As a fact-based and research-fueled awareness movement, we make it a point to explore all the scientific resources available that illustrate the real harms of porn.
One resource on the harms of pornography is the research-aggregate website, Your Brain On Porn (YBOP). The site is the brain-child (pun intended) of Gary Wilson, a former anatomy and physiology teacher, who is an educator in the neurochemistry of addiction, mating, and bonding.
You might recognize him from his TEDx talk titled, “The great porn experiment.” The video has been viewed over 14 million times, check it out for yourself:
He and a team of researchers created YBOP because, in their own words, “We don’t like people suffering needlessly, simply because they lack critical information for improving their circumstances themselves,” according to the site’s About page.
This site grew out of 15 years of research analysis on the effects of porn on the brain, and nine years of listening to recovering porn addicts. YBOP helps porn consumers understand exactly how today’s extreme internet porn can alter the brain and become an addictive behavior.
Science And Facts Only
YBOP uses only academic resources and peer-reviewed studies to help people realize the harmful effects of porn. This resource uses scientific breakdowns to educate on how consuming pornography affects the brain of the consumer:
“Porn consumption isn’t a moral issue. Yet, to the human brain, internet porn is as different from erotic magazines as ‘World of Warcraft’ is from checkers. The ability of this unique supernormal stimulus to alter the brain has major implications for the consumers (especially during adolescence).”
Wilson and his team rely on the research and facts they compile from commentaries and articles on the most up-to-date porn research available. The site also has sections dedicated to debunking flawed research and academically fact-checking questionable studies that claim porn can be “beneficial,” “healthy,” or “harmless.”
In a nutshell, YBOP is an educational resource that hopes to inform society just how harmful porn can be to the individual.
Scientific Backing For Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction
One of the main issues that YBOP devotes a lot of web space to is the issue of porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED). Still contested by many academics and psychologists, YBOP provides comprehensive research on the issue of PIED and how to help reverse it.
Previously, erectile dysfunction was unheard of in men younger than 40 years of age, but now due to the amount of porn being consumed by teens today, erectile dysfunction is being found in males as young as 15-16 years old. This has never been seen before in our society.
Wilson said in an interview:
“By the time they find real partners, perhaps as much as a decade later, some guys discover they have trained intensely… for the wrong sport. (These young men) had simply conditioned their sexual response to screens, isolation, constant novelty, shock/surprise, fetish porn and watching other people have sex. Their erection problems with real partners resolved only months after they quit porn.”
In his TEDx talk, Wilson says: “The widespread consumption of internet porn is one of the fastest moving global experiments ever conducted.” Right now, teens today are the guinea pigs of the internet era reaching the age where research can tell us what porn is actually doing to our generation. And that experiment is yielding some pretty negative results, as shown by the research you can find on YBOP.
“Porn trains your brain to need everything associated with porn to get aroused,” says Wilson.
Porn’s Serious Effects
YBOP also devotes a lot of attention to other negative implications of regular porn that many wouldn’t think about, like mental health issues.
It is not unusual for consumers caught in this cycle to feel anxious, socially ill-at-ease, moody, despairing, and apathetic. Until they reboot their brains, life seems meaningless, but for the single-minded pursuit of hotter stimuli. As one man recovering from porn put it:
“With the magazines, porn consumption was a few times a week and I could basically regulate it. ‘Cause it wasn’t really that ’special’. But when I entered the murky world of Internet porn, my brain had found something it just wanted more and more of…. I was out of control in less than 6 months. Years of mags: no problems. A few months of online porn: hooked.”
Often consumers don’t realize what they’re passing up until they give their brains a chance to return to equilibrium. For some, the lengthy withdrawal required to achieve this can be so agonizing (shakes, insomnia, despair, cravings, splitting headaches) that they feel trapped.”
Education is Power
The facts shared on Your Brain On Porn are eye-opening, to say the least, and it is an option for anyone looking for educational resources that detail the potential harms of porn. By being educated and raising awareness, we can make a much-needed change in our society.
