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Is Porn Poison for the Brain?
Does porn actually damage the brain? Might sound far-fetched, but there is some very interesting research on this topic that might convince you that it does. This week, I plan to post each day on a different topic related to my new book, Sex & God at Yale. Chapter 2, entitled “The Great Porn Debate,” details a rip-roaring Oxford-style porn debate starring porn performer Ron Jeremy, which was held in New Haven during my junior year.
Just this morning, a current Yale student sent me this fascinating TEDx video, featuring a talk by physiologist Gary Wilson, host of www.yourbrainonporn.com. According to the video description, Wilson’s research “arose in response to a growing demand for solid scientific information by heavy Internet erotica users experiencing perplexing, unexpected effects: escalation to more extreme material, concentration difficulties, sexual performance problems, radical changes in sexual tastes, social anxiety, irritability, inability to stop, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.”
The video lasts about 15 min, but you can catch the main drift by watching only the first 5. Do so and I promise you’ll learn something:
Fascinating stuff, huh? Especially considering how extreme and how universal porn has become among youth in the internet age. It has shaped an entire generation already.
So what do you think? Is porn harmless, or is it poison for the brain?
Published in General
Of course, the overwhelming majority of men who view porn are in no danger of behaving this way. Still, 14 million searches for “teen sex” is a tad troubling, no? And there are whole sites legally serving this market featuring women they claim are 18, often dressed as school girls with pony tails etc.
Is this really your argument? You cannot prove it with behavior or self-reports but you extrapolate your experience ans assume it is universal. That is not science, which is where this thread started.
Once again, I will simply ask for an answer in the affirmative or negative.
Did you or did you not watch the video? There’s plenty in there to go by that is not anecdotal. My experience confirms it, but the original post and the points it makes are not based on my experience.
You dismiss it because 14 million men are not going around raping women. No one claims that is the consequence, so that’s a straw man argument.
The original post and the content in it (the video, the links) clearly lay out the harm to the human brain from porn addiction.
And no, it’s not so much about Playboy, etc. It’s about Internet porn which you’re quite aware is far worse in the forms in which it is most consumed.
Thatcanbe the case, but it is not always or even often the case. To revert to my alcohol analogy, it neither denies the existence of alcoholism, nor of its harmful effects, to say that alcohol use is notinherentlyruinous.
As the TedTalk presenter said, pornography use is ubiquitous: the number of men who have experience with it is almost identical to the number of men living. And yet, most men do not exhibit the kind of anti-social symptoms of porn addiction. That warrants acknowledgement and explanation. ·1 hour ago
Edited 1 hour ago
I’m not entirely sure the porn/alcohol analogy is completely apt. Yes, both things can done to an extreme or tried and discarded, but they are not the same when done in moderation.
For the purposes of our conversation, which are just about the science of addiction, the comparison may work. But the inherent qualities of the two are vastly different. Also would be interesting to see whether (as I presume to be the case) a higher percentage of men get addicted to porn than alcohol and, if so, why.
I almost wish we could get examples from the participants as to what porn is OK and what is hard-core. But in addition to violating the CoC, it isn’t particularly relevant to the conversation, I guess. Just the need for more difference is the key in how internet porn addiction works, right?
The 200 word limit makes quoting hard.
There are not 14 million men running around as child predators. We cannot generalize from inmates to the overall population. For every man that acted out, how many did not?
Child porn hurts kids, and they are hurt over and over with it. That is wrong.
Are we only talking about that? Again, I can be against child porn, or underage porn all day long. That has not been what was coming before in this thread.
I don’t think there is much more for me to say. We have moved from “all porn is bad with no good at all” to going after the extreme stuff. Since I am not going to sit hear and defend child porn (which is where I feel I am being pushed), I should head on out.
The video is over the top because gaming and reading online maybe also produces that quick fix of pleasure? It seems to me that I am addicted to Ricochet and it definitely is changing the chemicals in my brain. Plus I like to sneak off and participate in conversations with strangers.
Soap opera addicts possibly have similar dopamine reaction and what about the fall out in their lives, wanting a well groomed man with no male bodly functions such as excess gas?
Also, I did read research that chemicals released during intercourse get women more relaxed and in a good mood afterwards. Sometimes, the extra effort has many other pay offs.
