The reason you are no longer satisfied with your sex life may be just because you are addicted to porn movies

The reason you are no longer satisfied with your sex life may be just because you are addicted to porn movies

Few things are truly universal. Although people around the world speak different languages, eat different foods, and even feel different emotions, millions of people around the world watch pornography. They have no national or language boundaries and share a common "interest." Although many people watch pornography, it is considered a source of social ills, and even politicians in Utah have labeled pornography a "public health hazard."


Due to the popularity of the Internet and the rapid development of network connections, the porn industry has quietly changed in the past few decades. At the same time, it is more immersive than ever before, and even capable of virtual reality. Earlier this year, researchers at Newcastle University in the UK pointed out that virtual reality technology has changed the pornographic experience, turning people from viewers to the protagonists of the experience, which may blur the line between reality and fantasy, may destroy normal relationships, and like harmful behaviors.
But is there real evidence that pornography may or may not affect people, and can research provide any answers? It’s a difficult question for scientists to study, as the very nature of pornography means that researchers must rely on people self-reporting their preferences for it, or on performing them in experimental settings, which can feel unnatural (and no doubt a little awkward).
That said, there is a growing body of research that can provide important clues, and BBC Future has taken stock of what researchers have concluded so far:
Sexual violence
The fundamental question about pornography is whether it encourages and helps normalize couples, or whether it causes social evils such as rape and sexual violence. This possibility has been explored for decades, for example: in the 1970s, Berl Kutchinsky, a professor of criminology at the University of Copenhagen, studied sex crimes in Denmark, Sweden and Germany, countries that legalized pornography in the 1960s and 1970s. He found no correlation between increased crime rates and decriminalization, and in fact many types of sex crimes decreased significantly during the period, including rape and child molestation.
In 1995, a multivariate analysis of 24 studies involving more than 4,000 participants measured the average correlation between pornography viewing and awareness of rape and sexual assault in the group. The study also introduced the "rape fiction" and assessed their awareness of sexual assault by asking them questions such as: Asking participants: When a woman goes to a man's home or apartment on a first date, does this mean that she expects to have sex with her boyfriend?
Compared with the control group, those who watched pornography were more likely to endorse the "rape fiction" scenario, but this was limited to experimental studies. Non-experimental studies without participant-reported information are not relevant, so these findings are inconclusive.
What is a “normal” sex life?
There are many reasons why people have less sex, and ultimately it can be attributed to sexual behavior. However, in recent years, pornography has been accused of becoming more violent and "perverted". A long-time pornographic film star said in a documentary about pornography that in the 1990s, pornography made people want to have sex in bed. But in 2010, researchers analyzed more than 300 porn scenes and found that 88% of them involved physical violations and attacks. Most of the perpetrators are men, and their targets are women, and the most common response of the latter to sexual assault is to show pleasure or acquiescence.
What do these findings suggest? In 2009, a review of more than 80 studies concluded that the causal relationship between porn use and violent behavior is tenuous, and that any findings are likely to be exaggerated by the media and politicians. It’s time to abandon the hypothesis that pornography promotes sexual aggression.
Neil Malamuth of the University of California, Los Angeles, has conducted a large number of studies on pornography and sexual violence, including 300 men who have committed sexual violence. He concluded that men who have committed sexual violence and watched a lot of sexually aggressive pornography are more likely to commit sexual assaults on women. In 2013, he told a reporter from BBC Radio 4 that watching pornography is like drinking alcohol. It is not harmful in nature, but it has the potential to harm others for those who have risk factors.
Brain and body
According to a 2014 study, watching pornography reduces the part of the brain related to pleasure. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany, studied the brains of more than 60 men. In the test, they watched a large number of pornographic pictures and asked about their habits when watching pornographic pictures. The results showed that when people watch pornographic pictures, the part of the brain that constitutes the reward system, the striatum, gradually becomes smaller, which means that they may be more sexually aroused by more pictures. But the researchers could not conclude whether the smaller striatum prompted them to watch more pornography, or whether frequent pornography watching caused the brain's striatum to shrink.
Erectile dysfunction is often thought to be caused by desensitization from watching pornography, but there is still a lack of research to support this theory. Researchers from UCLA and Concordia University in the United States said that in fact, watching pornography can help sexual arousal. They found that most of the men surveyed felt "sexually excited" when watching pornography in the laboratory.
Relationship
A 17-year-old British man pointed out in the government's survey on sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools that "my friend wants his girlfriend to dress like a porn movie star and know how to flirt like a porn movie star. In our lives, porn movies are easy to obtain. Sometimes classmates watch them on their mobile phones in the classroom, and sometimes on the bus.
However, pornography is thought to affect relationships, especially between young people. Research has tended to focus on adults, finding differences between the two groups. In 1989, Douglas Kenrick warned in a study that watching pornography could make men lose interest in their sexual partners, a "very influential" study in psychology.
