Why You Should Quit Watching Porn

With the ubiquity and easy access of porn these days, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people are beginning to study the effects of it on our sex lives. According to a website called projectknow.com, 420 million web pages are dedicated to porn, meaning the non-porn Internet roughly consists of..well, Wikipedia. Scientists at Cambridge University recently studied the brain scans of porn addicts and found that they looked exactly like those of drug addicts. With such an inexhaustible supply of porn at our disposal, there is a growing concern that it is beginning to effect our brains, our relationships, and even our bodies (beyond, of course, your mother’s idle threats of blindness and hairy palms).

 A recent survey of a Reddit community called NoFap, which is committed to abstaining from porn and masturbation, has helped researchers open the door to a better understanding of the effects of pornography on our lives. While none of the results are conclusive, there are certainly some statistics that should give a moment’s pause. Here are some of the highlights of why it may be a good idea to stick to Netflix next time you open up your laptop:

1. For those addicted to porn, arousal actually declined with the same mate, while those who regularly found different mates were able to continual their arousal. It’s known as the Coolidge Effect, or novelty-seeking behavior. Porn, after all, trains the viewer to expect constant newness.

 2. One in five people who regularly watch porn admitted to feeling controlled by their own sexual desires.

 3. 12 percent of NoFappers report watching 5 or more hours of Internet porn every week. 59 percent report watching between 4 and 15(!!) hours of porn every week.

 4. Almost 50 percent of those on NoFap have never had sex in their lives, meaning their only experience with intimacy is purely digital.

 5. 42 percent of male college students report visiting porn sites regularly.

 6. 53 percent of the NoFappers developed a regular porn habit between the ages of 12 and 14. An alarming 16 percent said they started watching before they were 12.

 7. 64 percent report that their tastes in porn have become more extreme or deviant.

 8. Among 27-31 year olds on NoFap: 19 percent suffer from premature ejaculation, 25 percent are disinterested in sex with their partner, 31 percent have difficulty reaching orgasm, and 34 percent experience erectile dysfunction.

 9. After committing to no masturbation/porn, 60 percent of those on NoFap felt that their sexual functions had improved.

 10. And 67 percent had an increase in energy levels as well as productivity. So there it is men. While the evidence may not be scientifically thorough, there’s certainly enough to suggest that porn has a negative impact on our lives.

It might be a good time to give that overworked hand some rest, or, at the very least, use it to dial the phone number of a real live human woman and ask her out on a date.