Mental Effects of Porn
Your life changes when you have a working knowledge of your brain. It takes guilt out of the equation when you recognize that there's a biological basis for certain emotional issues.
-Dr John Ratey, (Introduction to "Spark!").
The Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused more stress to our everyday lives. Many are turning to pornography to self soothe their anxiety or depression, or just find some quick stimulation. The multi-billion-dollar porn industry has taken advantage of so many people feeling bored while stuck at home and offered free access to premium sites to encourage use. This has resulted in mental health problems, gradual dependency, problematic use and even addiction for some.
The World Health Organisation has expanded its explanation of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in its International Classification of Diseases Revision Eleven (ICD-11) to specify out-of-control pornography use and masturbation as a key example of this behavioural disorder. Click on the button below to read this excerpt from a special article that focuses on it.
The Great Porn Experiment
The following pages will help make you more aware of the risks and what you can do to use better coping mechanisms if you are feeling low. The last thing you need is added stress and discomfort that you could have avoided with some helpful information earlier on.
Please enjoy Gary Wilson’s popular TEDx talk, the Great Porn Experiment to learn more about it. It has been viewed around 16 million times. Subtitles are available in lots of languages.
Of all activities on the internet, porn has the most potential to become addictive.”
- Dutch neuroscientists Meerkerk et al.
Learning about Porn's Effects
This learning about porn’s effects on the brain has been the single most important factor helping people overcome the wide range of negative mental and physical effects from overuse of porn. So far, there are over 85 studies that link poor mental and emotional health to porn use. These effects range from brain fog and social anxiety through to depression, negative body image and flashbacks. Eating disorders, on the rise in young people, cause more deaths than any other mental illness. Porn has a big impact on idealised notions of body image.
Even three hours of porn use a week can cause a noticeable reduction in grey matter in key areas of the brain. When brain connections are involved, it means they impact behaviour and mood. Regular bingeing on hardcore internet porn can cause some users to develop mental health problems, compulsive use, even addiction. These interfere significantly with everyday life and life goals. Users often talk about feeling ‘numb’ towards everyday pleasures.
Watch this 5 minute video where a neurosurgeon explains how the brain changes from watching porn.
Click below to see research and studies on poor mental and emotional health and how they affect a person’s ability to achieve in school, college or work.
See our FREE lesson plans for schools to help pupils be aware of the mental health effects of porn on their well-being and ability to achieve at school.
Underlying Trauma
Although bingeing on porn over time can, in itself, lead to mental health problems, some people have suffered trauma in their lives and use porn to self soothe. In these cases, people need help to get back in touch with their body to help them to manage the traumatic event(s) that keep them trapped in inappropriate coping mechanisms. We would recommend the book by clinician and research psychiatrist Professor Bessel van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps The Score” based in the USA. There are some good videos with him on YouTube talking about different types of trauma and various (limbic brain) therapies that are effective. In this one he recommends the power of yoga as one such therapy. In this short one he talks about loneliness and post traumatic stress disorder. Here he talks about trauma and attachment. This one relates to the trauma many people are feeling as a result of the pandemic, COVID-19. It’s full of wise advice.
The list below sets out the main effects observed by healthcare professionals and by recovering users on the recovery websites like NoFap and RebootNation. Many symptoms are not noticed until a user quits for a few weeks. Have you ever tried to quit but quickly relapsed? Take a look at our section on Quitting Porn for lots of help and suggestions. If you need more direct help, consider using the Remojo app straight to your phone. You can use it for free for 3 days.
Professor Bessel van der Kolk speaks on trauma and attachment.
What are the Risks of a Pornography Habit?
Adapted from “The Porn Trap” by Wendy Malz.
In this fascinating research "The Heat of the Moment: The Effect of Sexual Arousal on Decision Making", the results show that "the attractiveness of activities suggest sexual arousal acts as an amplifier of sorts" in young men...
“a secondary implication of our findings is that people seem to have only limited insight into the impact of sexual arousal on their own judgments and behavior. Such an under-appreciation could be important for both individual and societal decision making.
“… the most effective means of self-control is probably not willpower (which has been shown to be of limited efficacy), but rather avoiding situations in which one will become aroused and lose control. Any failure to appreciate the impact of sexual arousal on one’s own behavior is likely to lead to inadequate measures to avoid such situations. Similarly, if people under-appreciate their own likelihood of having sex, they are likely to fail to take precautions to limit the potential damage from such encounters. A teenager who embraces ‘‘just say no,’’ for example, may feel it unnecessary to bring a condom on a date, thus greatly increasing the likelihood of pregnancy or transmission of STDs if he/she ends up getting caught up in the heat of the moment.”
“The same logic applies interpersonally. If people judge others’ likely behavior based on observing them when they are not sexually aroused, and fail to appreciate the impact of sexual arousal, then they are likely to be caught by surprise by the other’s behavior when aroused. Such a pattern could easily contribute to date-rape. Indeed, it can create the perverse situation in which people who are the least attracted to their dates are most likely to experience date-rape because being unaroused themselves they completely fail to understand or predict the other (aroused) person’s behavior.”
