Photo by Drew Graham. Portions of this post are originally from an article on HighExistence by Filip. It has been edited for content and length. 5 minute read.
What happens when you drop a male rat into a cage with a receptive female rat? First, you see a frenzy of mating. Then, progressively, the male tires of that particular female. Even if she wants more, he has had enough. But replace the original female with a fresh one, and the male immediately revives and gallantly struggles to mate with her. You can repeat this process with fresh females until he is completely wiped out.
In science, this is called the Coolidge Effect—the automatic response to “new mates.” It’s what probably started, and continued, countless consumers on the road to compulsive internet porn consumption.
In the last couple of years, studies have been showing an increase in sexual problems among young males. While the numbers vary, a 2007 study of the American Journal of Medicine showed that this affects more than 18 million men in the United States over the age of 20. One of the factors has been attributed to the widespread exposure to internet porn.
And in this 2016 study with clinical reviews, a peer-reviewed paper involving 7 US Navy doctors, the conclusion is that porn can absolutely cause sexual dysfunction and low libido in male consumers.
So what happens?
The internet is like an infinite stream of body parts, a place where we can see more “super hot” men and women in a time span of 10 minutes than our ancestors could in multiple lifetimes. Turns out, the Coolidge Effect is no longer the exception, but the rule starting at the ripe age of 10 years old for some consumers. When we asked on Twitter what age people were when they first saw porn, many people said 8.
At the start of watching porn, it can easily suffice to watch one non-moving image and be able to get aroused. But due to the novelty effect, after years of consistent consumption, this won’t cut it anymore. The same pornographic material won’t excite to the same degree, and consumers often feel compelled to explore novel endeavors that take a twisted, shocking turn that they could never have expected.
This has far more negative effects on the psychological and relational health of the consumer than society and the porn industry would have you believe.
Here are a few neurological effects of saturating your brain with hardcore pornographic images:
- Desensitization: The more porn a consumer watches, the more they’ll need to reach the same amounts of dopamine release.
- Sensitization: The more porn watched, the more associations with porn that will be made when facing stimuli that can induce these thoughts. In other words, you will start making associations with watching porn due to the rewired nerve connections in the brain.
- Hypofrontality: Reduced impulse control and weakened ability to foresee consequences. The more porn you watch, the more difficult it will be to refrain from watching it and the less you will care about the consequences.
And these are just a few of the many brain changes the brain undergoes under the influence of a compulsive porn problem. The research is still new, but the effects are becoming more and more undeniable. All this in addition to arousal and erectile issues in real life sexual encounters—yikes.
Click here to read more of this article on HighExistence.
So what? Why should I stop watching porn?
Not only can porn cause turmoil in a consumer’s brain as well as in the bedroom, but studies have also shown that even a casual porn habit can cause the consumer to feel less attracted to their partner. [1] And when a person frequently watches pornography, they’re far more likely to feel less satisfied with their partner’s looks, sexual performance, and willingness to try new sexual acts. [2] The research has spoken.
Why all the sudden disappointment with one’s partner? It’s likely due to the fact that porn promotes a completely fictional version of how people look and behave, and makes it look like an exciting reality—one that their partners often feel they can never live up to. [3] Given that the women depicted in porn are surgically enhanced, airbrushed, photoshopped, and exaggerating their behavior [4] it’s not hard to see why, according to a national poll, that only one in every seven women doesn’t think that porn has raised men’s expectations of how women should look. [5]
And it’s no mystery that love can’t really develop in a relationship where one partner feels like the other isn’t really attracted to them.
Live your best life now
As you can see, there are many reasons to consider the ever-growing field of research on the real harms of porn before consuming it.
Porn can hurt the mental and sexual health of consumers, and it reinforces the Coolidge Effect by training the consumer to constantly seek novelty instead of valuing commitment to a partner. Fight the New Drug is all about fighting for real love and rejecting its hollow counterfeit: porn. It’s no coincidence that hundreds of thousands of people around the world who contact us to share their story that a porn-free life is the best life.
Porn may seem like an awkward topic, but it’s one we have to be bold and shine a light on. Porn can affect the sexual health, meaningful relationships and genuine happiness of consumers without them truly realizing it from the start. By taking a stand and fighting for real relationships, we are not only bettering our own lives, we are bettering our world as a whole.
