Hell, online smut played a major role in the rise of the web itself in the 1990s. “We were interested in whether these different motivations are linked to different patterns of sexual and emotional functioning,” he added. Most strikingly, the researchers found that participants who reported frequent pornography use were less likely to experience problematic outcomes. “One somewhat surprising finding was that frequent use, when driven by positive motivations, was linked to less sexual deactivation — meaning less emotional withdrawal from sexuality,” Meskó told PsyPost. “We would caution against thinking of pornography as either simply ‘good’ or ‘bad,'” Meskó told PsyPost.