Viewing pornography is actually nothing new. People have been doing it for hundreds, if not thousands of years
But it's only today that we're beginning to see pornography being distributed on such a widespread and easily accessible scale.
This is thanks to the internet. With some people claiming that porn takes up a huge percentage of total web content.
Because porns widespread accessibility is so new
Psychologists are still trying to find out what effect it could have on the human brain
It's all very new and unexplored territory for researchers but people are already coming to some pretty interesting conclusions
Here are five psychological facts about porn addiction
One you can develop a tolerance just like drug addiction. In the context of addiction, tolerance refers to a situation
Where someone becomes more and more acclimatized to the addictive behavior to the point where they need more and more of whatever it is
They're addicted to in order to receive the same effects. According to an article published in "The journal Behavioral sciences"
Porn an addiction may function in a similar way to a drug addiction.
What this translates to is the Attic needing to seek out porn more often
and viewing more extreme or illicit types of porn to receive the same effect.
Interestingly, a 2016 study published in the journal "Neuroimage" actually examined people's brains with the
FMRI - "Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging"
while they were watching porn. What they found was that while watching porn,
there was elevated activity in the ventral striatum.
Which suggests that the brains pleasure centers were releasing dopamine.
There's still a lot of research left to do on this subject and we'd love to hear your thoughts about it!
Two. Some studies have suggested that porn addiction does not affect sexual health and function
One of the most repeated facts about porn addiction and porn use in general is that it can negatively impact
Healthy sexual health and function, but is this really true?
More recent studies have challenged this and one published in 2015 really stands out published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine
The researchers studied men in three different countries and came up to the inclusion that porn had no effect on male sex
disturbances
they also stayed that linking porn to sexual dysfunction is probably wrong and it's more likely due to stress and other
Factors, this is only one study, but there are others to back this up as well
Do you agree with what this study is saying three porn addiction could be fueled by the Coolidge effect
The Coolidge effect is an interesting phenomenon that could have a substantial role in porn addiction
Simply put the Coolidge effect is seen when males seem to become more aroused
Whenever a new female partner is introduced
It could be caused by male evolutionary programming to fertilize as many females as possible
how does this affect porn think about it almost endless new females are available to view on the internet and
Viewing one female after another can actually fuel arousal for prolonged periods due to the Coolidge effect
This could be one reason as to why porn addiction could occur
Do you believe the Coolidge effect has anything to do with porn addiction? We'd love to hear your ideas on this one as well
For porn addictions can impact the way we behave in relationships and intimate situations
This is probably one of the most important things about porn addiction
How does it impact our relationships an article published by the American psychology Association?
Try to tackle this important issue
They cited various studies that suggested men
Experienced lower levels of intimacy with their real partners after using porn these studies also
suggested that porn news and men
Resulted in lower sexual quality and even depression on the other hand those same studies also touched on some very interesting things
about women in porn according to these studies women watching porn resulted in increased intimacy and
Improved sexual quality in the relationships they were engaged in
Five
Neuroplasticity and porn will end things with a very interesting concept
Neuroplasticity this is the ability of a person's praying to change and a refers to increases in gray matter
Rhe routing of synapses and other interesting changes that can happen in the brain
These changes can result in different types of behavior in the individual and even different types of emotion
obviously the younger a person is the more
Neuroplasticity they have as young people are constantly learning and changing
But what does this have to do with porn because teen brains have higher degrees of neuroplasticity?
Some have suggested that their brains are more vulnerable to being rewired by porn
This could make it harder to resist addictive things in general and form lasting
Compulsive habits such as viewing porn regularly like many parts of porn addiction
This is an area which still needs tons of research as these are all very new concepts
Does this theory make sense to you our teen brains really more vulnerable to porn addiction due to neuroplasticity?
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