57% of teens search out porn at least monthly. (https://www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats/) Porn is often promoted as fun, casual, healthy, and educational. In reality, there are serious risks associated with pornography. Porn consumption leads to addiction, a distorted view of reality, and sexual violence. Here are the facts on the subject so you can make an informed decision.
When we speak with students in class about pornography, they correctly share that a risk associated with porn is addiction (sensitization, desensitization, hypofrontality, and a malfunctioning stress system). Porn rewires the reward centers of the brain, teaching the brain to return to porn over and over again, often with more and more frequency, longer exposure, or more shocking content, as an easy supply of pleasure chemicals in the brain. Porn also leads to a decreased ability in the brain to keep cravings in check. As with many addictions, porn addiction commonly causes individuals to experience depression, low self-esteem, and loneliness when they are not proud of their actions, struggle to change their behavior, and hide it from their close friends and family.
Another risk that students mention is that porn distorts one’s view of reality. Viewers begin to objectify themselves and others because porn portrays people as tools to be used, placing a person’s value on how they look and their ability to perform, rather than the simple fact that they are human. Porn also teaches an incorrect understanding of sex as the sex shown in pornography is often fake and doesn’t show what a real relationship is like. Consumers can also become desensitized to immoral content over time, such as sexual violence, child sexual abuse material, etc. Fight the New Drug’s article, “How Porn Can Become An Escalating Behavior” states, “In one 2016 study, researchers found that 46.9% of respondents reported that, over time, they began watching pornography that had previously disinterested or even disgusted them.” Not all people experience this, but according to this study, nearly half of consumers do.
Additionally, pornography leads to sexual violence. Viewers are statistically more likely to become sexually violent with their partners regardless of whether the porn they watch portrays violence or not. It is also common for porn producers to coerce their actors into doing things they are uncomfortable with while acting like they enjoy it. If actors don’t comply, they are treated poorly, embarrassed, and threatened to not get paid. Pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficing are all part of the same industry. It is impossible to tell if someone shown in porn is consenting or not just by watching it, how they are acting, or how they are being treated.
Those who seek to promote pornography as harmless and/or beneficial say it only affects the person watching it, increases the viewer’s sex drive, and is educational. Porn affects more than just the viewer because it can hurt relationships and simply watching porn increases the demand for its production throughout the world, in turn, increasing the demand for prostitution and sex trafficing. Porn may increase one’s sex drive, but it actually causes the viewer over time to be more relient on porn to become arroused, making it difficult to have a healthy sexual relationship with a real person. Porn does educate its viewers, but gives false information on what sex is really like. Porn promotes violence as pleasurable, says that sex is all about physical pleasure, not an emotional connection, and is fake and manufactured. It doesn’t show what a real relationship should be like.
More and more people are exposed to pornography at younger and younger ages. 51% of male students and 32% of female students first viewed porn before their teenage years. (https://www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats/) Porn is not fun. Porn is not casual. Porn is not healthy or educational. Pornography is not harmless or beneficial because it leads to addiction, a distorted view of reality, and sexual violence. If you are hooked on pornography and want to stop, there is hope. Studies have shown how the negative effects of pornography can be managed and largely reversed over time. Keep trying to quit, be kind to yourself, and ask for help. Long term abstinence from pornography takes practice and patience, but it becomes easier and easier the longer one goes without watching it, building stronger and stronger self-control.
Resources:
Here are the resources used in researching the topic of pornography. We highly reccommend checking them out, as they offer great information that goes more in depth on the risks of pornography, it’s impact on the world, and encouragement for those who want to quit.
Fight The New Drug Organization
3 part short documentary series on how pornography affects the brain, heart, and world
How pornography affects the brain, heart, and world overview
Fact based articles about pornography
Podcast about how porn sites profit off of nonconsensual content, image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
Podcast on how porn is linked to sexual violence
Consider Before Consuming podcast
Resource to help quit porn
https://www.joinfortify.com/