A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that Internet pornography is a true addiction, like heroin, alcohol or tobacco addiction.
It literally rewires the human brain. The male human brain is hard-wired to respond to sexual novelty. It processes Internet pornography as a constant access to new sexual partners engaging in new kinds of sexual activity.
Brutal and kinky is a more powerful stimulus that erotic and gentle, so that would be the bias of any Internet side that wants viewers to keep coming back.
My inclination is to err, if I must, on the side of protection of free speech. I am suspicious of any form of censorship. But I have to reconsider after reading an eye-opening article yesterday by a writer named Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry who surveyed the scientific literature on pornography addiction.
Porn is a sexual stimulus, but it is not sex. Notoriously, heroin addicts eventually lose interest in sex: this is because their brains are rewired so that their sex reward system is reprogrammed to seek out heroin rather than sex.
In the same way, as we consume more and more porn, which we must since it is addictive and we need more to get the same kick, our brain is rewired so that what triggers the reward system that is supposed to be linked to sex is no longer linked to sex—to a human in the flesh, to touching, to kissing, to caressing—but to porn.
Which is why we are witnessing a phenomenon which, as best as anyone can tell, is totally unprecedented in all of human history: an epidemic of chronic erectile dysfunction (ED) among men under 40.
Pornography, including sado-masochistic pornography, has always been with us. It is as old as civilization. But never before has pornography been so universally available. A 12-year-old boy with a Smartphone has more access to sexual stimulation than the most decadent Roman emperor, Turkish sultan or 1970s rock star. I’m glad I’m not a parent today.
As Gobry admits, we don’t have conclusive evidence of the effects on society of universal availability of hard-core pornography.
… What we do know is that large numbers of our civilization are hooked on a drug that has profound effects on the brain, which we mostly don’t understand, except that everything we understand is negative and alarming.
And we are just ten years into the process. If we don’t act, pretty soon the next generation will be a generation that largely got hooked on this brain-eating drug as children, whose brains are uniquely vulnerable. It seems perfectly reasonable and consistent with the evidence as we have it to be deeply alarmed.
Indeed, what seems supremely irrational is our bizarre complacency about something which, at some level, we all know to be happening.
I am in favor of sexual freedom. Do whatever you like with whatever consenting adult you like in your own space. This is more than a question of individual behavior. It is a question of what kind of society we want to make.
LINK
A Science-Based Case for Ending the Porn Epidemic by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry for American Greatness. Print-Friendly Version.
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