turned on by stuff that seems degrading to women, but I can’t help myself. I didn’t always look at that stuff—I actually thought it was disgusting—but now I can’t seem to stay away from it.
Sometimes I use my smartphone to watch porn while I’m in the car. I like watching porn in the car more than anywhere else because it’s exciting and forbidden, and it takes my mind off of traffic and everything else that bothers me about my life. And, as part of my job, I’m on the road a lot—so I watch porn quite a bit. I’ve gotten tickets for driving erratically because of this, but I’ve always managed to switch the phone off before a police officer or anyone else can catch me in the act.
In the evenings I have “dinner and a show,” which means pizza or takeout Chinese food and several hours of porn beamed wirelessly from my laptop to the forty-six-inch flat-screen in my living room. My goal is always to find that one perfect video that I haven’t seen before. Usually even a so-so new video is better than a really good one I’ve seen a few times. On an average day, I can easily lose three or four hours to masturbation and porn. And sadly, even to me, on an average day—apart from interactions related to my work and purchasing food or gasoline—I don’t talk to or interact with a single human being.
—Steve, twenty-nine, insurance claims adjustor
Steve’s experience is not unusual for a self-reported porn addict for the following reasons:
•His seemingly unending involvement with pornography prevents him from engaging in any genuinely intimate, real world interaction.
•He is constantly searching for his next sexual “high,” which is brought on by the intensity of each new video or simply the fantasy of what each new video might bring.
•His porn use has escalated to the point that he is now aroused by sexual content that he does not feel good about watching.
•He justifies his behavior with lame excuses like “I just can’t help myself.”
•His experience is framed around the fantasy of future sex such as searching for the perfect new video rather than sex itself.
THE GREAT PORN DEBATE
Currently there is panic about young males and their nearly ubiquitous use of Internet porn. When Canadian researcher Simon Lajeunesse attempted to perform research into the effects of porn on young males, he was stymied in his efforts because he couldn’t find any college-aged males who weren’t porn users; and without a control group, there was no way for him to make comparisons. Countless parents are worried about or horrified by their sons’ fascination with and use of Internet porn. And more than a few people are talking openly about the negative effects of porn use on young males.
In his book, The Demise of Guys: Why Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, Phillip Zimbardo writes, “From the earliest ages, guys are seduced into excessive and mostly isolated viewing and involvement with…pornography.”4 Zimbardo then asserts that thanks to all of this porn consumption young males’ brains are being rewired to demand unrealistic levels of novelty, stimulation, and excitement, and as a result they are becoming out of sync with real world relationships. Gary Wilson, creator and moderator of the popular yourbrainonporn.com website, also asserts that young male porn users may experience a loss of interest in real world intimacy, plus a variety of other issues typically associated with compulsive sexuality.5
On Wilson’s website these fears are backed up with first-person postings by young men who’ve written into the site, detailing their experiences with porn usage saying things like:
•I started watching porn around the age of 10 and fapping (masturbating) around the age of 14. It got up to 2 to 3 times a day for the last four years, until I decided to quit. I had many reasons for starting nofap (abstinence from masturbation)—girls, anxiety, depression, and I couldn’t figure out why I felt so dead inside.
•I had weird fetishes and I couldn’t stay aroused or erect during sex or even masturbation.
•What was worse than the PIED [Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction] was the desensitization to the world. I found it hard to enjoy anything at all.
Clearly the young men posting their stories on the website have experienced consequences—not only emotional but physical—related to their porn use. The questions that can’t be answered without further investigation are whether these guys are actually addicted to porn or just casual/heavy users, and whether all young males who regularly access porn are being similarly affected. In reality, there is very little research on the topic, so we don’t know for certain what online porn is doing to the majority of young males who are looking at it. However, we do know they are looking at very early ages (for boys, the average age of first exposure to Internet porn is eleven6), and we know that some boys are being negatively affected.
In all likelihood, the majority of boys who look at porn will do so without serious problems, just as most boys who try alcohol will do so without ever becoming alcoholic. However, kids who are vulnerable to addiction thanks to either genetics or difficult life circumstance (or both) are definitely at risk for porn and cybersex addiction, just as they are at risk for developing alcoholism or drug addiction if they start experimenting with potentially addictive substances.
The following is an incomplete listing of factors that increase a young person’s vulnerability to addictions of all stripes:
•Prior addiction in a family member
•History of neglect
•History of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse
•Social anxiety
•Depression
•Attention deficit disorder (ADD)
•Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
•History of self-harm behaviors (cutting, burning, etc.)
•Disordered eating (binging and purging, anorexia, etc.)
•Falling anywhere on the Asperger’s spectrum
•Learning disabilities
•Impulsivity toward high risk or intensity-driven behaviors
Of course, addiction is not just about vulnerability factors. Even people without genetic predispositions toward addiction and/or family-of-origin issues can be at risk—especially if they start in with a pleasure-inducing substance or behavior early in life. Research proves this rather conclusively with alcoholism and drug addiction, with numerous studies showing that the earlier the age of first exposure to these substances and the more frequent the use, the higher the likelihood of addiction.7
It seems reasonable to assume that the same is probably true with porn, although there is not currently any research to this effect, nor is there likely to be any such research in the near future. After all, as Gary Wilson writes, “First, who can find porn virgins of a suitable age [to use as a control group]? Second, who deliberately wants to expose kids to super-stimulating erotic videos to see what happens in their brains, or how it alters their sexual response over time?”8 This means that the only research we can realistically hope for is after-the-fact surveys of self-identified adult porn addicts, asking about when they were first exposed to digital porn, how much they used, and
