Is Porn Harmful?

What’s the big deal with porn? Is porn harmful for you? Is porn harmful for your brain? Is porn harmful for your body or your sex life or your emotional health? Is porn harmful in general, or to our culture?

These are all perfectly valid questions. In recent years, cultural attitudes toward pornography have shifted, and what was once a no-brainer has become a much more complex, complicated cultural conversation. Let’s look at each of these questions individually.

Is porn harmful for your brain?

Yes. Porn definitely takes advantage of your brain’s natural mechanisms to create an artificial high. The thing is, sexual release feels great, and pornography stimulates that release. So when you indulge in porn, you’re giving your brain a shortcut to getting that orgasmic high; so much so that your brain now wants that shortcut over and over again.

That can be a problem when it comes to sex. Which leads us to the next question:

Is porn harmful for your sex life?

Yes. If porn short-circuits your brain so that you seek sexual release more quickly, then just imagine what that does to your sex life. How can you have fulfilling, satisfying sex with your spouse when you’re constantly fighting your own mind and body?

There’s a common fallacy that says that introducing porn into your sex life can “spice things up.” This could not be further from the truth. Porn isn’t real sex. Porn is beyond fake. The sex in porn is as real as Jason Bourne’s fight scenes or the dinosaurs in Jurassic World. You wouldn’t study movies to learn about paleontology or how to beat up someone with a magazine, so why would you turn to porn to learn about sex? The short answer: don’t.

Is porn harmful for your emotional health?

Yes. Possibly the worst, most detrimental part of porn is the devastation it wreaks on you emotionally. It is practically impossible to use porn and feel great about yourself. We certainly haven’t met very many people who feel that way – and that includes the people who make it.

Porn is a cheat, and deep down, you know it. It can wreck you emotionally, starve you sexually, and warp you mentally. Is porn harmful? Absolutely.

Now here’s something you can do about it.