Yeah the whole porn addiction thing is nonsense especially with how religious right often portrays it. They make it seem like a genuine drug where watching porn will ruin you and your relationships and it wont be long before you’re shunning life and relationships because you’re too busy studying your porn.
I do think that it can be a sign of other mental illness in one’s life. People who utilize livecams and chats can find themselves in parasocial relationships, and people can self medicate with a quick dopamine hit by watching porn.
Diagnosing the root cause as porn addiction is like diagnosing someone with a hoarding disorder as having an old newspaper addiction. Like no this is a symptom of something bigger and healthy people are able to consume the news without it becoming a problem.
This is fascinating, but I’m having a hard time grasping something. The title and article mentions that porn addiction itself is not backed by science, but the findings seem to just indicate what the most common predictor for porn addiction is religiosity rather than the previously theorized availability through the internet. Am I misunderstanding something here? I think I’ll give it another read…
The abstract of the meta-analysis might help you understand what they found
The notion of problematic pornography use remains contentious in both academic and popular literature. Although the mental health community at large is divided as to the addictive versus non-addictive nature of Internet pornography, substantial numbers of individuals report “feeling” as if their use of Internet pornography is problematic. The present work seeks to construct a model related to problematic pornography use that is clearly derived from empirical literature and that provides directions to be tested in future research. The focus of the present work is on those perceptions as they relate to the overarching experience of moral incongruence in pornography use, which is generally thought of as the experience of having one’s behaviors be inconsistent with one’s beliefs. To this end, we put forth a model of pornography problems due to moral incongruence. Within this model, we describe how pornography-related problems—particularly feelings of addiction to pornography—may be, in many cases, better construed as functions of discrepancies—moral incongruence—between pornography-related beliefs and pornography-related behaviors. A systematic review of literature and meta-analysis is conducted in order to evaluate support for this model, and the implications of this model for research and clinical practice are discussed.
Not an expert but I’m inclined to believe the other side. David Ley is on XHamster’s payroll.
Will Ley tell xHamster customers that every study ever published on males (about 70) links more porn to less sexual and relation satisfaction? Will Ley tell them that all 52 neurological studies on porn users/sex addicts report brain changes seen in drug addicts? Will he inform his audience that 50% of porn users report escalating to material they previously found uninteresting or disgusting? Somehow I doubt it.
This doesn’t look like mere religious fundamentalism to me, it looks like there is a shitload of research that supports the idea of excessive porn use being harmful. Is it addictive in the sense that heroin is addictive, no, probably not.
https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articles-about-the-studies/
Porn is absolutely problematic but there’s a difference to it distorting societal views and expectations around sex and whether or not it’s addictive. Porn gets an interestingly unique bad rep. These are fantastic points to bring up to help center ones understanding of addiction medicine and porn’s effects on society. Thank you for sharing the links.
Porn absolutely does get a bad rep, but I also do think we can’t pretend that it’s not harmful.
Honestly I have no difficulty believing that it has potential to become a pretty severe addiction for some.
Gary Wilson’s Your Brain on Porn is a problematic source. It’s not a peer reviewed academic source and its citations should be taken with a pinch of salt. The tone of the website often appears downright unhinged, especially when discussing the work of clinical experts such as neuroscientist Nicole Prouse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Wilson_(author)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Prause
Clinical Psychologist David Ley’s publishing history includes many relevant contributions to peer reviewed publications.
https://www.davidleyphd.com/publications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Ley
Neither APA’s DSM-V nor WHO’s ICD-11 recognise any addiction disorder related to pornography. While ICD-11 recognises compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD), the absence of a close fit to established addiction models has been remarked. On the other hand, there is a substantial cottage industry based on this pseudoscientific concept.
