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 questions}
  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 split it up in to three parts. First a light will be
  68 shed on the aspect of attitude against sexuality. Are there shifts in
  69 normativity and is society adapting to the new situation by changing
  70 moralities.
  71
  72 After describing the change in attitude there will be elaborated upon the
  73 actual acts. Do, specifically adults, change their behaviours in practise
  74 because of the increase and easy of use of internet pornography.
  75
  76 Thirdly we try to discover what influences the aforementioned changes have on
  77 the youth and on education. Does society teach different moralities and
  78 behaviours than before?
  79
  80 Concluding this we will wrap up and provide an overview in the form of a
  81 description of general changes in society.
  82
  83 \section{Answers}
  84 \subsection{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 \emph{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. Ancient paintings of sexual
  92 activities have been found and it has been documented that some sort of
  93 pornography existed in the forms such as voyeurism.
  94
  95 In the current age with the internet the field has changed enormously. Where
  96 people had to buy pornographic magazines in shabby stores earlier they now have
  97 every fetsh they imagined, and more, at their fingertips. A human browsing the
  98 web can see more people in one evening than a human say 100, 1000 or even
  99 10.000 years ago. In the internet era aberrant sexual behaviour is much more
 100 considered normal because of the use of pornography. While before the internet
 101 you really had to seek out companions or peers that also practised the
 102 abberative behaviour, currently you can seek contact with everyone in the world
 103 and the normativity changes. Suddenly there are numerous amounts of people that
 104 have the same interest. Moreover, this leads to the rise of these activities
 105 such as BSDM fantasies such as \emph{she-males} that were never so prevalent in
 106 society\cite{escoffier2011imagining}. These trends show a change in sexuality.
 107 Gender becomes less important and more fluid and aberrant sexual fantasies
 108 become regular. Whether this stays to be a fantasy or becomes reality will be
 109 explored in the next section.
 110
 111 \subsection{Act}
 112 The second aspect of the change in society will be the influence of the
 113 availability of internet pornography on real relations and sexual contact
 114 between adults. We specifically not focus on youth here because that is an
 115 entirely different matter and will be treated in the next subsection.
 116
 117 A little over a decade ago Stack, Wasserman and Kern studied the influence of
 118 pornography to adult social bonds\cite{stack_adult_2004}. It showed that
 119 pornography deviant, albeit sexual, behaviours weher indicators of cyberporn
 120 use. Moreover, numerous studies have found a negative relation in the use of
 121 pornography and relationship quality\cite{muusses_internet_2015}. In this study
 122 by Musses et al.\ it was found that while short-term effects are prevalent, in
 123 this longitudinal study there were no long-term effects. These short-term
 124 effects were summarized by Harkness et al.\ and show an association between
 125 pornography and sexual risk behaviours\cite{harkness2015association}.
 126
 127 \subsection{Education}
 128 Finally, to see the effect on society we specifically take a look at the
 129 educational part of the matter. Does sexuality for youth and adolescents change
 130 because of the prevalence of internet pornography.
 131
 132 A study from Kvalem et al.\ revealed that the view on sexuality is changing
 133 on young men due to pornography consumption\cite{kvalem2015self}. Oddly enough
 134 there was no significant effect on women. This can be explained by the fact
 135 that the consumption percentages were a lot lower. More $80\%$ of the male
 136 reported weekly use in contrast to less than $20\%$ of the women. Presumably it
 137 is a lot less accepted to consume pornography for women because their view on
 138 it is also different.
 139
 140 Another study by Nelson et al.\ showed that almost half of the women and
 141 roughly two thirds of the men view pornography consumption as
 142 acceptable\cite{carroll2008generation}. The percentage of students that used
 143 pornography was about the same as in the Kvalem et al.\ study. This shows that
 144 there is while the use has risen over the years the acceptance is lagging
 145 behind a little bit.
 146
 147 A similar study also shows that the average age of exposure is lowering. Sabina
 148 et al.\ showed about the same numbers as the previous study regarding exposer
 149 below 18 years of age.
 150
 151 \section{Conclusion}
 152 From the answers we can conclude that there is a shift going on in society's
 153 view on pornography and society itself.  While in the early days pornography
 154 was for the select few and was frowned upon it is now abundant in volume and
 155 frequency. This results in to a change of the consumption. People start to use
 156 pornography earlier on in their lives and it is regarded more and more as
 157 normal. This shift leads to previously aberrant sexual fantasies becoming
 158 more regular and, at least on the short term, aberrant sexual behaviours
 159 becoming more prevalent.
 160
 161 All this change can be led back to the inhibition mechanisms humans, and all
 162 other animals exhibit. We are to consume at the fullest when we can consume a
 163 scarse resource because who knows when you will encounter the resource
 164 again\ldots In society already subcultures and groups arise to combat the easy
 165 seductions and to reprogram our minds.
 166
 167 \bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
 168 \bibliography{a}
 169 \end{document}