Porn and the Brain & Emotional Health

 Quick Findings from the Experts

I hope that in addition to helping you to understand more about the destructive nature of porn on individuals, relationships, and society, this book will help you to explain these things to others. To that end, in addition to the many research findings already discussed, in this appendix I have provided findings concerning porn’s effects on (1) the brain, (2) emotional health, (3) sexual tastes, (4) sexual violence, (5) erectile dysfunction, (6) marriage, and (7) adolescence.

Porn and the Brain

1. When researchers compared brain scans of porn users with scans of nonusers, they found that the more porn the person had used, the less his reward center activated when porn images were flashed on a screen.1 The researchers said, “This is in line with the hypothesis that intense exposure of pornographic stimuli results in a downregulation of the natural neural response to sexual stimuli.”22. With a dulled reward center, a person can’t feel dopamine’s effects as well as they used to. As a result, the porn a person is using can stop producing the same excitement it did before. This leads many users to go in search of more hard-core material to get a bigger dopamine burst.3

3. People with Internet addiction have been found to have less gray matter in several important areas of the brain, including the frontal lobes (which oversee things such as planning, prioritizing, and controlling impulses), the striatum (which is involved with the reward center and with self-control), and the insula (an area involved with feeling empathy and compassion for others). The vast majority of people with porn addictions have Internet addictions.44. One study showed that even moderate porn use correlated with having reduced gray matter. Though it did not conclusively show that porn had caused the reduction, the study led researchers to conclude that porn use was the most likely explanation. They even subtitled their study “The Brain on Porn”. The study also found a correction between the length of time spent watching porn and the amount of gray matter reduction in the brain’s reward circuitry, which is important in motivation and decision-making. This reduction is also indicative of having a numbed pleasure response. The researchers interpreted the reduction as an effect of porn use.55. Addiction researchers have found that brain problems seen in Internet addicts, similar to the problems seen among porn users, improved with abstinence and treatment, indicating that the addiction was the problem, not a preexisting condition.6

6. Almost every study on addiction has demonstrated atrophy of multiple areas of the brain, particularly those associated with frontal volitional control and reward salience centers. This is true for addictions to drugs such as cocaine,7 methamphetamine,8 and opioids,9 and also for behavioral conditions associated with pathologic overconsumption of food,10 sex,11 and the Internet.127. The journal NeuroImage published a study in 2008 demonstrating that as men are sexually aroused by pornography, the mirror neurons in the brain also fire. This means that the brain naturally imagines the porn viewer in the scene. The man is not merely responding to the naked woman. His brain is mirroring the pornographic scene with the viewer as the main character, heightening arousal.138. When a person continually strengthens the brain maps linking sexual excitement to porn, those maps enlarge and can crowd out maps linking sexual excitement to a real person or to real sex.14

9. In 2005, Dr. Eric Nestler wrote a landmark paper describing addiction as a dysfunction of the reward centers of the brain. Addiction occurs, he explained, when pleasure-reward pathways are hijacked by certain euphoria-inducing activities, such as eating, taking drugs, or having sex.15Porn and Emotional Health

1. Studies have found that frequency of porn use correlates with depression, anxiety, stress, and social problems.16 It shouldn’t be surprising that porn use is associated with depression, given that porn has the ability to mess with the user’s dopamine system.17 Research has found that dopamine signaling is a main factor in depression.182. Dopamine significantly affects our motivation to pursue goals and build relationships, so when the brain can’t feel dopamine’s effects as well, our interest in doing those things can start to slide.19

3. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with having less sexual and relationship satisfaction and changed sexual tastes.20

4. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with lowered quality of life and poorer health.215. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with intimacy problems.22

6. Researchers at Oxford University found that moderate to severe Internet addiction is associated with increased risk of harming oneself.23

7. Even moderate porn use is correlated with damage to parts of the brain involved with motivation and decision-making.24

8. Researchers have also found that moderate porn use is correlated with shrunken gray matter in parts of the brain that oversee cognitive function.259. A study that looked at Internet addicts (pornography was a main online activity for the subjects) found that they suffered from “negative moods” when they went offline.26

10. Researchers in Belgium looked at fourteen-year-old boys’ academic performance twice and compared the two scores. They found that “an increased use of Internet pornography decreased boys’ academic performance six months later.”27

Porn and Sexual Tastes

1. Studies have found that porn use is correlated with less sexual and relationship satisfaction and changed sexual tastes.282. Sexual interests are conditionable—we can train them, as Pavlov trained a dog to salivate when it heard a bell.29

3. The brain’s reward center doesn’t know the difference between “porn that’s ‘acceptable’ to use” and “porn that’s not cool”. All it knows is that it likes dopamine. So, when something sick or disturbing pops up and is linked with sexual arousal, the brain stores the connection.30 “Neurons that fire together wire together, and feeling pleasure in the presence of [something normally unappealing] causes it to get wired into the brain as a source of delight.”314. As a porn user builds up tolerance “the pleasure of sexual discharge must be supplemented with the pleasure of an aggressive release, and sexual and aggressive images are increasingly mingled—hence the increase in sadomasochistic themes in hardcore porn.”32

5. Researchers have found that women become less sexually aroused by repeated viewing of the same porn, but become aroused again when novel porn is introduced.33

6. In a 2012 NoFap poll of users, more than half of the respondents agreed with the statement “My tastes became increasingly ‘extreme’ or ‘deviant’.”347. In a study, researchers found that when male subjects saw the same porn film repeatedly, they were progressively less aroused by it. When researchers introduced a new video after eighteen viewings of the old one, subjects’ arousal spiked.35

8. When a person uses porn, his brain wires together what is seen with the feelings of arousal it creates, building new brain maps for both what he thinks is sexy and what he expects from his partner.36

9. Researchers have found that the younger the age of first porn use, the more likely a porn consumer is to use bestiality or child porn.37Porn and Sexual Violence

1. In a meta-analysis of forty-six studies published from 1962 to 1995, comprising a total sample of 12,323 people, researchers concluded that pornographic material puts one at increased risk of the following:

    • developing sexually deviant tendencies (31 percent increase in risk)

    • committing sexual offenses (22 percent increase in risk)

    • accepting rape myths (31 percent increase in risk)38

2. A study that both exposed participants to pornography and asked them about their pornography use found that high pornography use corresponds to higher acceptance of rape myth, acceptance of violence against women, adversarial sex beliefs, likelihood of committing rape and forced sex acts, and sexual callousness.39

THE PORN MYTH

Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography

Matt Fradd