available at the press of a button. If this would be the case it would have
  25 detrimental effects on society since it would lead to a neglectance of primary
  26 needs.  However, over the course of the digital revolution, a new type of
  27 overstimulating has appeared in the human society.  Sexual stimuli that where
  28 scarce earlier are now abundant. People can lavishly stimulate themselves by
  29 the press of a simple button. These stimuli arise from the connectivity that
  30 came with the internet and became to get known as internet pornography. Never
  31 have there been times where consuming visual sexual stimuli was possible in
  32 such high quantities and with such variance in the material.
  33
  34 Numerous researchers and research groups have devoted their research onto the
  35 physical consequences of such hyper stimulation. However, studies are showing
  36 mixed results on these matters. Most of these studies try to find correlations
  37 between the physical well being and pornography consumption. The results are
  38 mixed however. There are studies that show a correlation between for example
  39 erectile dysfunction and pornographic material
  40 consumption\cite{klein2015erectile} while other show only insignificant
  41 results\cite{landripet2015pornography}. A recent survey from Park et
  42 al.\cite{park2016internet} shows excessive pornography consumption does not so
  43 much cause a physical change in the brain. Evermore so it leads to negative
  44 psychological changes. Excessive consumption of pornography even has been found
  45 to be negatively correlating with direct well being\cite{grubbs2015perceived}.
  46
  47 Several years ago a popular science article was written on the subject that had
  48 the catchy title: ``Your brain on porn''\cite{wilson2014your}. The article gave
  49 the layman a view on the physical and psychological changes that pornography
  50 consumption gives. This article, together with other voices, gave the rise to
  51 very active online communities that try to inhibit their own behaviour
  52 regarding the consumption of pornography. From within these
  53 communities\footnote{e.g.~\url{reddit.com/r/nofap}} a lot of extra anekdotal
  54 evidence arose that not consuming is very good for the general sexual health
  55 being.  These changes show that we should reformulate the question. It is not
  56 so much a question on what porn does to your \emph{brain} but even more so the
  57 question of what pornography does to \emph{society}.
  58
  59 \newpage
  60 \section*{Research question}
  61 This leads to the following main research question.
  62 \begin{center}
  63         \emph{How does the increase in consumption and ease of use of pornography
  64         via the internet change the society?}
  65 \end{center}
  66
  67 To tackle this question we approach it from three perspectives. First we will
  68 shine a light on the possible change in attitude on sexuality with adults. Are
  69 there shifts in normativity and is society adapting to the new situation by
  70 changing moralities?
  71
  72 After describing the change in attitude there we will elaborated upon the
  73 actual acts of sexuality. Do, specifically adults, change their sexual
  74 behaviours in real life because of the increase and easy of use of internet
  75 pornography.
  76
  77 Lastly we show what influences the aforementioned changes have on
  78 the youth and on education. Does society teach different moralities and
  79 behaviours than before? Is pornography considered differently than before.
  80
  81 Concluding this we will wrap up and provide an overview in the form of a
  82 description of general changes in society.
  83
  84 \section*{Attitude}
  85 %First question
  86 To answer the first question we should go back in time a little bit because
  87 pornography is of all ages. Starting in the sixties, people started to document
  88 ``histories'' of pornography. However, in those times there were hardly any
  89 methodological methods of describing such social histories and therefore it is
  90 mainly an enumeration of techniques\cite{hoff1989there}. This is in a contrast
  91 with the reality in which there is a rich history with changes in behaviour,
  92 social constructs and society. Even before the modern era pornography was a
  93 thing. Ancient paintings of sexual activities have been found and it has been
  94 documented that some sort of pornography existed in the forms such as voyeurism
  95 in for example the Roman Empire.
  96
  97 In the current age with the internet the field has changed enormously. Where
  98 people had to buy pornographic magazines in shabby stores earlier they now have
  99 every fetish they imagined, and more, at their fingertips. A human browsing the
 100 web can see more naked people in one evening than a human say 100, 1000 or even
 101 10.000 years ago in their entire lifetime.
