Pornography – Can I Watch It?

 

 

 

Every second around 30000 plus users watch porn. According to the ‘Google trend search’ seven Indian cites are among the top ten in the world for porn search. 70% of the users are men while women constitute to the rest 30%.

 

 

The average age of watching porn according to few researches is considered as 11 thus making it porn before puberty. Researcher Simon Lajeunesse, PhD wanted to compare people who watch porn and people who do not porn. However he couldn’t find a single person who has not watched porn.

Porn works much like a drug and can lead to addiction. It goes in through your eyes and stimulates the brain to produce chemicals (like dopamine, epinephrine, serotonin and oxytocin) enabling pleasure and gratification. Over a period of time these chemicals consolidates and rewires the brain. Thus you not only desire it but require it.

 

Curious

Individuals certainly vary in the intensity they watch porn. Few people once a while as opposed to few who have their entire hard disks and galleries filled. There might be individuals who are able to maintain a stable life without letting porn affect them much, however in many instances there are chances that individuals increase their consumption of porn and behaviors associated to it. Being not able to stop watching porn despite repeated attempts, reacting adversely if asked to stop, largely maintaining a secret life, and being affected in their overall productivity are some signs indicating the addiction to pornography.

 

It does in many ways in few the impact might be more while less in others.

 

Physically: It affects the erectile health of younger individual as opposed to adults requiring large time to recover (Recovery Times). Permanent drop in the sexual drive, loss of erection could be seen in few(Dr. Carlo Foresta).

 

Behaviorally: Porn consumption lead to a lesser level of commitment among partners (Lambert,2012). Pornography also is attributed among the major causes in marital discord and divorce(Schneider, 2002). Porn users may tend to be dominant during sex and replicating rather than focusing on the partner, to the extent that they need to visualize the porn scene to get fully aroused and get an orgasm.

Socially: Digital world makes love/sex merely voyeurism, clicking, searching, multiple tabs, fast-forwarding, constant novelty shock and surprise as opposed to the real love/sex which involves courtship, touching, being touched, smells, pheromones, emotional connection, interaction with a real person. (Garry Wilson, 2012).

 

Watching porn, masturbation and sex has always been a good feeling as it satisfies their need and also gratifies them. However when it comes to pornography as opposed to the other two it affects the growth and development if the individual in harming ways.

 

Few explanations can be: Identity formation: Pornography apart from pleasure is also used as a medium to know and understand more about sex. However this can be a major problem as pornography contains extreme, unrealistic depictions of sex acts that even most adults don’t engage in. It might be like objectifying the partner and practicing what has been seen in porn.

 

Coping to stress: watching porn releases the ‘feel good’ neuro-chemicals, and excessive watching has wired the brain as such that every time a person is faced with stressful situation the only way they might know to respond is through watching porn.

Curious

 

Porn works like “law of diminishing marginal utility”, the more a person watches, the less he is satisfied and requires more and more. However it requires conscious efforts to come out of this habit and addiction of watching porn.