The Effects of Pornography on Your Brain

bad lighting bad acting bad dialogue awful music and lots of sex pornography can be a very sensitive subject since there are many different opinions about it whether you like it or hate it we can all agree that watching pornography like anyone else has an effect on your brain but what does watching porn do and how often do you need to watch for effects to take place let's dive into the world of science to explain what pornography does to your brain effects of availability when you think of porn you might go right to the 70s with

the Shag carpets and pizza boy plot lines but when we think of porn the word taboo comes to mind the fact that you've watched porn used to be something that was looked down upon and never spoken of you know like saying Voldemort's name shoot I said it nowadays it's much less of an elephant in the room with the rise of the internet pornography like most everything else became much more available in his 2002 book strip tease culture Brian McNair States about half of all internet activity is sex related fast forward to 2004 MSNBC and L

magazine did a study regarding pornography where out of 15 246 participants 75 percent of the men and 41 percent of the women stated they had downloaded pornography via the Internet in the 2008 book The porning of America they explained this phenomenon once porn became available on demand and it didn't risk a computer virus with every third click more escalated topics were searched and more people watched porn in general less problems no pleasure when smartphones came out teenagers jumped on the bandwagon and boosted the numbers once more it's a mobile computer that can be taken out

of adult supervision range kind of The Perfect Storm if you think about it effects on the brain in a study done by researcher and author Barry Gunter he found that teen males were more interested in more erotic types of pornography and wished they could experience it for real it was also found that if the participant had a more positive or accepting opinion of pornography they would be more often aroused when watching well duh I don't think that we needed a study to tell us that last part anyway Patrick Fagan PhD compiled research on the effective

pornography on married individuals with families through his research Fagan found that pornography can change someone's opinion or perception of what sex is he also noted that males who regularly watched pornography had a higher tolerance for some fun and weird stuff in the bedroom we see you Christian Gray they also may have a higher tolerance for seeing someone as an object rather than a person with value effects of addiction like anything else too much of a good thing can have negative effects so moderation is key look chocolate cake is amazing but you can't have a slice

of decadent sugary chocolate cake every day eventually that can catch up with our physical health and bodies the same thing can happen with your mind in 2015 a group of researchers stated frequent pornography exposure hasn't been fully studied so there may be a lot more to the picture than what we know now in 2011 Donald Hilton Jr and Clark Watts did a study on pornography addiction they found that the brain activity produced by cocaine addiction was identical to brain activity from pornography addiction a similar study was done in 2004 with methamphetamines and had similar findings

so your aunt with a shopping addiction who's always ordering off Amazon or home shopping networks all at the same time her brain might look a little something like this too it's not all bad we know that there's limited information on the subject and the majority of it sounds really awful so Gary Wilson came out in 2016 to remind us that we can't just say oh you watch porn you see people as objects and are a trash human no no no pump the brakes baby cakes we found that the times we saw more extreme negative effects

from pornography overuse that the same person also showed evidence and indications of mental illness so there may have been other reasons as to why this person Justified negative sexual preferences with pornography also in 2016 another study was done regarding acceptance of pornography and marriages so for the rest of us how do you feel about your spouse watching porn in this study it was found that the majority of the couples didn't mind their spouse watching porn when they both engaged maybe not necessarily in the same room at the same time but you get it specifically wives

in the study felt positively towards pornography as it's a way for them to gauge sexual satisfaction you see something you like you try it out it might be a good time pornography can still be a sensitive subject to some but to others it may be a part of their relationship or their self-care routine no matter what our experience or relationship with porn is one thing is for certain if we consume it it can affect our brain in some way have you noticed any changes in yourself after watching porn has watching pornography helped her relationship let

us know in the comments below as always keep an eye on site for more psych2go content see you next time the studies and references used in and to create this video are listed below