 102
 103 In the internet era aberrant sexual behaviour is considered more normal because
 104 of the use of pornography. While before the internet you really had to seek out
 105 companions or peers that also practised the abberative behaviour, currently you
 106 can seek contact with everyone in the world and the normativity on the subject
 107 changes. Suddenly there are numerous amounts of people that have the same
 108 interest. As a consequence, this leads to the rise of these activities such as
 109 BSDM fantasies (e.g. \emph{she-males}) that were never so prevalent in
 110 society\cite{escoffier2011imagining}. These trends show a change in sexuality.
 111 Gender becomes less important and more fluid and aberrant sexual fantasies
 112 become regular. Whether this stays to be a fantasy or becomes reality will be
 113 explored in the next section.
 114
 115 \section*{Act}
 116 The second aspect of the change in society will be the influence of the
 117 availability of internet pornography on real relations and sexual contact
 118 between adults. We specifically not focus on youth here because that is an
 119 entirely different matter and will be treated in the next subsection.
 120
 121 A little over a decade ago Stack, Wasserman and Kern studied the influence of
 122 pornography to adult social bonds\cite{stack_adult_2004}. It showed that
 123 pornography deviant, albeit sexual, behaviours where indicators of internet
 124 pornography use. Moreover, numerous studies have found a negative relation in
 125 the use of pornography and relationship quality\cite{muusses_internet_2015}. In
 126 the study by Musses et al.\ it was found that short-term effects are prevalent
 127 from other studies. On the contrary, in their longitudinal study there were no
 128 long-term effects significant. Moreover, these short-term effects were
 129 summarized by Harkness et al.\ and show an association between pornography and
 130 sexual risk behaviours\cite{harkness2015association}. This means that internet
 131 pornography is also changing the real life behaviour outside of the fantasies.
 132
 133 \section*{Education}
 134 Finally, to see the effect on society we specifically take a look at the
 135 younger members of our race. Does sexuality for youth and adolescents change
 136 because of the prevalence of internet pornography.
 137
 138 A study from Kvalem et al.\ revealed that the view on sexuality is changing
 139 on young men due to pornography consumption\cite{kvalem2015self}. Oddly enough
 140 there was no significant effect on women. This can be explained by the fact
 141 that the consumption percentages were a lot lower. More $80\%$ of the male
 142 reported weekly use in contrast to less than $20\%$ of the women. Presumably it
 143 is a lot less accepted to consume pornography for women because their view on
 144 it is also different.
 145
 146 Another study by Nelson et al.\ showed that almost half of the women and
 147 roughly two thirds of the men view pornography consumption as
 148 acceptable\cite{carroll2008generation}. The percentage of students that used
 149 pornography was about the same as in the Kvalem et al.\ study. This shows that
 150 there is while the use has risen over the years the acceptance is lagging
 151 behind a little bit.
 152
 153 A similar study also shows that the average age of exposure is lowering. Sabina
 154 et al.\ showed about the same numbers as the previous study regarding exposer
 155 below 18 years of age.
 156
 157 \section*{Conclusion}
 158 If we combine the different perspeanswers we can conclude that there is a shift
 159 going on in society's view on pornography and society itself.  While in the
 160 early days pornography was for the select few and was frowned upon it is now
 161 abundant in volume and frequency. This results in to a change of the
 162 consumption. People start to use pornography earlier on in their lives and it
 163 is regarded more and more as normal. This shift leads to previously aberrant
 164 sexual fantasies becoming more regular and, at least on the short term,
 165 aberrant sexual behaviours becoming more prevalent.
 166
 167 All this change can be led back to the inhibition mechanisms humans, and all
 168 other animals exhibit. We are to consume at the fullest when we can consume a
 169 scarce resource because who knows when you will encounter the resource
 170 again\ldots{} In society already subcultures and groups arise to combat the
 171 easy seductions and to reprogram our minds.
 172
 173 \newpage
 174 \bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
 175 \bibliography{a}
 176 \end{document}