A recent study suggests there is a significant culprit in the decline of marriage rates among young adults—pornography.

According to the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), the rise of easily accessible and free pornographic content on the Internet and the declining marriage rate isn’t necessarily just a coincidence. The group concluded that porn “is negatively associated with marriage formation.”

The IZA, a German organization, realized that there is a wealth of information about how porn damages existing marriages, but very little regarding whether it can prevent or delay marriage in the first place.

“Since changes in the accessibility of pornography have occurred coincident to large changes in marital behavior, the causal relationship between the two is a natural question,” notes the study. “Substitutes for marital sexual gratification may impact the decision to marry.”

According to the researchers, “The results in this paper suggest that such an association exists, and that it is potentially quite large.”

The IZA studied the marriage rate and Internet habits of more than 1,500 men aged 18-35.

The researchers noted the age and marital status of each participant and how much time they spent on the Internet each day. In addition to porn sites, the researchers studied what other types of websites the participants used such as sports, news and religious sites.

Men who used the Internet heavily were less likely to be married, porn users even less so. Participants who reported using religious websites were more likely to be married.

According to Forbes, of the million most-visited websites in 2010, 4 percent were porn sites. Thirteen percent of queries on search engines between July 2009 and July 2010 were for “erotic content.”

According to another study cited in the report, 87 percent of young men report having used pornography.

The researchers stressed that they “stop short of saying” that porn is to blame for the declining marriage rate, the evidence suggests “that we have uncovered something real.”

According to the Witherspoon Institute, “Society will be better off if the facts about pornography use and its consequences are widely and effectively circulated so that people from all walks of life can take account of them.”