March 29, 2019, (LifeSiteNews) — Young men are being robbed of their ability to enter into natural sexual relationships with women as frequent pornogrpahy viewing rewires their brains, undermining their ability to perform sexually.
In a sense, males in their teens through their 30s are being inoculated against sex, against intimacy, against procreation, against expressing love, against marriage, against happiness.
And that vaccination is administered free of charge via the internet.
“Until 2002, the incidence of men under 40 with ED (erectile dysfunction) was around 2-3 percent,” Mary Sharpe of the Reward Foundation told The Guardian. “Since 2008, when free-streaming, high-definition porn became so readily available, it has steadily risen.”
“(P)orn is changing how children become sexually aroused,” continued Sharpe, and it is happening, “at an age when they’re most vulnerable to mental health disorders and addictions. Most addictions and mental health disorders start in adolescence.”
The Guardian article suggested that, “Up to a third of young men now experience erectile dysfunction.”
The phenomenon has grown so common that it has a name: “Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction” (PIED).
“Instead of wiring his sexual arousal to real people, today’s adolescent is often found in front of a screen, and he’s wiring his brain’s sexual circuits to being alone in his room, to voyeurism rather than participation,” noted an instructive video, Adolescent Brain Meets High-speed Internet Porn.
“Alien is the word I’d use to describe how it felt when I tried to have sex with real women,” said one young man quoted in the video. “It felt artificial and foreign to me.”
“It’s like I’ve gotten so conditioned to sitting in front of a screen (masturbating) that my mind considers that to be normal sex instead of real actual sex,” he added.
“Women don’t turn me on, unless they are made two-dimensional and behind my glass monitor,” said another.
Others report their only hope of achieving and maintaining an erection during intimacy is to “imagine porn.”
Since the phenomenon is new — after all, high-speed internet access coupled with easy, private access through smartphones, iPads, and laptop computers are recent innovations — empirical studies need to be undertaken.
In the meantime, anecdotal evidence is piling up as experts — including psychologists, psychiatrists, and urologists — report that they are hearing these sorts of laments from young men who in ages past would’ve been at the peak of sexual prowess.
Urologist Paul Church told LifeSiteNews that while currently there is no conclusive evidence for the association between porn usage and erectile dysfunction, the causality “makes sense and many clinicians and therapists, including myself, firmly believe it to be a HUGE problem for this next generation.”
“It’s hard to know exactly how many young men are suffering from porn-induced ED. But it’s clear that this is a new phenomenon, and it’s not rare,” noted Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, director of Men’s Health Boston and clinical professor of urology at Harvard Medical School.
“I know this to be true just because of my experience with this happening to people I work with,” said Maureen Newberg, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) practicing in the Washington, D.C. area.
“I’m in private practice in which 95 percent of my clients are boys and men. Almost all these clients have a porn problem or porn addiction,” licensed marriage and family therapist David Pickup told LifeSiteNews.
“My experience of their issues and their success getting out of porn usage has resulted in the discovery that porn is a powerful ‘drug,’” said Pickup.
Porn addiction, like other addictions, is impoverishing the lives of a whole generation of young men. Europe’s eminent psychologist, Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg, sums it up:
The porno-enslaved are poor men, isolated in their human contacts. Lone wolfs. The more porno, the more they strengthen their infantile preoccupation with the wish to be a “big man,” and the less they are capable in real live contacts.
The unintended, unanticipated consequences from frequent porn usage by young men perhaps extend beyond erectile dysfunction and the undermining of healthy marital relationships.
Mark Regnerus, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture, suggested a correlation between porn use and support for same-sex marriage back in 2012.
The researcher noted that “Young adult men’s support for redefining marriage may not be entirely the product of ideals about expansive freedoms, rights, liberties, and a noble commitment to fairness. It may be, at least in part, a byproduct of regular exposure to diverse and graphic sex acts,” witnessed through internet porn.
“The web’s most popular pornographic sites do little to discriminate one sex act — or category of such — from another,” said Regnerus. “Gazers are treated to a veritable fire-hose dousing of sex-act diversity.”
“These are not your grandfather’s Playboy,” he added.
The toxic omnipresence and power of pornography via the internet
As the battle over the “freedom of speech” rights of pornographers and their industry has been waged for decades, few noticed that young male viewers were themselves becoming collateral damage. Now the carnage is becoming impossible to ignore.
Dr. Donald Hilton, an adjunct associate professor at the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio and a member of the Board of Directors of Medical Institute for Sexual Health, wrote in an article titled Pornography: Fueling the Fire of Sexual Toxicity:
It’s everywhere. Pornhub, the second most visited site on the net, had 92 billion people visit in 2016, enough for 12.5 videos for every person in the world. It has become the primary mode of sexual education for teens and even preteens now, with many teens having seen sexual intercourse, including between more than two people.This unleashing of toxic sexuality on humanity is damaging those who view it and is addictive to those who continue to use it. However, these points are vigorously opposed by the porn industry and the academic apologists who support it. They say that the only problem with porn is the shame and moral construct that religious mores place upon it.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, in a statement delivered to U.S. Senate committee in 2008, explained: “It has always seemed self-evident that pornography is nothing more than a form of ‘expression.’ Its putative merits, lack thereof, or evils always therefore have been debated in terms appropriate to ‘expression,’ and our laws reflect as much. We argue over the ‘morality’ of pornographic literature; its nature as ‘high’ or ‘low’ art; whether it has any ‘redeeming value.’ References to ‘works’ of pornographic ‘literature’ and ‘acts’ of pornographic ‘dance’ are enshrined at the highest levels of American constitutional jurisprudence-the words in quotation marks making it clear that the understanding of pornography as expression is foundational and unquestioned.”
“With the advent of the computer, the delivery system for this addictive stimulus (internet pornography) has become nearly resistance-free,” continued Satinover.
“It is as though we have devised a form of heroin 100 times more powerful than before, usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain through the eyes,” added Satinover. “It’s now available in unlimited supply via a self-replicating distribution network, glorified as art and protected by the Constitution.”
Undoing the damage
“Porn-induced sexual dysfunction is a phenomenon here to stay,” declared Dr. Tim Lock, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Divine Mercy University.
PIED will be with us “until men can be raised with the virtue of self-control and parents can be convinced of the need to use internet filters (and internet accountability) to prevent their children from accessing inappropriate websites,” said Lock in a statement to LifeSiteNews. “It is neither simple nor effortless to raise a child who values self-control, chastity, purity, and modesty. The teachers of the children must first be convinced of these values.”
“It’s a hard sell,” said Lock. “Unless you are aware that Our Lord came to give life, and to give it abundantly.”
Dr. Hilton outlines four essential steps:
- First, we must protect the next generation from the toxic sexuality promoted by the porn industry and its apologists;
- Second, we must return to a society where adults reject the inhumanity of porn;
- Third, our culture increasingly is intolerant of racism and sexism, yet we celebrate both if people are having sex and the cameras are rolling. We must hold the porn industry to the same standard;
- Fourth, we must return to a culture of respect, empathy, and compassion, which is the antithesis of modern porn culture.
A wealth of information about quitting porn and escaping its potentially damaging effects can be found at the helpful secular website, Your Brain on Porn.
A Christian-based answer to bondage to porn use is offered by Strive.
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