Cedars, November 2019

ANALYSIS by Breanna Beers and Alex Hentschel Fight The New Drug, a non-profit, non-religious organization, reports some staggering numbers about the worldwide pornography industry. n It is valued at $96 billion. n Porn sites, of which there are over 420 million, receive more regular traffic than Net- flix, Amazon and Twitter combined. n Thirty-five percent of all internet downloads are porn-related. n Over 40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites, and 28,258 users are watching pornography every second. The amount spent on porn every second is $3,075.64. n Eighty-eight percent of scenes in porn films contain acts of physical aggression. All these statistics tell one story: Pornography addiction is a disease whose spread we can hardly control and whose symptoms worsen with each diagnosis. Cedarville University is not immune. The ease of access to pornographic content has drastically changed the industry’s tra- ditional demographics. Though porn addiction has traditionally been understood to be a “grown man’s problem,” juveniles and females are taking more and more of the market share. A survey conducted by The Independent found that one third of women consume pornography at least once a week. Young children have almost unlimited access to pornographic content. A study of university students found that 93% of boys and 62% of girls had seen internet pornogra- phy during adolescence. According to The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, 64% of young people (ages 13–24) actively seek out pornography weekly or more often, and young- er women are much more likely than older women to be regular consumers of pornographic content. Though men still comprise 72% of porn users, the industry is changing rapidly. Anyone with a cellphone can access graphic content with relative ease and privacy, fueling a new epidemic. Understanding neurology Addiction is defined as continuing to repeatedly engage in a behavior despite knowing its negative consequences, and feeling unable to stop or do otherwise. However, pornogra- phy addiction is different than drug addiction. While methamphetamine or cocaine addiction comes from the drugs’ inherently ad- dictive chemical properties, pornography addiction is what psychologists call a process or behavioral addiction. Instead of responding to a chemical, the human brain builds com- pulsive habits in response to a behavior. Other types of behavioral addictions include gam- bling, exercise, or eating addictions. Despite this distinction, numerous studies have found that behavioral addictions have not only behavioral consequences, but physical and neuro- logical ones as well. Much like food, sex is a natural and integral part of the human experience. However, sexual behaviors and desires can become compulsive, and compulsions have consequences. As Harvard’s Dr. Howard Shaffer wrote, “high-emotion, high-frequency experiences” trig- ger the brain’s reward circuitry, and chronic repetition of these experiences can result in physical changes in brain structure that promote perpetuation of the behavior. Drugs induce changes in the brain by imitating naturally occurring neurotransmitters; behaviors induce similar changes by inducing higher levels of those same naturally occur- ring neurotransmitters. The younger a pornography user is, the greater pornography’s neu- rological impact. Numerous studies have found that behavioral addictions, including pornography ad- diction, result in similar or even the exact same changes to brain circuitry as drug addic- tions. These changes create a compulsive urge to return to the behavior, and may also in- crease the threshold of what it takes to achieve the same sense of satisfaction. Perverting sexuality Even though many sex-positive researchers suggest that pornography increases sexual awareness, much pornography does not depict consensual, respectful intimacy. This has a negative effect on women in particular. A study by the Washington Post analyzed the content of porn videos and found “a dismal pattern of endless scenarios of male dominance and female subordination,” wherein women are called by derogatory slurs and forced into degrading scenarios. Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College, authored “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality .” She believes that porn has a dramatic affect on sexual violence against women, mainly because young boys are exposed to violent pornography in middle school and hardly know anything different. “Around the ages of twelve to fifteen you are developing your sexual template. You get [boys] when they are beginning to construct their sexual identity,” Dines said in an inter- view with author Chris Hedges. “In porn, there is no making love ... it is about making hate. Pornography has socialized a generation of men into watching sexual torture. You are not born with that capacity — you have to be trained into it, just like you train soldiers to kill.” Anecdotal evidence finds that men expect their partners to behave exactly as women do in porn. Various studies have found correlations between pornography use and dissatis- faction in relationships, likelihood of divorce, and incidence of sexual violence. While cor- relation is not causation, and pornography’s effect on any given individual will vary widely, these general trends are significant data points. Darker types of pornography — for instance, films that contain masochism or pedo- philia — may have proportionally stronger effects on users. For instance, there is an 85% correlation between viewing child pornography and engaging in actual sexual violence against children. Similarly, violence against women has been found in some studies to cor- relate with pornography use; that correlation becomes even more significant when con- sidering primarily the use of sexually violent pornography. Fight The New Drug reports that even men who only consume “regular,” non-violent porn are more likely to use verbal coercion, drugs and alcohol to push women into sex. Even mild pornography inevitably influences the way the user views sex. The neurolog- ical impact of repeated use means that the more frequently pornography is viewed, the less the satisfaction the user will receive from the same experience. This can reduce satisfaction from real sex and may lead the individual to seek out more intense forms of pornography. Dr. Grant Hillary Benner, writing for Psychology Today, wrote that compulsive pornogra- phy leads to “distress and dysfunction;” many pornography users report feeling “out of con- trol,” finding lower satisfaction in other areas of life and feelings of intense fear and shame. Transcending reality Damon Brown, author of “ Playboy’s Greatest Covers ,” once wrote: “It seems so obvi- ous: If we invent a machine, the first thing we are going to do — after making a profit — is use it to watch porn.” The newest machine is virtual reality, or VR. Gone are the days of slinking to the corner Your Brain on Porn The destruction of intimacy in our minds and our society, and what little is being done to curb it November 2019 8