A couple of 20-year-old developers make $500,000 a month promising to help men to stop watching porn, but exposed their private porn watching habits.
A couple of 20-year-old developers make $500,000 a month promising to help men to stop watching porn, but exposed their private porn watching habits.
You’re not wrong, but like gambling, porn addiction exists, but that goes to your first point about therapy. I don’t understand why anyone would load this type of information into an app. I assume it’s ignorance to technology, which is sad, but I can’t help but think how anyone would think it’s a good idea.
Most people don’t really even think about privacy.
Sad but true.
Porn / sex “addiction” does not exist. Some nice folks who were super invested in proving it gave up a while back.
Most people have perfectly average porn / sex use, and are shamed by a partner or cultural messages.
A small percentage of people deal with “OCSB”, out of control sexual behavior.
I disagree, but that’s fine. There are people that squeeze porn into every open minute of their lives, sacrifice relationship is because of it, and spend more than they have to view it. If that’s not addiction, then we might as well say that any non-chemical vice can’t be considered one, like gambling.
Just because many people don’t seem to notice their addiction that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The methodology used to disprove the existence of porn addiction is just to completely and utterly ignore all the people who experience it and than claiming it doesn’t exist
I haven’t read any such study myself, but it sounds like a BS study. Anything that controls a person’s life can be considered an addiction. There are certainly people where porn has controlled their lives. One person who’s been very vocal and brutally candid about how it was ruining his life is The Primeagen, a coder on YT. My best friend’s father died in huge debts because he was buying copious amounts of porn outside of his means, and phone sex lines. That’s addiction.
We are talking about sexual addiction and bro linked studies about average and moderate use of adult content lmao
I understand people have big feelings about sex / porn. At present addiction is a narrowly defined medical issue; the NIH has some great information about it, and some cool brain scans! The science, (PET and fMRI) disagree with the feeling porn / sex qualify as an addiction. Researchers and clinicians do recognize that some people are profoundly impacted by sex / porn, and acknowledge it - OCSB, out of control sexual behavior. Researchers and clinicians want to have a better understanding / definition of OCSB, but it’s very difficult to get funding for research into sexuality.
David Ley talks about this in numerous books.
Mayo Clinic - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/compulsive-sexual-behavior/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20360453
NHS mentions behavioral addiction - https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/, but oddly doesn’t support it in the IDC-11 🤷♂️
The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) - https://www.aasect.org/position-sex-addiction
Grubbs, J. B., Perry, S. L., Wilt, J. A., & Reid, R. C. (2020). Sexual addiction 25 years on: A systematic and methodological review of empirical literature and an agenda for future research. Clinical Psychology Review, 82, 101925. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7044607/
Prause, N., Pfaus, J. G., & Steele, V. R. (2021). Viewing sexual stimuli associated with greater sexual responsiveness, not erectile dysfunction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 130(7), 742–749. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/abn-abn0000501.pdf
I have more, but I’m at the wrong device
Light hearted blog post if you don’t want to dig through research - https://www.livingauthenticity.com/post/sex-addiction-isn-t-real-here-s-what-the-science-actually-says
I’m not saying someones sex or porn habits might be causing harm, but please consider the confounding variables defining why it’s considered harm. Consider who is most often reporting the harm. And, please, keep in mind there is a multi billion dollar industry (not considering churches), out there who want to convince someone their behavior is problematic and can be fixed for a nominal fee.
Thanks for the resources. I will read through them when I get a chance to give them a fair read. Just on the surface, it feels like the term addiction is too narrow, or perhaps there should be a better word that encompasses compulsive behaviors that control one’s life. Things like food addiction, gambling, porn, gaming, or literally anything that is done to an unhealthy amount feels like it should be grouped as addiction to me.
Addendum: The terminology: OCSB - out of control sexual behavior, seems to be slowly losing favor to CSB, compulsive sexual behavior.
Reading through this thread has been a bizarre experience - I genuinely couldn’t have imagined the amount of pushback you get here just for speaking up for people struggling with this. It seems exactly the kind of thing I’d have expected deep compassion for, given the userbase here.
Still, my conclusion is that much of it boils down to the term “addiction” - since it’s a medical term, people seem to think that once you medicalize it, you’re paving the way to ban it.
Personally I don’t care what term we use. If people prefer “compulsive porn use,” then fine. For me the point has always been the lived experience of what people mean when they talk about living with a porn addiction - even if it officially doesn’t count as one. In my opinion it does, because it checks virtually all the boxes of the standard definition: you need more of it, you seek out more extreme stuff, you get cravings when you stop, and you keep going long after the negatives have started to outweigh the positives. If that’s not addiction, then I don’t know what is.
Its crazy that everyone is comfortable with the idea of social media being able to cause an addiction, but when the said social media is about sexually explicit content, it automatically becomes ultra healthy and extremely good with no limits and its use always legitimate and to encourage. Porn sites are, at their core, still social media designed with the very intention to keep people into the loop of consumption. Porn sites don’t profit from people who use it every once in a while but to users who watch it hours and hours of it on a daily basis
Then we can argue to the fact that it’s is technically an addiction or not, but if you got all the symptoms of an addiction, if it impacts your life and you still do that even I it means postponing important things of your life, craving it inappropriate moments and constantly feeling the pulsion to do that no matter what even in public, THAT IS AN ADDICTION! I have seen firsthand people who have COMPLETELY changed just by removing porn, including myself. Again, not removing sex or masturbation, but just removing EXCLUSIVELY porn (and maybe increasing how much they have real sex in real life). It can definitely change your life to the better. Moreover, the guy who linked the studies is acting like porn isn’t a multi-billion dollars industry managed by huge corporations with basically unlimited power
Again, competent clinicians and researchers are not denying anyone’s experience, or that sex / porn can on occasion be problematic. There is a movement to more appropriately label distressing sex / porn use.