As various psychologists have pointed out, it’s a moving target. It’s just like the amount of heroin it takes to keep a rock star calm. It increases over the course of their addiction, until they lose gigs, their kids hate them, their divorce goes to court, and they finally have to go to rehab.
Soap opera addicts possibly have similar dopamine reaction and what about the fall out in their lives,
The cliche “all things in moderation” implies that anything can be taken too far and become harmful, including novels, soap operas, games, food, and – God forbid – Ricochet. However, “all” doesn’t really mean all, does it? Moderation doesn’t apply to murder. So another implication of the cliche is that there is a scale on one end of which we have things that are acceptable or beneficial if used/done in moderation (e.g. eating) while on the other end of the scale we have things that are always unacceptable or harmful regardless of moderation (e.g. murder).
Generic pleasure isn’t under attack in this thread; we’re discussing both immoderation and pornography’s place on the scale.
If the wife gets any sense that she is replaceable by porn, then there will be the danger of a serious break down of the relationship.
Young males who are being raised looking at these extreme situations portrayed online may find it easier to skip real girls. The video concerned me when it said that porn affected performance with a real woman. For young males, with no experience, is this a concern?
Are we only talking about extreme porn here? That was not clear in the video. That seemed to say that all porn use leads to use of extreme porn. I figured we were talking about it all.
I don’t think he said that at all. I think his claim is that repeated, habitual use of porn over time can lead to addiction, and that porn addicts will become desensitized and seek out more and more extreme forms.
No one is claiming all porn use leads to addiction. Suppose the number were 10% of men are prone to this addiction. Would that be cause for concern?
Cornelius suggested this comment belonged in this thread, so here it is again:
This [the power of sex] is why the American prioritization of concern about depictions of sex over depictions of violence, as compared to European censorship priorities (opposite), is a superior cultural trait. Temptations to violence are less frequent and less compelling than sexual temptations for most civilized people.
It’s a lot easier for most people to get through life without assaulting or killing someone than it is to avoid having unplanned children or cheating on a spouse.
That is why porn is not a subject to be shrugged away.
… I think his claim is that repeated, habitual use of porn over time can lead to addiction, and that porn addicts will become desensitized and seek out more and more extreme forms.
No one is claiming all porn use leads to addiction. Suppose the number were 10% of men are prone to this addiction. Would that be cause for concern?
Due to the mechanisms involved, the percentage of people who become porn addicts is quite likely to be much higher than for most drugs. Read and watch more at yourbrainonporn.com for the reasons. They explain the way the addiction mechanism works in great detail.
Also, as with most addictions, you start out with something mild and progress to more novel and more graphic/violent/strange forms. However, the scary thing is that our teens whose minds are being formed, are now jumping straight in to the more extreme forms right away. Porn in general is a problem, but the extreme forms are even more problematic because they are becoming the default.
If your son owns this small business (below,) are you proud? Is he just one more good hard-working American entrepreneur? ·1 minute ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
Of course not. Nor would I want my daughter to work in porn. Nor would I work in porn. Ugh. Nor do I want them to smoke, or work to shill for a tobacco company. I am very much a ardent non-smoker. However, if people want to smoke they can smoke. Not my business.
If people want to use porn, who am I to condemn? That is what this thread is really about: Condemning porn. Isn’t it interesting how un- libertarian we can all be about some areas. For me it is hard core drugs. ·22 hours ago
I’d prefer my kids not work on a highway paving crew or lay steel beams on a skyscraper. Doesn’t make me a hypocrite for driving on a highway to work in an office building.
There is definitely a problem for women nowadays. They are being fed such rubbish about what marriage ought to be, and how the man ought to behave like a woman and love babies and young children and look after them willingly. Add to that the romantic expectations and there is a recipe for disaster.
Just to be cheeky: Maybe men hide their porn use because they know the women in their lives will overreact because the women have been taught a bunch of rubbish about how “bad” porn is.
This can be proved, for men whose wives have read Fifty Shades of Grey. Let your wife catch you viewing porn, and then just casually declare that “it’s no different from you reading Fifty Shades.” Note the reaction. It’s definitely NOT a goose/gander thing, in their eyes!
Tell me that’s not degrading and exploitative, even if the women do it for money.
This is a total shot in the dark, but I would say what you quoted is far, far outside what most people think of when they hear the word “porn.” It certainly is for me. And maybe that’s part of the problem in this thread – each commenter’s definition is different. The quote above isn’t “porn” to me – it’s depravity, it’s inhuman, it’s unhuman. And I question whether it’s quasi-mainstream or even familiar to most “casual” porn viewers or users.
