Singer Billie Eilish made a shocking denunciation of porn on the Howard Stern Podcast, calling it a “disgrace” and admitting she used to watch a lot of it, starting at age 11. For a long time, she considered herself cool for being an advocate of porn, but looking back as a 20-year-old, she believes porn destroyed her brain. “I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she said. Eilish attributed her problems with night terrors, sleep paralysis, and bad choices in sexual relationships to having been heavily into abusive porn as a teen. She spoke in particular of how porn distorts women’s body images and desensitizes them to harmful behaviors and sex roles. “I’m so angry that porn is so loved, and I’m so angry at myself for thinking that it was okay,” she shared.
If you’re a teenager, young adult, or even someone older, it’s not weird or “uncool” for you to be worried about the ways porn can impact sexuality and general health. Because of its ready availability on the Internet and society’s tacit acceptance, porn is having an increasingly negative impact on the personal well-being and sexuality of millions of people all across the globe. There are porn recovery websites, such as Fight the New Drug, No Fap, and Remojo app, where people talk about the often unspoken and ignored serious problems porn use can create for anyone who wants to date around or establish and maintain a healthy long-term sexual relationship in real life.
Easy exposure
Just a few decades ago, it was much harder to get your hands on porn, especially for kids and teens. And when they did find a magazine or two, it was usually not as graphic or filled with harmful images as it is today. These days, a steady stream of porn can easily be accessed on the Internet, on cable television, on cell phones, and even in video games. And much of the commercial porn contains scenes of aggression and violence which can cause real problems for anyone, especially easily impressionable young people. Due to a lack of discussion, warnings, regulation, and guidance, all of us are on our own, in the dark, about the product and its potential for harm. Many young adults today report that they feel they were tricked, betrayed, and not protected from porn’s potential for causing serious harm.
The numbers are startling. According to statistics, one-third of us have viewed porn by age 12. One in four children with internet access are accidentally exposed to porn while online. We all know how easily that can happen. Just by typing in a search word while doing research for a class project, for example, a child can land on one of over 400 million pages of porn on the Internet. An alarming 80% of 15-17 year-olds have had multiple exposures to hardcore pornography. Surveys show that kids under the age of 18 are now some of the largest consumers of the more than $97 billion dollar global porn industry.
Formative sexual learning
When we’re young, we have a right to sexual innocence. And as we grow up, we have a right to have our sexuality advance at a natural pace, based on our own readiness and natural curiosities. It is unfair to us and our potential future partners to have this pace sped up by an industry with a primary goal of making money.
Unfortunately, for many young people, porn elbows its way in as their first and most formative sexual experience. It has become the world’s de facto sex education system. It is easy for kids to look at it on-line and mistakenly think that it represents what sex looks like and how they should act sexually.
False ideas about sex take hold quickly in the absence of comprehensive, science-based sex education. The lessons about sex that porn teaches have little to do with learning sexual self-care or how to approach sex in a respectful, responsible, mutually enjoyable and genuinely affectionate manner.
People who regularly use porn are frequently unaware of just how much porn they view, how much of their time they spend with it, and how the circumstances in which they view it can affect their real lives. They may not recognize when their porn interests are trending towards extreme and unhealthy themes. These factors can make a difference in whether or not they develop future sexual intimacy and relationship problems. We can all benefit from factual and honest information about the possible negative consequences and hazards of porn use and how porn-related sex differs from leading a healthy sexual life.
Seven benefits of staying away from porn
Porn presents itself as supportive, encouraging, and positive about sex, but the truth is it can disrupt healthy sexual development and lead to problems that weaken sexual health.
If you are concerned about your or your child’s use of porn, it is helpful to realize the many benefits of staying away from porn.
Advantages of reducing contact with porn include, helping you to:
- Heal your brain-body chemistry. Porn can hijack brain chemistry in a way that actually harms emotional attachments and diminishes your ability to feel pleasure. If you find yourself needing more, more, more, you’ve already experienced one way porn can change your chemistry. And if you’ve tried to purge porn from your life only to find yourself going back to it when you really don’t want to, that’s your biochemistry talking.
- Increase your ability to be sensually and emotionally present in sex. Porn conditions us to get sexually aroused and respond to visual images and fantasies of strangers. Without it in your life, you can focus on your experience of full-body sensuality, where all your senses are alive and engaged. And without it, you are better able to tune into feelings of caring and love for yourself and your partner.
- Develop your own attitudes about sex. Porn often portrays sex in unrealistic, misogynistic, callous, and sexist ways. For example, most real people don’t want to have sex immediately upon meeting someone. Anal sex isn’t a lot of folks’ cup of tea. Orgies aren’t that common. Rough sex can harm sensitive tissues. But you wouldn’t know these things if everything you’ve learned about sex has been from porn.
- Avoid a dependency on or addiction to porn. Having sex with porn is highly addictive for some people. Reducing or eliminating exposure can make the difference between whether or not you become hooked.
- Feel good about yourself and pursue a healthy social life. Using porn can cause feelings of shame, anxiety, and inadequacy, that lead to social isolation. It can also monopolize your time so that you’re not getting out there and meeting possible real sexual partners.
- Feel and be more attractive to an intimate partner. Most people are turned off by the idea of a long-term partner who is heavily reliant on porn. “Regular porn user” is not a description most people are drawn to in online dating profiles.
- Make responsible decisions concerning your sexual health. Porn encourages unhealthy sexual practices, such as sex without consent, premature sex, sex with strangers, sex with children, sex without protection, violent sex, and more. Staying away from porn reduces the allure and influence of sexual behaviors that can hurt you and others.
Support and caring
No matter your age or situation in life, take time to consider your feelings about pornography and whether or not you want it to be part of your sexual life going forward. Find safe people, such as trusted friends and family members (who aren’t into porn themselves), and non-judgmental and well-informed mental health professionals and clergy with whom you can openly discuss the subject of porn. Seek out quality sex education resources, such as articles, books (such as The Porn Trap), and videos produced by medical professionals and certified sexuality educators and therapists. Focus on developing a comprehensive understanding of sex that includes an accurate awareness of sexual body parts and functioning, as well as essential concepts and skills needed for approaching sex in a responsible, respectful, caring, and mutually pleasurable way.
If you decide you want to steer your sexual interests and involvements away from the influence of pornography, it is possible. Like singer Billie Elish, many people are waking up to the harm porn can wreak on their own sexuality and deciding they prefer a life without it.
Check out our Links section for a list of resources and organizations that offer sex education materials, help people recover from porn problems, and provide referrals for therapeutic support.
© 2022 Wendy Maltz, HealthySex