Rhonda Balzarini, a doctoral student at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said that in November 2016, she conducted a similar experiment using 10 times the number of participants - 150 heterosexual women and 400 heterosexual men, in three separate studies, and questioned the results of the study.
She showed male and female subjects centerfolds of nude magazines depicting heterosexual sex scenes, as well as photos of clothed models and abstract art, and found that neither male nor female subjects changed the degree to which they subsequently reported feeling loved or attracted.
Still, Rhonda acknowledged that the two studies may have different results because the first study was conducted in 1989, when pornography was not as abundant as it is today.
On the contrary, a study reported in May this year pointed out that people who start watching pornography may indicate divorce. Researchers found from three sets of research data between 2006 and 2014 that Americans who start watching pornography are likely to double their divorce rate. Those who watch pornography 2-3 times a month have the highest breakup rate. However, this study did not address whether starting to watch pornography is the cause of divorce or a sign of marital cracks. More importantly, this study found that people who watch pornography very frequently (watching pornography at least once a day) have a lower divorce rate than those who have never watched pornography, and almost no divorce.
Sexual life
Pornography has long been blamed for alienating couples from each other, perhaps because the erotic scenes in pornography fascinate viewers, making men less satisfied with real sex. But the opposite is true for women.
Researchers believe this may be because women are more willing to watch porn with their boyfriends rather than alone, while men rarely watch "negotiated sex" when watching alone. Another study found that people who watch porn with their partners are more focused and satisfied with their sex lives than those who watch alone.
Addiction
There are many negative effects of watching pornography, and addiction is the biggest one. A study from the University of Cambridge in the UK linked pornography addiction to drug addiction and found that the two conditions have similar effects on the brain.
The men were scanned with fMRIs while asked to rate sexual and non-sexual video clips, and the results showed that half of the men had compulsive sexual behavior (CSB), while the other half did not. Compulsive sexual behavior, commonly known as sexual addiction, involves obsessing over sexual fantasies, urges or behaviors that causes people distress and negatively affects their work, relationships and other aspects of their lives.
Scientists have found that people with compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) have three brain regions that are more active when drug stimulation causes addiction. Compulsive sexual behaviors reportedly have a higher craving for sexual video clips, but they no longer like them. The separation between craving and addiction is consistent with a theory called "incentive motivation," which holds that addicts become addicted to drugs because they want to be addicted, not because they like drugs.
But the researchers concluded that while their finding that the brains of people with compulsive sexual behavior mirrored the effects of drug addiction in some way, it did not necessarily prove that pornography was addictive.
The UK's National Health Service has likened sex addiction to drug addiction and claims the disorder can include an out-of-control addiction to pornography. While pornography is a component of sex addiction, whether it causes this addictive effect remains to be proven.
Sexual Behavior
Porn has been found to make people more open and indulgent in sexual behavior, but a study found that porn can make people more comfortable. A survey of 265 men reported that gay men who watched more porn without condoms were less likely to use protection during sex. If the porn they watched included scenes with condoms, they were also more likely to use condoms.
Condoms are unpopular in the porn industry, where actors are often tested for sexually transmitted diseases. In 2016, the California government required porn actors to use condoms during sex. Although advocates believe it is necessary to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among porn actors, critics say the move will lead to the exodus of the porn industry from the United States.
Porn has also been linked to promiscuous sex, with some evidence suggesting that watching porn can increase casual sex sevenfold. But this only occurs among unhappy people.
The data, which was analyzed from 2002 to 2004, showed that people who watched more porn had more sexual partners and more affairs, and were more willing to pay for sex. As with much of the research on the subject, it's unclear whether porn causes these behaviors, or if there are underlying factors that lead to the behaviors.
Attitudes toward women
Pornography has long been accused of fostering sexist attitudes and leading to unrealistic sexual expectations. Research has proven this to be contradictory, but one study went a step further. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of California, Los Angeles in the US asked 200 adults about their pornography consumption and rated their personalities based on "agreeableness", one of the five personality traits that people are rated as, along with altruism, helpfulness, trust and sociability.
By observing test subjects watching porn in the lab, the researchers found that watching more porn would produce negative attitudes toward women, including: stereotypes and hostility, but this phenomenon only occurred in men with low affinity.
Summarize
Viewing pornography has been linked to a host of personal and social problems, but for every study that comes along to discredit pornography, the evidence is often mixed and the research has limitations in methodologies and sampling.
Will more immersive pornography bring more risks in the future? It’s too early to tell. The question of causality is of great relevance to porn research: Does pornography attract people and make them more likely to commit sexual aggression? Are people in unhappy relationships, those with smaller reward systems in their brains, and those with sex addictions affected by pornography? This is a tricky area that needs further research, but getting more definitive answers will help to confirm its relevance. The evidence so far suggests that the likelihood of pornography having a negative impact depends largely on “personal taste.”

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.

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