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Pornography use has increased every year since 1998. Pornhub website visits have increased 11.6% since the pandemic, making Pornhub the fourth most visited website next to Google, Facebook, and YouTube. Maybe even more shockingly, when you put all porn websites together, they get more visits than Twitter, Amazon, and Netflix combined. At the same time, since the 1990s, there's been an increase in male erectile dysfunction, leading to what some researchers are calling is a crisis in male sexuality. Is male erectile dysfunction and pornography use linked? A recent study found that 82% of people who try to quit watching pornography failed? So, what is porn doing to your brain? Is it making young men unable to
get hard? And how can you tell if you or someone you know has a problem with porn? Today we're going to learn about the updated science on pornography use. It's honestly intense. Wanting to watch porn is related to dopamine, a molecule you've heard a lot about here at ASAP Science, as it's involved with you physiologically craving the things you need to survive, like money, food, love, friendship. But importantly, in the case of porn, the molecule is involved with our physiological craving of novel experiences, and sex. The thing about scrolling porn websites is you're constantly looking at novel videos about
sexual stimulation and this really impacts your messolympic dopamine system. Keeping tabs open and scrolling porn sites actually physically changes the vententral stratum of your brain with two studies finding that your vententral stratum physically grows due to watching porn websites. And it is this physical change in your brain that can over time make it harder for you to restrain from watching porn and even succumbing to dopamine cravings in general. Essentially, watching new novel sexual porn videos on websites is such an intense stimulus for your brain that it changes neural connections. The areas in your brain that end up affected by watching porn are related to reward processing, decision-making, and
emotional regulation. One study found higher amounts of porn use is associated with preferring short-term gains over long-term gains, while other studies show that the change in brain shape from increased porn consumption can lead to irritability, depression, and lower self-esteem. A lot of these physiological responses in your brain might lead you to think that pornography is addictive, but that's still quite a controversial term within the science community. Right now, something known as problematic porn use is considered an impulse control disorder. But pornography addiction does not have a standalone diagnosis. So, how can you tell if you or someone you know has problematic porn use? Here is a clear list. Salience. You place pornography
watching of high importance in your life. Maybe you stay up extra late to watch it or find that you are prioritizing porn over sleep, hanging out with friends, or doing your work. Mood modification. You use pornography to deal with negative emotions. Tolerance. You gradually seem to need more and more pornography to feel satisfaction or are watching more extreme pornographic imagery in order to feel satisfied. Conflict. You have intra or interpersonal problems due to your pornography use. Withdrawal. You feel psychological distress or withdrawal symptoms in the absence of pornography use. And relapse. You experience unsuccessful efforts to reduce or stop pornography use. In the general
population of Australia, North America, and Europe, approximately 70 to 94% of adults report lifetime pornography use. Another study listed the countries with the highest number of people with problematic porn use, which was Brazil at number five, number four was Turkey, number three was Malaysia, number two was China, and number one was Taiwan. The thing is that in these studies, you need to self-identify as having problematic porn use in order to show up in the research. Many people probably have it, don't want to admit it, and even in these studies, the results could be skewed. One study found that in general, 7% of porn users feel they have a problem or self-proclaimed that they
are quote unquote addicted. But as high as 32% in another study admitted that they wanted help with their pornography use. Now, when it comes to pornography use and erectile dysfunction, the new science coming in right now is fascinating. In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the prevalence of erectile dysfunction and low sexual desire in men under the age of 40. In a study conducted in Europe in 1999, the erectile dysfunction and low sexual desire rate was 5%. In 2011, ED rates increased to 14 to 28%. Another survey of men under 40 in the US found that 34% claimed to have ED or low sexual desire.
This has led some researchers to trace the pattern of increased erectile dysfunction to the increase in pornography access we have had since the 1990s. One paper from 2015 found erectile problems may occur when real life sexual stimulation does not match the broad visual sexual stimuli of online pornography. In other words, because porn is so prevalent and people might be using it as their main source of sexual stimuli, when they're in the bedroom with someone else, they have a harder time maintaining arousal or staying erect because it's not matching what they're used to doing. A study in China found early porn use was associated with changes in reproductive hormone levels and semen quality. Of
course, there could be other reasons for the increase in male erectile dysfunction, stress, world issues, even social media access online, but researchers are not ruling out the trend of increased porn consumption as having an impact on increased male erectile dysfunction. Now, when it comes to having problematic porn use, it's important that you understand that you or the person you know who has it, it's not your fault. Pornography is considered a supern normal stimulus. And it's new for our brains to have to deal with looking at this content, let alone being on Instagram where you're being fed softcore porn like all the time. We are in an unprecedented time for sexual content on our phones, through social media, and our brains have not adapted
to deal with this type of stimulation. In some cases, studies found porn consumption is used to deal with depressive symptoms, loneliness, or even a fear of death. That being said, the increased porn use didn't help these symptoms and ended up negatively affecting people's emotional moods. Three studies I read were on the psychological effects of increased porn use. It can lead to low mood, depression, decreased self-esteem, and in extreme cases, decreases in appetite. People with problematic porn use had increased rates of general anxiety, psychological distress, and decreased bonding with family. It's also important to reflect on when you started to watch porn because the younger you were
watching porn, the more impact it has on your brain and the harder it can be to stop watching porn. So, what can you do to deal with this? One thing that's really important is to not blame yourself. Again, this is a technological issue. In fact, when you feel guilty about porn use, it can backfire and make you actually consume porn more often. One study on moral inongruence found that being religious is a better predictor of porn related problems than the actual amount of porn you are watching. This is because of guilt. The guilt of being religious and watching porn may actually lead you to seek it out. Guilt or forced abstinence creates a reward prediction error where your brain has a hard time not focusing on
not watching porn which in a backwards way makes you think about it more. Intrusive negative thoughts can actually end up leading to arousal. The clearest way I found to deal with your porn use was from a study using a diagram with these three words: liking, wanting, and needing. Ideally, when viewing porn, you want to like it. When the dopamine system in your brain starts to lean towards the area of wanting it, or in extreme cases, needing it, this is when you may need to seek help. Another study on porn use found that the more people watched it, the less they actually liked it. This makes sense when looking at the diagram from this study. When you get towards wanting or needing porn, the
reward strength actually decreases. Most of these studies talk about the importance of cognitive behavioral therapy. So, if you feel like in your life you're getting to the point where you are wanting porn or needing porn, then that's when you might need to seek out mental professional help. There is a lot of studies coming out about this right now. We're in unprecedented technological times as we've talked about for pornography access and use. Share this video. It might be an awkward share, but share with anyone who you think might be struggling with problematic porn use. And make sure you're subscribed for more science videos. We will continue to update you on the science as it comes in. Like,
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