That communication caricature always presents the husband as the cad or the oaf.
So, husbands are responsible for the lack of marital communications. And husbands are responsible for the lack of marital intimacy and sex.
Say, are there any marital problems for which wivesmight bear some responsibility? I even recall an earlier Rico thread asserting that it’s the mothers who do all the worrying and the fathers who do all the fun stuff. More abject bunk.
This is all straw man. No one is saying that wives don’t bear responsibility for lack of marital intimacy or communication. No one is endorsing the stereotype of an oafish husband. No one is suggesting that porn is at the root of all failed marriages. What we are saying is that when porn is present, people (users, wives, families, children) suffer for it.
You say my comments are a straw man, and then you say categorically and without exception that “when porn is present, people…suffer for it.”
Yours is an absolutist statement. Mine was an exaggeration to make a point. But you’re the one making the absolute statement earnestly.
And finally, is porn the poison or is it easy access to myriad sources of immediate gratification that alters the brain and induces destructive behavior? In place of “porn” let’s substitute Facebook or Twitter or online gambling or 24/7 internet sports or…dare I say…Ricochet? Don’t all of those things tap into the same brain functions and lead to similar outcomes? I’m only speaking for myself (or am I…?) when I say I’ve spent far more time than was good or healthy over the past few years on Rico and NR and OpinionJournal. Is it “porn” or is it the human condition, and porn just happens to be the favorite whipping boy?
Does porn poison the brain? Or does porn along with all other forms of immediate internet gratification poison the brain? And will we see Ricochet install monitors to deny user access after a certain amount of time spent on the site each month? Will Rico implement a kind of “limited data plan” to protect its membership from the ravages of Rico use abuse? (If they had, I’d clearly have been shut off by now. So I’ll self…regulate now.)
I enjoy Ricochet, I too have spent more time here than perhaps I should, but… do you really think the level of pleasure is remotely comparable to sex?
The addiction process discussed in the video involves the release of large amounts of dopamine in the porn viewer’s brain. I’m fairly confident there are no such levels of dopamine in my brain as I’m writing this post. It’s fun, yes, but more a calm, low-key, intellectual sort of fun. Unless I’m doing it wrong…
Well, then, we should go about changing this. I would DEFINITELY not be OK with my wife reading “50 Shades.” And she knows it. She’s not the type that would be into that, fortunately.
This is a total shot in the dark, but I would say what you quoted is far,faroutside what most people think of when they hear the word “porn.” It certainly is for me. And maybe that’s part of the problem in this thread – each commenter’s definition is different. The quote above isn’t “porn” to me – it’s depravity, it’s inhuman, it’s unhuman. And I question whether it’s quasi-mainstream or even familiar to most “casual” porn viewers or users.
It’s very common. And teenagers are viewing this kind of stuff in large numbers. Once they discover one of the (several very large) video sites, the lid is completely blown off.
Many of the people in the study in the video became addicted to porn right after they got high-speed Internet.
Now do you begin to see the problem?
You used EXACTLY the right words. Inhuman. Depraved. It takes the objectification of women to levels the “old” porn never did.
Not that the old porn is good, but you simply cannot compare the effect of unlimited video on the brain to that of the paintings on the wall in Pompeii, etc.
Irrelevant– peanut butter can be used to excess, and can even be used to assault someone who has a peanut allergy. Many hard drugs have some medical uses.
Just because something (anything) can be used to excess does not say anything about its equivalence to anything else, or whether it has any legitimate uses, or how frequently it is abused or how addictive it is. That is the main topic here.
2. All addictions are harmful and are particularly harmful to children and adolescents;
3. Simply showing that something can be addictive and that the consequences of that addiction are profoundly negative is not, in itself, an argument that the thing is harmful; and
4. Just because most people can enjoy something harmlessly doesn’t mean that discussion about its harms is an implicit condemnation of their own behavior.
Agree with these points, especially 2 and 4. Point 3 is true, but I would still argue (not necessarily from the addictiveness but from other angles) that porn is indeed harmful in and of itself. One example is the exploitation of the people involved in making it.
There’s also the unmeasurable component of what damage is done to those who are not addicted, but view porn “moderately”. How do you quantify how much more a man objectifies a woman as a result of what he saw? Or the increase in unrealistic expectations?
