On Tuesday I was at the National Press Club for an event hosted by the Witherspoon Insitute on the Social Costs of Pornography.

The press conference was a great success, and I will be blogging more about it and the issues it raised in the future.

In the meantime, here is the introduction to the project:

The Witherspoon Institute has released The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations, the fruit of an inquiry begun at a consultation held in Princeton, New Jersey.

This consultation was the first multifaceted, multidisciplinary, scholarly exploration of pornography since the advent of the Internet. The proceedings, research and recommendations are available in booklet form and as a two-DVD set of the actual two-day meeting that assembled leading experts in several fields, including economics, psychology, sociology, and law to present a rigorously argued overview of pornography in today’s society. [You may visit the Social Costs of Pornography website here.]

The current productions are only the first round of materials to be produced by the project.

Our own Preserve Innocence has posted a summary of "What Parents Need to Know" from the study:

• Pornography is more common and available that at anypoint in history.
• It is easily accessible on the internet, movies, television, mobile devices, and even in video games. Some seemingly ordinary video games even encourage the player to develop sexual relationships with other characters in the game—male and female.
• Children can access pornography at school, on cell phones, at local libraries, etc.
• It is extraordinarily easy for a child surfing the web to gain access to pornography sites. Only 3% of such sites require proof-of-age, and most do not have “adult content” warnings.
• Many adult sites provide visual “teasers” to entice people to explore further.
• It is very likely that your child will be exposed to pornography --often involuntarily. One study found that 70% of 15-17 year-olds had accidentally encountered pornography online, with about 23% of those reporting that such exposure happens often. Another study found that 65% of 16-17 year old boys had friends who regularly download and view internet porn.
• Most parents whose children have been exposed to porn are unaware of that fact.
• Increasingly, the likelihood is that children will see more “realistic” or even “hard core” pornography. Such images and videos are easy to find on the Internet, making it all too simple for the viewer to become addicted to internet pornography.
• Males make up the majority of viewers, but studies show increasing use by young women.
• Filtering programs are often unreliable on home computers and virtually ineffective on mobile devices like iPhones or Blackberries.
• A growing trend among young people is “sexting” --sending pornographic images and messages via text message.
• Psychologists link increased exposure to porn among young people to earlier sexual activity, pornography addiction, sexual dysfunction and incompetence, and difficulties in future relationships. Addiction leads to a decrease in sexual pleasure.
• As a general matter, women find men who frequently use pornography to be less attractive.

Preserve Innocence will also be publishing reports which explains the harmful effects of pornography.