Correlation != Causality: Porn And Marriage

I've already had several people post this Washington Post Wonkblog piece about porn and marriage which asserts that young men aren't getting married because they are consuming more porn, and thus no longer need women, or something:

Broadly, higher Internet usage was associated with lower marriage rates. But pornography use in particular was more closely linked to those participants who were not married than any other form of Internet use, including regular use of financial websites, news websites, sports websites, and several others. The opposite, for comparison, was true for religious website use, which was positively correlated with marriage.

"The natural reaction might be to dismiss the findings as confirmations of an obviousness", they continue, "that men who are married tend to look at porn less frequently precisely because they are married." Well, duh, but maybe we could lift a finger to see, perhaps, why young men might be unmarried? That, of course, is a question the Wonkblog probably doesn't want answered truthfully, because of their political biases.

Asking young women what they want in a potential mate, a poll by the Pew Research Center in September revealed that 78% want a man with a stable job; no single answer by men was even close to that high. That is to say, young women — despite years of feminist action — overwhelmingly value men for their economic contributions. So why might young men, particularly young and poor men, not be getting married? The answer is obvious if you look at youth labor participation, with some observers speculating that structural youth unemployment may well be permanent. While it's been hotly debated whether Obamacare and a recent minimum wage step increase have contributed toward this, it is incontestable that youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. If young men, especially young men without college degrees, are to marry, their job prospects must improve, and dramatically.