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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
Thus, I’d want to see the effects on the brain and on users’ behavior of:
Then compare the findings, and see if the “heavy internet erotica users” show symptoms dramatically different from heavy internet users of the other things studied. Only then, it seems to me, can porn be indicted or exonerated.
We’re not talking about what you call “generic porn,” although nowdays the worst kind is so common as to become generic, which is where your concern should rise.
Internet porn, especially videos, is much more addicting than anything else on the Internet, such as Ricochet. The analogy to “heavy use of anything” else on the internet is not correct. The dopamine hit men get from this stuff is far greater than what you get even from video games, because it taps into one of our most basic instincts– the instinct to reproduce– and because it offers endless variety, triggering the Coolidge effect. Watch the video! It explains it better than I can.
Thus, it is the very quality or essence of Internet porn that makes it so much more addictive than other Internet activities.
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.
You used EXACTLY the right words. Inhuman. Depraved. It takes the objectification of women to levels the “old” porn never did.
You don’t have to go out of your way to find this stuff online. If a curious teenage boy googles a few dirty words, perhaps merely hoping to find some Playboy-style naked pictures, he can within a few clicks end up on sites offering free samples of this type of extreme porn.
We as mature adults can draw distinctions between loving, romantic sexual acts and inhuman, depraved practices. I wonder, though, will these distinctions be so obvious to boys growing up in the high-speed Internet age, if their formative experiences of sex involve viewing these types of hardcore images?
If the women in the porn seem to like it, why wouldn’t real women like it too? If his first real girlfriend is shocked and insulted when he tries a few “porn moves” on her, perhaps he’ll think she’s just a prude.
You would be surprised. Not too many initially seek that out. In the past, the escalation was gradual, and not everyone proceeded that far down the path. Today, as soon as you find one of the main portals, you have everything laid out in front of you. Boys may not click on everything at first, but the constant hunger for novelty eventually causes them to get there very quickly.
That is another myth– the idea that you have to have an existing predilection for addiction or violence to get trapped in this. First, many people who never suffered addictions before are getting addicted to Internet porn. Second, porn is causing far more predilections than it exacerbates. While most people don’t follow through with these in real life, especially if they started when they were older, they do get exposed to, and dwell on, some of the more depraved and inhuman stuff you can and cannot imagine, mainly for the shock and novelty value. Even though they don’t all act it out, that’s got to be unhealthy.
The biggest concern we have is what effect it has on teenagers whose brains are extremely plastic and impressionable, and they don’t have as much real life experience with which to compare it.
Thus, it is the very qualityor essenceof Internet porn that makes it so much more addictive than other Internet activities. ·1 minute ago
You don’t have to go out of your way to find this stuff online. If a curious teenage boy googles a few dirty words, perhaps merely hoping to find some Playboy-style naked pictures, he can within a few clicks end up on sites offering free samples of this type of extreme porn.
Not only free samples, but some of the largest sites on the Internet are completely free video sites that have the entire range of porn available without a credit card, and no real age check.
“While most people don’t follow through with these in real life…they do get exposed to, and dwell on, some of the more depraved and inhuman stuff you can and cannot imagine, mainly for the shock and novelty value. Even though they don’t all act it out, that’s got to be unhealthy.”
Agreed. But addicting? I still would think it has to be appealing or arousing to be addicting.
Merely being harmful is an argument different from the one originally proposed, namely, that heavy internet erotica users are “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.”
For that to happen would seem to require an addiction, and for an addiction to happen would seem to require something appealing or arousing, and the depraved and inhuman stuff would seem to me to NOT be appealing or arousing to most males. So while some harm may come from exposure to the crap, it doesn’t seem like it would be the harm quoted in the original post, the harm for which the study was commissioned to examine.
So if the depraved, inhuman stuff is disgusting to most males (as I claim, without evidence to back me up, to be sure), how would the “quality or essence” of that crap be addictive to most males? It seems to me most males would recoil from that stuff, just as they’d recoil from, not be aroused by, the skank.
Initially, yes. But do I have to really spell it out for you in more graphic detail? The process starts “relatively” innocently enough, but the viewer quickly gets bored with one type of material. They need their rush, and they find the only way to get it is to progress to increasingly shocking and novel material. It’s not only finding new girls to look at (the Coolidge effect as originally described) but new types of material as well.
This is how many people end up viewing child porn– not too many of them started out as pedophiles, as a matter of fact, but they became that way after exhausting the novelty of adult porn. Fortunately, child porn is still hard to come by, but the extreme forms of adult porn are very available.
From yourbrainonporn.com:
This is how many people end up viewing child porn– not too many of them started out as pedophiles, as a matter of fact, but they became that way after exhausting the novelty of adult porn. Fortunately, child porn is still hard to come by, but the extreme forms of adult porn are extremely available.
Though as the article mentions, plenty of sites are willing to walk the line by finding the youngest-looking 18-year-old girls they can and dressing them up as school girls, baby sitters, and so forth.
Plus, this stuff is a global industry these days, and who is actually checking the IDs of those Russian or Thai or Nigerian girls to make sure they are really 18? For that matter, how many are even entirely willing participants?
Is that really true? That that’s “not unusual??”
And is that the kind of “porn” that TEDx and others say is poison and prevalent, as opposed to Playboy or the SI Swimsuit issue, etc.? That what I quoted is not the fringe extreme of men out there but instead is, if not commonplace, then at least not uncommon?