Is it unmeasurable because it’s subtle and insidious, or because it’s very low? I’m not saying it has to be the latter, only that I wish you would consider the possibility.
For the record, I do think those are legitimate dangers, though it depends more on the nature of the pornography than anything. Some of it — as Nathan said in his comment — can only be described as degrading and objectifying, though that’s hardly a description of all of it.
Personally, I think treating porn as monolithically degrading is as misleading as treating all alcohol as monolithically leading to drunkenness. Forgive the imperfect analogy, but my Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban is fundamentally different in that sense from the cheap swill some jerk imbibes before getting himself blind drunk on a Tuesday.
I always found the term “exploitation of the women in the films” interesting. If two people on film are doing a sex scene why is it the woman that is being exploited and not the man? It would seem to me that both are. Well that is if it is a male-female sex scene. If it is a female – female sex scene then both women would be exploited but if it was a male – male sex scene then both men be exploited. Can/Are males being sexually exploited in films? I have never heard the term. If they are does anybody care?
Women are paid more, so probably. The men should sue under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Fairness_Act
At an age in life when the knowledge would seem to do me little good, I’m learning that at least one of the stereotypes is rather backward, that sex is lesscomplicated for women than we suppose it to be and morecomplicated for men than we suppose it to be. ·12 hours ago
This whole thread is fascinating but this is the paragraph I keep thinking about. I’m coming to the realization that there’s a lot of truth in this.
There’s also the unmeasurable component of what damage is done to those who are not addicted, but view porn “moderately”. How do you quantify how much more a man objectifies a woman as a result of what he saw? Or the increase in unrealistic expectations?
Is it unmeasurable because it’s subtle and insidious, or because it’s very low? I’m not saying it has to be the latter, only that I wish you would consider the possibility.
That really is the $10,000 question. It is my opinion that it is subtle and insidious, and therefore appears to be very low.
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read the studies that Tabula Rasa posted in comment #12. It clearly documents the multitude of ways that porn affects individuals and the people around them. Some are immediately noticeable while others not so much.
-E
If people want to use porn, who am I to condemn? That is what this thread is really about: Condemning porn. Isn’t it interesting how un- libertarian we can all be about some areas. For me it is hard core drugs. ·3 hours ago
Libertarianism with regard to porn has to do with what action the government has the right to take. Condemnation or criticism of porn is outside that sphere.
A libertarian can easily see pornography as outside the legitimate realm of government force while condemning or criticizing its use as dehumanizing or otherwise a bad idea.
Confusion about libertarianism is a problem. One need not support, say, drugs, to believe they shouldn’t be made illegal. Conflating those two things is more libertinism than libertarianism.
Maybe men hide their porn use because they know the women in their lives will overreact because the women have been taught a bunch of rubbish about how “bad” porn is.
Speaking of hiding behaviors, is that what makes it cheating, the hiding part?
Is a woman cheating on her husband when she confides in a friend something she won’t tell her husband? ·3 hours ago
Hogwash. To generalize broadly, women like to be special and men like to be extraordinary. When a woman’s partner is finding sexual satisfaction with a harem of other women, it makes her feel not special. No need to be “taught” that to feel that way.
Is it so hard to realize that cheating can happen in thought, word and deed? Perhaps you should define “cheating” — maybe you’re working with a different definition?
(cont.)
Third, I just find it hard to believe that a substantial portion of the male population spends a significant amount of time consuming the kind of depraved, inhuman porn that your Guardian link described. While impressionable teens (and others, FTM) certainly do accidentally stumble across the depraved stuff, I’m skeptical that not only aren’t they totally disgusted by it but that they immerse themselves in it.
Some do, for sure. But I’m not convinced that it’s a substantial enough number to allow us to extrapolate its effects on the male population as a whole. Most males, it seems to me, would shake their heads in stunned amazement at that crap, maybe even share it with a buddy for kicks and giggles, and then move past it.
And I would also surmise that those who do find the depravity appealing, and appealing enough to be heavy users of it, were already not-good-husbands and not-good-fathers and not-good-citizens. And so the depravity tapped into their predilections rather than caused them.
Total guesses of mine, nothing scientific to support what I’ve said, but that’s my take on it.
I enjoy Ricochet, I too have spent more time here than perhaps I should, but… do you really think the level of pleasure is remotely comparable to sex?