Problematic Pornography Use
compulsive sexual behavior disorder, addictive disorder, CSBD
DISORDER
Given the increasing prevalence of pornography use, the potential negative psychological effects of pornography use (particularly in relation to its problematic or addiction potential) have been the subject of growing empirical attention in recent years (de Alarcón et al., Despite these self-reports, researchers still disagree about whether habitual pornography users can develop genuine addictions to pornography and manifest addiction-related symptomatology akin to substance addictions. Some have argued that pornography is inherently addictive due to it being a particularly novel and rewarding stimulus (Hilton Jr., The lack of consensus concerning how best to conceptualize dysregulated use of pornography has also been in large part due to ongoing debates in the field about how to conceptualize out-of-control sexual behaviors more broadly (Fernandez & Griffiths, Most recently (in 2019), the World Health Organization (WHO) included the diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) as an impulse control disorder in the eleventh revision of the While the current ICD-11 CSBD diagnosis is a good starting point for unified assessment of the disorder, more research on its precise phenomenology and neurobiological underpinnings is needed to determine whether it should be re-classified as an addictive disorder in future iterations of diagnostic manuals (Griffiths, 