Can pornography negatively affect your brain and body?

Question

I have many friends who claim porn is “bad for your brain.” What does this mean? Can casual porn viewing negatively impact your body?

In: 0

Answer 1

We have very little evidence that it is bad for your brain. The view that it does mostly comes from research on obviously violent/misogynistic porn, like one where the man is clearly abusing the woman. This line of research is, not coincidentally, funded by religious affiliated organizations that are anti-porn because of religious reasons. That’s fair for them as religious organizations, but that obviously biases the research they’re pushing and funding.

COULD non-violent pornography be bad for you? Unclear. We don’t have enough evidence to really say. All we can really see in society is that pornography availability (internet) has coincided with an increase in loneliness in young adults, and a decline in sexual activity / long-term partnership. But this is just correlational. There are a lot of social changes happening at the same time (e.g., declining economic prospects for young adults compared to previous generations, overall technological change, cultural changes).

But let’s say we find out it is bad for you: theoretically, what could *cause* this? Repeated exposure to anything changes stuff in your brain. These changes are literally what learning is. So essentially, you’d be learning *something*. For example, you may develop a learned association between “wanting intimacy” and pornography. Maybe in the past, that was essential to pushing us to seek out relationships, and now we’re instead learning to associate the drive with pornography, and this overall makes us less connected to others. We know social connection is a big deal for physical and mental health. So sure, this could be a problem.

It’s also unclear if the expectations young people develop from porn actually interfere with their behavior with real people. People have *always* had weird expectations about sex and relationship. Before internet porn, it came from society telling us what romance and sex are supposed to be like, and from other media (e.g., books). Is porn essentially different from that? Probably not, I’d guess.

But like I said, it’s unclear when/if this happens.

Oh right, I should add, this is separate from consuming abnormal amounts of pornography. I’d consider addiction and other behavioral issues separately. Because it’s also unclear if addictive tendencies toward pornography are unique or just another form of addictive behavior. E.g., would these people have just found something else to be addicted to or did the pornography actually cause the problem?