“In sum, the current study shows that sexual arousal influences people in profound ways. This should come as no surprise to most people who have personal experience with sexual arousal, but the magnitude of the effects is nevertheless striking. At a practical level, our results suggest that efforts to promote safe, ethical sex should concentrate on preparing people to deal with the ‘‘heat of the moment’’ or to avoid it when it is likely to lead to self-destructive behavior. Efforts at self-control that involve raw willpower (Baumeister & Vohs, 2003) are likely to be ineffective in the face of the dramatic cognitive and motivational changes caused by arousal.”
TEDx talk by Dan Ariely on Self Control
Addiction - Effects on sleep, work and relationships
The most basic effect of watching too much internet porn or even gaming is how it affects sleep. People end up ‘wired and tired’ and unable to concentrate on work next day. Constant bingeing and seeking that dopamine reward hit, can lead to a deep habit that is hard to kick. It can also cause ‘pathological’ learning in the form of addiction. That is when a user continues to seek a substance or activity despite negative consequences - such as problems at work, home, in relationships etc. A compulsive user experiences negative feelings such as depression or feeling flat when he or she miss the hit or excitement. This drives them back to it again and again to try and restore feelings of arousal. Addiction can start when trying to cope with stress, but also causes a user to feel stressed too. It is a vicious cycle.
When our internal biology is out of balance, our rational brain tries to interpret what is going on based on past experience. Low dopamine and depletion of other related neuro-chemicals can produce unpleasant feelings. They include boredom, hunger, stress, tiredness, low energy, anger, craving, depression, loneliness and anxiety. How we ‘interpret’ our feelings and the possible cause of the distress, affects our behaviour. Not until people quit porn do they realise that their habit has been the cause of so much negativity in their lives.
Self Medication
We often seek to self-medicate negative feelings with more of our favourite substance or behaviour. We do this without realising that it was perhaps overindulgence in that behaviour or substance that triggered the low feelings in the first place. The hangover effect is a neuro-chemical rebound. In Scotland, alcohol drinkers suffering from a hangover next day often use a famous expression. They talk of taking “the hair of the dog that bit you”. That means they have another drink. Unfortunately for some people, this can lead to a vicious cycle of bingeing, depression, bingeing, depression and so on.
Too Much Porn
The effect of watching too much, highly stimulating porn can lead to a hangover and depressive symptoms too. It may be hard to see how consuming porn and consuming drugs can have the same general effect on the brain, but it does. The brain responds to stimulation, chemical or otherwise. The effects don’t stop at a hangover however. Constant overexposure to this material can produce brain changes with effects that may include the following:
Romantic Partners
Research shows that consuming pornography correlates with a lack of commitment to one’s romantic partner. Getting used to the constant novelty and increasing levels of arousal provided by porn and the thought that there may be someone ever ‘hotter’ in the next video, means that their brain is no longer aroused by real life partners. It can stop people wanting to invest in developing a real life relationship. This spells misery for almost everyone: men because they are not benefitting from the warmth and interaction a real life relationship brings; and women, because no amount of cosmetic enhancement can keep a man interested whose brain has been conditioned to need constant novelty and unnatural levels of stimulation. It is a no-win situation.
Therapists too are seeing a big increase in people seeking help for an addiction to dating apps. The fake promise of always something better with the next click or swipe, stops people focusing on getting to know just one person.
Social Functioning
In a study of university-age males, difficulties with social functioning increased as pornography consumption rose. This applied to psychosocial problems such as depression, anxiety, stress and reduced social functioning.
A study of educated Korean men in their 20s found a preference for using pornography to achieve and maintain sexual excitement. They found it more interesting than having sex with a partner.
Academic Achievement
Consumption of pornography was experimentally shown to decrease an individual’s ability to delay gratification for more valuable future rewards. In other words, watching porn makes you less logical and less able to take decisions that are clearly in your own interest such as doing homework and studying first instead of just entertaining yourself. Putting the reward before the effort.
In a study of 14 year old boys, higher levels of internet pornography consumption led to a risk of decreased academic performance, with the effects visible six-months later.
The More Porn a Man Watches
The more pornography a man watches, the more likely he was to use it during sex. It can give him the desire to act out porn scripts with his partner, deliberately conjure images of pornography during sex to maintain arousal. This also leads to concerns over his own sexual performance and body image. Further, higher pornography use was negatively associated with enjoying sexually intimate behaviours with a partner.
Low Sexual Desire
In one study, students at the end of high school reported a strong link between high levels of pornography consumption and low sexual desire. A quarter of regular consumers in this group reported an abnormal sexual response.
• The 2008 Study of Sexuality in France found that 20% of men 18-24 “no interest in sex or sexual activity”. This is very much at odds with the French national stereotype.
• In Japan in 2010: an official government survey found that 36% males aged 16-19 “have no interest in sex or have an aversion to it”. They prefer virtual dolls or anime.
Morphing Sexual Tastes
In some people, there can be unexpected morphing sexual tastes which reverse when they stop using porn. Here the issue is straight people watching gay porn, gays watching straight porn and lots of variations. Some people also develop fetishes and interests in sexual things away from their natural sexual orientation. It doesn’t matter what our orientation or sexual identity is, chronic overuse of internet pornography can cause serious changes to the brain. It changes both brain structure and functioning. As everyone is unique, it is not easy to say how much porn is enough for just pleasure before starting to cause changes. Changing sexual tastes is an indication, however, of brain changes. Everyone’s brain will react differently.
Photos by Anh Nguyen and Önder Örtel on Unsplash