Is porn hurting your brain?

Last night I masturbated. That’s not particularly exciting in itself – a pretty standard Thursday night – but when I found myself alone in bed looking for some me-time, I automatically reached for my phone for some inspiration. Realising that I didn’t know when I got in this habit, so I decided to put down the phone and just use my imagination. And it was hard (no pun intended, in fact, it was exactly the opposite)! Somehow, I’ve accidentally trained myself to get turned on immediately when I look at porn, and simultaneously managed to forget how to masturbate without it, which has the potential to be more than a little frustrating when paired with the unreliable battery in my aging iPhone.

I like porn (which may be obvious from the above statement), and I think that it has a place in anyone’s sex life, if they want it to. Although porn sex is frequently unrealistic, once you’re past early teenagerhood and have a more pragmatic view of what sex is and isn’t like in reality, it can be a great way to explore different things, and find out what you do and don’t like. And it can just be really fucking hot, which is always good in a source of visual entertainment.

But is it bad for you? There’s a lot of crackpot shit on the internet about how stopping watching porn will make you taller, less angry, have clearer skin, and somehow will make you less submissive to the Illuminati. It’s also cited as giving you “destructive erections”, better dream recollection, and an urge to expand your mind. However, no reliable source was given, and so we’re choosing to ignore these #AlternativeFacts.

Keeping it real though, let’s be grown up enough to admit that we all use porn, at least occasionally, and that’s perfectly okay. I think we’re all on the same page that masturbating is healthy, but it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. In the same way that years of intense wanking can make it difficult to enjoy handjobs from a friend, consistently using porn to feed your fantasies makes it harder for your brain to go it alone. Porn makes it easy to rapidly alleviate the physical sexual frustration, and who wants to make time for pleasuring themselves in their busy life? But does this seem healthy? We’re limiting our abilities to use our imagination, and training ourselves only to respond to certain stimuli. As well as restricting the way we get ourselves off, this can translate into problems in your wider sex life.

There’s a growing movement against any use of porn for masturbation, and I don’t just mean amongst the creepy pick-up artistry toting neckbeards occupying the NoFap forums on reddit. I don’t know if that’s completely necessary, but I think it is important to be aware of how your thought processes can be affected by what you’re choosing to wank to. In the same way that masturbatory reconditioning is a disturbing technique used to ‘cure’ homosexual tendencies and ‘retrain’ ‘correct’ desires, the same principle applies when you consistently masturbate to certain imagery. In a classic Pavlovian way, you become conditioned to become turned on only by porn – a learned behaviour that can manifest as discernible neurological changes.

Porn sex can frequently be violent and problematic, and teaching yourself only to be aroused by this imagery could lead to some questionable behaviours down the line in a desperate quest for satisfaction with a partner (which is fine, if that’s what they’re also into, but not so much if they want to explore a more varied diet).

Brainwashing yourself into enjoying any one thing exclusively sounds like a risky manoeuvre in any case, and one that’s best avoided. This can mean curating your porn habit by varying the content, and maybe sometimes making that content come straight from your mind. It’s like those brain training games, only a little more fun! You’re definitely going to get a first if even your wanking time is being used to develop your cognitive abilities.

I don’t think that we need to break the porn habit entirely, but maybe occasionally try and do something different: try a new butt plug, hang upside down from the ceiling, but most importantly, use your imagination.