Courting disaster

More important, while glued to his screen(s), a young guy is not learning courtship skills and or spending time around real potential mates—the very tasks for which mammalian adolescence evolved. His brain is not wiring his sexual pleasure to flirting, pheromones or three-dimensional partners of normal proportions providing ordinary simulation. In days gone by, nervous young men fumbled through one-on-one, vanilla sex for a bit before graduating to the kama sutra. Now, a 17-year old virgin envisions his first time with his first love as involving two of her friends, handcuffs, strap-on gear and a massive amount of lube.

Nor will our hero be able to explain to a future sweetheart his apparent lack of ardor, his fading erection and condom mishaps, or his frantic attempts to stay hard by fantasizing about watching someone have sex. He doesn’t have a clue why he isn’t responding, or how to go about repairing the damage. Nor do his peers.

Alas, many mates are too confused or hurt to hang around in such a disheartening situation. Resulting performance anxiety makes our hero’s situation worse. Could this explain why 36 percent of young Japanese guys and 20 percent of young Frenchmen have no interest in real partners? Or why abstinence rates in the States are increasing?

Today, a 13-year-old’s sexual pathways are chiseled by hardcore porn, multiple windows, and constant clicking. In contrast, Dad’s matured to Sally next door and his fertile imagination. At first, we were astonished to see some older porn addicts recover from PISD (porn-induced sexual dysfunction) more quickly than young ones. Is it because thirty- and forty-somethings had well established brain pathways relating to connections with real partners from pre-Internet days?

The good news is that brains retain some plasticity even after teen years. When a guy stops using synthetic sexual cues (or fantasizing to them) for 2-3 months, his brain’s recovering reward circuitry begins to ‘look around’ for the sexual cues it evolved to find. After all, its top priority is passing on genes, so it wants action. Gradually it wires the neuronal circuitry for natural cues more strongly to the brain’s pleasure center. The girl next door looks more interesting.

Said a 21-year old guy three months after giving up porn/masturbation:

I remember saying to my girlfriend, during my very worst days of porn use and porn-related erectile dysfunction, that it didn’t feel like I’d had sex yet. She didn’t really understand, and I couldn’t explain myself. But last night, OMG it felt so good. I could feel everything, and it was great. My penile sensitivity has increased loads. For the first time in my life, it feels like I’ve lost my virginity.

Another guy:

[Early twenties] Day 43 now, I am definitely seeing a girl as the source of my arousal now, rather than seeing her as an image that I can store up for later use. I see a hot girl now and think ‘That’s what I want’, and try to take steps to meet her. It’s been a gradual flipping of the switch. I’m probably about 90% there, but I can remember being 10%, 20% etc.

Today, average young Westerners are feverishly cultivating neuronal connections between all manner of Internet porn and their sexual response. No longer can we take for granted that teen arousal arises from some mysterious, individual, unchanging, core sexual identity. Thanks to the teen brain’s incessant quest for novelty to relieve its owner’s ever present boredom, some teens manage to wire in sexual tastes that cause them to doubt their fundamental sexual orientation.

A few caveats

Adolescence is a unique period of brain development. In the right environment, it’s highly functional and adaptive. No matter how keen hunter-gatherer teens were to seek thrills, they were also like bumper-car drivers. They had few opportunities to wire their sexual responsiveness to anything beyond the neighboring hotties.

The brains of today’s kids are equally eager, yet they’re titillated with abnormally stimulating erotica that pushes all their buttons: passion for novelty, delight in shocking things, potential for overriding normal satiety, and desire for sexual instruction with “adult” cachet.

Adults tend to assume that Internet porn use is harmless because “porn has been around a long time.” But how many males born, say, in 1960 started daily porn use circa 1973? Especially the hard-core, endlessly novel porn available now?

Today’s kids can’t necessarily stop themselves when they’ve had enough:

For years, like since I was 11-years old, I have been looking at porn and masturbating. I just can’t resist it and I do it too much now. I wanna stop it now.  I’m 15 years old and wanna stop it because I think it’s affecting my social life, relationships, and school grades. How do I stop?

Adults also often assume kids will naturally leave impulsive behaviors behind at adulthood. Indeed, studies suggest that college-age kids do tend to outgrow binge drinking, pot use, etc.  However, Internet porn habits may prove to be different. Did the young adults who outgrow substance abuse start their daily drinking/pot use at age 11?

[Age 35] When I was in my early teens and my mum would take us to the library, I’d sneak off to find an erotic novel. Just the talk/description of a woman would get me going. God, how I long for those days again LOL. Today, you can get ‘maxed out’ on porn. In the early stages it was a novelty and hard to get hold off. Over the last few years, porn is always on tap. Now it’s a necessity rather than a thrill/reward. How sad is that? I have no moral objection to porn. In fact quite the opposite, but when you get to my state, it’s no longer a positive, just a huge negative. A big, fat anchor around my neck.

