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When watched in excess, the sinful pleasure of watching the forbidden can harm your mind.
"Consuming pornography does not lead to more sex, it leads to more porn. Pornography condition the consumer to be satisfied with an impression of extreme sex rather than the real."
When a conversation about porn is brought up for discussion, it is usually quickly hushed down for a variety of reasons, including our social conditioning. Porn, particularly internet porn, is a multifaceted topic with many fascinating facts. Facts include: the first video streamed on the internet was a porn video in 1998; 40% of all internet traffic is thought to be porn-related; 35% of all internet downloads are porn; and 95% of people who work in the porn industry have never even been to a porn set; they are software developers who work on the technical end of websites and apps.
When it comes to South Asian countries, particularly India and Pakistan, discussions about porn become hypocritical. Almost every year, these two countries have had the highest number of adult content viewers. Theoretically, these porn-addicted, over-populated regions should have sexually progressive societies. The truth is quite different.
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The Indian government has banned most porn sites since a few years, although access to them is just a few clicks away. Sex and porn in general are shunned and frowned upon, even in the most progressive circles, for being ‘vulgar and gross’. It's imperative to note here that sex and porn are two very different genres: while porn portrays sex in aggressive, unrealistic ways, sexual intimacy is physical pleasure that's natural. The issue we're addressing here is the fact that sex and porn are co-related more than they should be and men and women expecting to reenact porn in real life, fail, because hey, porn performances are done by pros, sex is supposed to be intimate and in the moment.
Thanks to taboos though, our society has not been able to have an open conversation about how much porn is too much porn, which often leads to men getting engrossed in this lucrative vice more than they should. If you're someone who consumes porn mindlessly, without thinking about the amount you're consuming, it's time to take two steps back, and read on.
Here are a few ways excessive porn can harm you
Distance from reality and consent
The world of internet porn is scripted and full of ridiculous storylines that involve anything from a pizza delivery guy to an astronaut. As porn inevitably becomes the only source of sex education in regressive societies, viewers involuntarily take the half-baked storyline of these videos as a manual for intercourse in real life. This leads to a bad understanding of consent, which has adverse effects on society as a whole.
In 2010, multiple researchers analysed more than 300 popular porn scenes and found that 88% contained physical aggression.
Lack of self esteem
The actors in these videos have been doing this for a living for years, they are experienced and know how to handle themselves in front of the camera. A young viewer who views them regularly will end up comparing his own performance and physique to them and gradually resent himself. This eventually leads to lack of self-esteem.
This lower self-esteem regarding one’s physical and sexual ability leads to performance anxiety in real life. Sexologists have blamed porn addiction as the major reasons for performance anxiety in men aged between16 and 28.
Low sexual pleasure and libido
The content of internet porn is created and beautified by a team of people. Professionals are involved to make the videos pleasing to the eye, from a make- up artist to a sound editor .Viewing them regularly can make one assume that physical intimacy is going to be as glossy and picture perfect as that, while reality is often very different. This leads to disappointment in self, one’s partner and in the act of physical intimacy itself. Excessive porn has been labelled as one of the major reasons for lower libido in men.
Harming relationships
As a regular porn viewer, certain acts become a norm of intercourse in the viewer’s perception of sex, while their partners may have a very different idea of physical intimacy. This leads to lack of satisfaction in relationships and creates physical discomfort.
Addiction
One study from the University of Cambridge likened porn addiction to drug addiction, after finding that they both trigger the brain in a similar way. Dutch neuroscientists Dr. Gert Jan Meerkerk says, “Of all activities on the internet, porn has the most potential to become addictive.”
Internet websites are designed to keep the viewer engrossed and hooked by popping multiple videos that the viewer may like. The websites measure their success by the time a user spends on them, which can be translated to ‘Porn sites want to make you an addict’. The point we're making is that porn has the potential to go from being the necessary release of physical tension to a crippling addiction that alters one’s ideas about carnal desires, without them even knowing.
