Porn — The super-stimulus of the 21st century? [Part 2]
In the last part of this blog series, I gave an introduction of the reward center in our brain, the function of the reward center, and how it can be abused in the modern day with constant exposure to superstimuli. Since food and sex are the biggest natural stimuli that help us extend our gene pool, superstimuli based on food and sex have the potential to be the most addictive. Junk food is already established as a superstimuli, and binge and stress eating is a recognized problem. However, the problem of porn addiction remains something to be established. In this part, I’ll review some of the old and new research in this topic.
Show me the science!
Now, a lot of people may ask — where is the science for all this? I was told masturbation was healthy! Well, masturbation and porn are two different stimuli, and there is a fair bit of debate about whether any of it is good or bad.
Studies in favor of porn usage
First, I’ll go over research that shows the “benefits” of porn use, some of which are:
- It relieves stress: This study shows that boys who watched erotic material had a lower stress response on average. However, most hard drugs also have the stress relieving effects because of similar effects on the reward circuitry, that doesn’t mean that they should be used. A hit of dopamine means you have accomplished your task, and you need not stress about it for a while. Also, the study used “mildly erotic” pictures but pro-porn articles mention this study as justification for usage of hardcore porn.
- It allows you to explore your sexuality: Porn should NEVER be a substitute for sex education by trained professionals. In fact, porn websites may even confuse people more about their sexual preferences, as a lot of porn users report that they suffer from Homosexual OCD and their sexual preferences differ a lot in real life and porn.
- Sometimes its better than the real thing: I still do not know how that is a benefit, all it does is gives you wrong expectations of sex and takes your dopamine receptors for a ride (spoiler: not a good one). This may provide pleasure in the short term but does a prolonged damage.
There are no real benefits to porn other than short-term gratification. If you do a google search about benefits of porn and masturbation, links like this, this, this and this pop up. These articles have listed a lot of benefits with no citations to corresponding research studies. In fact, the second article links the point about immune functioning to a page that doesn’t exist and the study about depression links to some other page that studies the properties of seminal plasma that allow survival in the female genital tract. The only benefit backed by research is that they report is the reduced risk of prostrate cancer. But like any other cancer, there are multiple factors to it and a healthy lifestyle should automatically reduce the risk of any form of cancer. Also, the study says that ejaculation frequency is negatively correlated to the risk of prostate cancer, which means that having sex can also reduce this risk.
Studies against porn usage
On the other hand, there are a lot of studies which show that long-term use of porn is very detrimental to one’s mental health. One of the biggest issues with these studies is that it is extremely difficult to find control groups (groups of people who don’t watch porn). Nevertheless, here are some of the detriments of porn:
- Anxiety: This study shows that binge-watching porn is associated with high levels of anxiety. Watching porn once a day or more, is also linked to poorer psycho-social functioning and problematic alcohol, cannabis, gambling and video game use as per this study. The study found a significant positive correlation between frequency of porn use and porn addiction, and higher levels of porn addiction are associated with these problems.
- Physiological health detriments: This study shows that intercourse has positive correlation with better health indices, but weaker acts like masturbation has inverse correlation with health indices.
- Low sexual satisfaction: This study assessed porn consumption and sexual satisfaction in a heterosexual sample of Korean adults and founds that the linear association between porn consumption and satisfaction was negative and significant. Another study also shows that frequent viewing, rather than infrequent or only occasional viewing is responsible for any adverse effects with respect to sexual satisfaction.
- Objectification of women and normalization of sexual assaults: A lot of porn videos depicts women as perpetually horny beings ready for sex, no matter who the guy is. This might tell the subconscious brain that any girl can be persuaded for sex with little to no effort, just like in porn. This may lead us to believe that women are “objects of sex” who are ready any time. When the girl doesn’t act according to those expectations, it becomes a blow to the ego, and this can lead to sexual assaults or rape. This longitudinal study, for example found that risky sexual scripts were linked to risky sexual behavior and indirectly increased the likelihood of victimization. Another study also reviewed longitudinal studies and showed that sexually explicit material seems to affect several sexuality-related attitudes, gender-related stereotypical beliefs, likelihood of having sexual intercourse and sexually aggressive behavior.
Can you trust these studies at all?
Results of newer studies are generally more relevant, because the porn industry only boomed very recently. However, porn industries and their benefactors are promoting regular porn usage as healthy. Why is that so? Because porn industry is a big business, and it wouldn’t be happy news for their owners if one day, everyone just stops visiting these porn sites. In fact, something very similar happened around 50 years ago.
The sugar industry lobbying
In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that highlighted the health risks of fat, while suppressing the effects of sugar on heart health. Today we know that sugar is more dangerous than fat, but 50 years ago, the sugar industry funded research that didn’t put sugar in a bad light. People were convinced that cutting out fat from their diets was the best way to address heart risks. This article provides a lot more details on what exactly happened, but the bottom line is that the sugar industry heavily influenced the research on the fat versus sugar debate, and people substituted their fat intake with sugar, which was a lot more harmful. The New York Times also covered this in great detail. Now why would the sugar industry do that? (Hint: meme below)
The answer is simple — money. Sugar can be produced very cheaply and it is also highly addictive, so people would buy more sugar to put in their foods. The junk food industry doesn’t really care if you suffer from heart diseases, they should be making as much money as possible. This exploitation is not limited to the sugar industry, as the cigarette and tobacco companies spend billions of dollars each year to market their products, especially to youth and young adults, despite the well-documented research on smoking and its effects on health. Industries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi were loaded with contaminants and toxins beyond the permissible limits for consumption.
Similarly, the porn industry also runs on advertising, and after regular users get bored with the free stuff, they are willing to pay for “premium services”. They also advertise to teenagers and kids, although they are supposed to be “18+ sites”.
Superstimuli like these are used to make huge money, at the cost of your physical and mental well-being.
What are the cons of “not watching porn”?
With increasing evidence of porn with many harmful effects on the individual and society, its also fair to ask — what happens if I don’t watch porn? Are there any side effects? We humans didn’t have access to hardcore porn only until a couple of decades. There is no physical or mental illnesses that have been cured by porn. The only thing it has given us is instant gratification, and if you remove that from your life, you’ll start to look for gratification in other places like work, which can be healthy. I couldn’t find any benefit of porn that is worth risking your mental health for. I’m very open to any arguments you may have, so feel free to contact me.
Are you addicted? [Simple Test]
This simple test will give you an idea of how big of a role porn plays in your life. It is very important to be honest with yourself and not answer out of ego or denial. Here are the questions:
- Do you feel dependent on porn for coping with stress?
- Have your tastes in porn gradually “evolved” since the first time you started watching porn?
- Do you feel the need to watch a new video everyday, or find yourself searching for “more erotic” content?
If the answer to the first question is yes, then you are using dopamine to combat your stress hormones, which is also how stress eating helps people cope with stress (both are unhealthy coping mechanisms). If the answer to 2nd or 3rd question are yes, then you’re building tolerance to porn, and since dopamine loves novelty, you are driven to find more novel content to get the same “high”. There are also more detailed questionnaires like this.
In the last part, I’ll present you a simple challenge, what a lot of famous people have to say about NoFap, the Eastern take on NoFap and my personal experience. Thank you for reading!
