Should you avoid watching pornography? | Pros & Cons of Porn

Is pornography okay? Well, today we're going to answer that question. I'm Dr. Rena Malek, Urologist and Pelvic Surgeon and if you're new here I make content weekly on sexual health, bladder health, urologic health, and so much more. If you like what you see, make sure you subscribe and share this channel with your friends. before i get started i want to be a hundred percent clear i strongly believe that no one should be shamed for their sexual behaviors as long as they're not damaging themselves or damaging others and quite frankly pornography is everywhere people are gonna

get exposed to it and maybe even have problems with it so let's take a deep dive into the scientific research about pornography so first off who uses it well depending on the study up to 70 to 80 percent of men have used pornography or use it regularly and up to 32 percent of women interestingly traffic to pornography sites increased by 11 percent during the coven pandemic and people use pornography for a number of different reasons to increase sexual desire to satisfy their curiosities about sex and sadly to learn about anatomy because let's face it sexual

education is limited if not mediocre at best is pornography black or white good or bad well there's not one right answer for every person so i'm gonna ask each of you to please watch this video in its entirety to learn the pros and cons of pornography before you make your decision on the positive side people have shown that pornography users have a more positive attitudes towards sex they may be willing to experiment more with their partners and have a more satisfied sexual life because of it and in the moment some studies have shown particularly in

women that watching pornography increases their sexual satisfaction and libido and people who watch porn with a partner actually find that they're more dedicated to their partner and more sexually satisfied and i know a lot of people worry about watching abusive and damaging pornography and how that can cause maybe sexual violence but there has been no linkage after looking at multiple studies with pornography and increases in sexual violence rape or assault so when does pornography become a problem across multiple studies up to four to ten percent of people find that they have a problem with porn

use or may self-identify as having a porn addiction medically porn addiction is not a classified disease what people in the medical field call it is problematic pornography use so who is at risk for getting problematic pornography use watching more pornography does put you at higher risk but doesn't in and of itself mean that you have a problem also if you have depression or anxiety on top of watching a lot of pornography that puts you at a higher risk as well if you find yourself having moral incongruence or feeling that morally pornography is bad you're more

likely to have a problem due to pornography use lastly if you find yourself preferring masturbation to pornography than having sex with your partner or a real person then that's also a sign that you may have a problem if you think you have a problem you probably do so how does this actually happen let me explain how pornography affects our brains and our behaviors our brains are often exposed to a neurochemical called dopamine it makes us feel good and our brains are wired to look for things that give us dopamine and those are usually things that

help sustain our bodies and help sustain our species and sex is one of those things because sex leads to fertility which leads to propagation of humankind and when you watch pornography your brain releases the same chemicals that get released during sex dopamine so watching pornography in people who develop this problematic pornography use have up regulations in pathways in our brain that cause us to look for these dopamine pathways over other things that we normally would do so your brain starts developing cravings for pornography and even signs of things that may be similar to other addictive

substances like drugs for example you may develop a tolerance so you'll watch some pornography and you may need to find more novel more aggressive or different types of pornography to get the same sort of enjoyment from watching it you also get impulsivity and compulsivity what that means is you get strong sudden urges to watch pornography and you compulsively do them you keep repeating it regardless of the negative consequences that might occur and you get what's called a weakened executive function what that means is your brain when it tells you to do things that are good

for you so like go to work take a shower pick up your kids from school just normal activities but when you have this pathway upregulated you actually impair that executive function so you're less likely to do things that you normally would do and lastly you can get dysphoria and so what that means is that you start feeling very frustrated and unhappy in other parts of your life when you're not watching pornography and this all of this taken together can really impact your willpower and willpower is actually not the best way to get rid of these

cravings and we'll talk about how to get rid of this problem if you are finding yourself having problematic pornography use in a video to follow so when all this is going on in your brain what happens to people in real life well you'll find yourself avoiding doing normal daily activities spending time with family or friends rather than going to work finding yourself watching pornography instead this can lead to social isolation feeling very lonely and having very few connections it can lead to financial problems where you're spending more and more money to use pornography and it

can cause problems in your relationships more than that people can find themselves getting signs of real mental health disorders like depression or anxiety where you're feeling constant sadness or constant worry and what about your sex life here's where some of the problems come in people are accessing pornography at younger and younger ages in fact boys are accessing pornography as early as 10 years of age and in fact i'm gonna make a video of how this could be detrimental to younger kids and how to talk to your kids about pornography also coming up so make sure

you subscribe to my channel and turn on that notification bell so you can make sure you don't miss these new and upcoming videos so these younger children who are watching pornography don't have fully developed brains and they have difficulty discerning what's reality and what's fake and pornography if you're not aware is a fake product it is not real life this is not how normal sexual encounters occur this is a highly edited product with lighting with special effects and all sorts of things that can make sex seem like something very different from what it really is

and quite frankly a lot of pornography is aggressive abusive and doesn't show you how you actually need to pleasure your partner these actors in pornography are not average people they have above average length penises they have special effects to make look that they have higher volumes of semen and they are immediately erect and women are immediately lubricated which is not at all what happens in real life if you want to learn more about how to pleasure women or about an anatomy of women please check out my previous videos i've done some great interviews with lisa

mungledass dr kelly casperson and dr lori mintz about how to pleasure women and i've made a great video about female anatomy so you can understand exactly how and women do derive pleasure based on their anatomy the real issue with this fake production of pornography is people can start really having self-esteem issues so they start thinking like oh am i good enough because i don't look like that or am i pleasuring my partner well enough because they're not responding like the woman on the porno video did all of this taken together can lead to performance anxiety

and issues with erections so if you're having problematic pornography use or you're finding yourself really comparing yourself to the things you're seeing on pornography this is a sign that maybe you should really investigate your pornography use and check out my next video on how to reduce this problematic use i hope you all found this helpful please comment below and let me know what you thought as always remember take care of yourself because you're worth it