Remember, learning to binge drink or get high isn’t the brains’ prime evolutionary imperative; reproduction is. Food habits may be a better analogy. Do 22-year-olds suddenly change their habitual food choices? Now that junk foods are ubiquitous, 4 out of 5 adult Americans are overweight, and nearly half of those obese (i.e., hooked on food). Do they change their ingrained sexual tastes? Perhaps not unless they hit the wall of PISD.

Long-term effects

Obviously, watching Internet porn from an early age does not mean the user will end up a deviant, or more sexually active, or more violent toward partners—although some may believe it’s normal for sex partners to relish “facials” while having every orifice filled with objects. Tragically, however, a percentage of users will end up addicted, and that percentage may be higher than we think, given the rates of Internet addiction already affecting adolescents (6-18%, depending upon whether Italy, China or Hungary did the research).

For many, the lingering effects of heavy Internet porn use are likely to be analogous to effects on online gamers. Overstimulation leaves the brain with a need for intense stimulation (unless it is consciously restored to normal sensitivity). Other activities seem boring in comparison. In this short TED talk, “The Demise of Guys?” famous psychologist Philip Zimbardo describes the ill effects of widespread “arousal addiction.”

Such effects impact relationships. Constant novelty is one of the prime reasons Internet porn is a superstimulus for the brain. Erotic training that relies on novelty as aphrodisiac can condition users such that familiar partners quickly lose their luster—confining users affected to shallow hook-ups. Also, the non-climax aspects of sex (skin-to-skin contact, kissing, comforting stroking, playful behavior, etc.) may be too unfamiliar and subtle to register as deliciously rewarding. Unfortunately, these are the very behaviors that soothe the brain and help couples strengthen their bonds.

Perhaps it is the easiness and comfort of just sitting in front of my computer jerking to images that I don’t have to please. I can go at my own pace and not have to worry about them. Having a real girl in my bed kind of distracts me.

Brain plasticity education

Maybe no one should be turned loose on the planet today without thorough education about the brain’s reward circuitry and its unique vulnerabilities during adolescence. That’s when it’s bombarded by junk food, drugs, video games, iPhones, and online erotica. Why not teach kids the simplified science behind the potential effects of extreme stimuli on the brain? (Watch Things You Didn’t Know About Porn for possible concepts suitable for 10-13-year olds.)

Today, adolescents can (and do) wire up their brains to random erotic caricatures that their ancestors never imagined, let alone viewed intently for years before mating. Users may know that porn’s cartoonish 2-D stimuli are nearly as unreal as Santa. Yet those who inadvertently wire their ability to climax to gonzo porn themes are sometimes horrified. Many are afraid to ask for help because they think they are hopeless perverts. Some are even suicidal.

Advisors who don’t understand the difference between fundamental sexual orientation and randomly acquired, plastic tastes can increase an adolescent’s angst. Sadly, few experts yet know enough about brain plasticity to help kids rewire, which results in some sorry advice.

As pubescent brains are going to start wiring up sexual tastes anyway, give kids the facts and explicit information they are seeking—without the implausible scenarios porn makers must rely on to lure viewers whose brains have grown numb to subtler sexual pleasures. Teach kids the difference between sexual orientation and sexual tastes, and how the two can slip out of sync with habitual use of extreme stimulation. Also, teach them the behavioral-addiction signs to watch for and how to reverse those changes.

 [Age 17, arrived with weak erections, and was still showing limited signs of erectile health on Day 50 of no porn/masturbation] Day 76: Feeling great, way happier and more energetic and way more libido. My morning wood this morning was ridiculous – it literally wouldn’t go down for like 20 minutes even standing up! I’m gonna give it 90 days so I’ve done a full 3 months and then I should be completely back to normal and ready to try and find a partner. So relieved this actually works.

And to end:

I’m 27 and I have a science and medical education, and I strongly believe that this brain-plasticity viewpoint about Internet porn needs to get out there. We’re losing the opportunity to educate young men who are suffering from physiological problems within their brains. Basically, I wish I had learned about this 15 years ago.

For more information:

1. Teenage Brain: A work in progress (Fact Sheet) NIH
2. FRONTLINE – One Reason Teens Respond Differently to the World: Immature Brain Circuitry
3. FRONTLINE-  INSIDE THE TEENAGE BRAIN (Documentary)
4. The Brain: The Trouble With Teens

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—Photos ssoosay/Flickr

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