Sexual Conditioning
The first way porn conditions people sexually is by teaching them that, “This is how people have sex, and this is how I should do it.” Porn gives people all sorts of inaccurate concepts about sex: What women are supposed to like, what men are supposed to like, how a sexual exchange is supposed to happen. Even when knowing that what you’re watching is fake, it’s been documented how watching porn conditions people’s understanding and expectations regarding sex.
The second way porn conditions people can be summed up by is, “This is what turns me on.” Continued porn use provides porn-induced preferences/fetishes. People come to believe that certain kinds of people or things naturally arouse them, but that’s simply how they’ve been trained, especially if from a young age. Then, as porn use becomes more severe, people get to the point where porn is literally the only thing that turns them on. Porn becomes more exciting than real sex, and the only way to stay aroused is by clicking from one video to the next.
Addiction-related brain changes
You don’t have to experience a full addiction to experience addiction-like affects. The most universal impact that porn has on brains across all levels of use is called sensitization.
Sensitization occurs when the brain wires together the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, emotions, and memories associated with a big reward, such as masturbating to porn – creating a pathway that can blast your reward center in the future. When activated by cues or triggers, this pathway creates powerful, hard to ignore cravings.
Bingeing on anything that induces high levels of dopamine (porn, junk food, TV) gets interpreted by your brain as, “This activity is really valuable. You need to do it more often.”
Your brain gets sensitized to porn-use as a rewarding activity, which then gets reinforced by each use.
The info for this lesson comes from Gary Wilson’s work at Your Brain on Porn.
This is a fantastic article you can read to further understand porn’s effect on your the brain.