More links:
Is that really true? That that’s “not unusual??”
And is that the kind of “porn” that TEDx and others say is poison and prevalent, as opposed to Playboy or the SI Swimsuit issue, etc.? That what I quoted is not the fringe extreme of men out there but instead is, if not commonplace, then at least not uncommon? ·0 minutes ago
Don’t tell me you are that surprised.
Again, I won’t give the sites any courtesy of a link– even a mention is bad enough– but some of the BIGGEST SITES ON THE INTERNET (below YouTube.com, Facebook.com, etc. but bigger than, say, cnn.com) have this stuff readily available in categories and indexed with search keywords.
Is thatreallytrue? That that’s “not unusual??”
And is that the kindof “porn” that TEDx and others say is poison andprevalent, as opposed to Playboy or the SI Swimsuit issue, etc.? That what I quoted is not the fringe extreme of men out there but instead is, if not commonplace, then at least not uncommon? ·0 minutes ago
Don’t tell me you are that surprised. ·1 minute ago
My question is as to its prevalence, not its existence. The claim that it’snot unusual for a substantial number of men to go, in short order, from innocently looking up a picture of JLo’s butt to depravely looking up goat sex, I find preposterous, yes.
Let me repeat – it’s thenot unusual part of going from JLo to goats that I find hard to believe.
My question is as to its prevalence, not its existence. The claim that it’snot unusual for a substantial number of men to go, in short order, from innocently looking up a picture of JLo’s butt to depravely looking up goat sex, I find preposterous, yes.
Let me repeat – it’s thenot unusual part that I find hard to believe.
The younger a person starts, the more likely it is to happen, and the quicker and farther they progress. Most of us who started a bit older hit some kind of limit and say this is just beyond my boundaries (not that we get to pat ourselves on the back for that!).
Ok, that sounds plausible. I’m going to see if I can induce my 21-yr-old son to have a conversation about this.
Well, here’s a start for the discussion, intended for teens: http://yourbrainonporn.com/things-you-didnt-know-about-porn
Of course, your son isn’t a teen anymore– the fuller version (a bit long, though) is at http://yourbrainonporn.com/your-brain-on-porn-series
And more than you probably ever will have time to view: http://www.yourbrainonporn.com/videos
If we defended the republic with the same vigor and commitment that men apply in defending pornography, the current stupidity could never have come to pass. Of course, clearly that 2M+ of new disableds collecting Social Security are suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome from activities related to the Internet.
So if the depraved, inhuman stuff is disgusting to most males (as I claim, without evidence to back me up, to be sure), how would the “quality or essence” of that crap be addictive to most males?
There is a complex, weird relationship in the mind between depravity and sexual arousal. I can still dimly recall as a pre-teen first learning about the birds and the bees when any kind of sex, even kissing a girl for that matter, seemed kind of icky and disgusting. They have cooties!
Words like “dirty” and “nasty” are often associated with sex, and not solely by moralists. Some people would insist that if sex isn’t at least a bit dirty, you’re not doing it right. Then there’s the forbidden-fruit effect: some things are arousing or titillating precisely because they are forbidden or off-limits.
So yes, I think most men will initially be disgusted by these sorts of depraved images; but that very disgust, and the knowledge that these acts are wrong and socially unacceptable, can also become a source of arousal and stimulation.
We are strange creatures, aren’t we?
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…
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. ·2 hours ago
Straw man =/= categorical statements or hyperbole.
-E
I want to see more comments just to find out where the software breaks down ala Y2K.
How many comments does the software allow?
Since the software is highly customized, I only know of one certain way to categorically and with full assurance determine the answer to that question.
Ok, I’ve watched the video, and my conclusion is that nothing can be gleaned, surmised, or concluded about porn from that clip. Here’s why (and no, this is NOT a defense of porn):
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5. At the 3:49 mark he laments the lack of a control group of nonusers and likens the dilemma to what it would be like if boys started smoking at age 10. “We would think that lung cancer is normal for all guys.”
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You guys still beating this thread? You have got to back off. You are going to give Chris Deleon a stroke as he tries to keep up with everybody’s “red herrings” and “straw men”.
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Bottom line – without knowing what kind of porn he’s talking about (not all porn is the same) and without knowing the kind of use he’s talking about (what is “heavy?” and is he arguing only about “heavy” use?), I don’t see how any conclusions can be reached from the original clip and the text of the post that started this thread.
Chris, here’s I think why I’m skeptical about the findings and their application in this discussion. The quote in the opening cited “heavy internet erotica users.”
First, the things you referenced in that Guardian link do not sound – to me, anyway – like “erotica.” I consider them, as I’ve said, depraved and inhuman. So users of “erotica” are different in my book from users of the depraved stuff, and I think the effect is different, for erotica vs. depravity. (To wit: I think the Fifty Shades is erotica, from my limited exposure to snippets of it, not depravity. But I would have fun with the exercise of comparing it to porn viewing…if I didn’t think I’d suffer greatly for making it!)
Second, I think “heavy users of internet anything” suffer and cause suffering because of the heavy use, not just because of the subject matter of the anything. Thus, my opinion that excess (e.g. “heavy”) use of Facebook or Ricochet could cause suffering to the user and others. Which again is why I’m skeptical that generic “porn” is to blame more than the behavior impulses that lead someone to do anything “internet-heavy.”