The industry is one of the biggest industries today. They built an empire that would only expand over time. When you log on to the Internet, your chances of unintentionally stumbling into are higher than those of stumbling upon current news. This is because is everywhere. You can find spam ads, video streaming websites, or hundreds of websites dedicated to pornography. You can easily access with the click of a button.

This privilege that the Internet has given us also has its own cons. One of the side effects of the growing industry has become increasingly evident in recent times. It’s a addiction problem. People of all ages, genders, are falling prey to this problem. According to experts, over time, it will only get worse. 

What is addiction?

In theory, addiction refers to a situation where a person cannot stop watching pornography. Even if they want to quit, their minds and bodies push them towards consuming more and more pornography. 

It is a behavioral form of addiction characterized by the need to constantly watch pornography. Individuals here are so involved in it that they become emotionally and physically dependent on pornography. To the point where it begins to interfere in their daily life and even relationships. 

However, despite the growing cases of addiction worldwide, pornography addiction is still not officially recognized as a disorder by psychiatric societies around the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a legitimate issue. An uncontrollable urge to watch can be just as harmful as other behavioral addictions like gambling or shopping. 

Addiction affects not only the life of the addict, but also the lives of those around him. Here are some of the main side effects of addiction:

Depression 
Anxiety disorders
High probability of infidelity
erectile dysfunction
Chronic loneliness
Inability to form meaningful relationships in the future

People from all over the world have come up with stories about how is negatively affecting their lives and relationships. This is not surprising when you take into account the traffic that websites receive every day. In 2019, the popular streaming website Pornhub announced more than 42 billion visits. That’s about 115 million views in just one day. Keep in mind that it was only one website. There are hundreds of websites like this streaming content every day. Now, does the increase in addiction really come as a shocker?

What makes so addictive?

The short answer is that works just like drugs. How the effects of drugs vary from person to person, it is the same with pornography. Like addictive substances, scenes are overstimulating, causing very high levels of dopamine secretion in the brain. This is very unnatural. The more you indulge in such activities, the more your brain secretes dopamine. This messes up your brain’s dopamine reward system. As a result, your brain stops responding to other natural sources of pleasure。

When this becomes a habit, your brain slowly begins to associate with dopamine. This is the beginning of the craving. When you stop giving this content to your brain, dopamine also stops, which can make things ugly. It can lead to various sexual dysfunctions and mental disorders. Compulsive pornography consumers report higher depressive symptoms, generally lower quality of life, and adequate health compared to people who do not consume pornography regularly. People who identified as engaging in compulsive sexual behavior showed more responsiveness in their brains compared to those who identified as non-compulsive. Therefore, watching pornography, especially when it becomes compulsive in nature, activates the same underlying brain network as alcohol and other drugs.

How addiction works

The path to becoming addicted to often follows the same pattern as drug addiction. For example, at some point, an individual is exposed to pornographic images and begins to experiment with pornography. When is everywhere in today’s world, this doesn’t help. It plays from video games to the social media websites in which we participate, to the movies we watch. In most cases, these platforms may not have full sexual content, but there are slight sexual images everywhere you look. We live in a world where everything is highly sexualized. This is especially difficult for the current generation, as this is the world in which they are growing. This is what they see every day and can have serious negative consequences for their mind and body. This slightly increases the chances of addiction in the younger generation. 

Why can be damaging

It is important to distinguish between favorite and compulsive addiction. It is not the concept of that causes damage in this scenario. What the industry has made with it is problematic and damaging. The industry leaves no opportunity to make money. But the bigger problem is that there is no censorship and there is a lack of mountains of illegal content available. There are sex/trafficking victims, sexual abuse victim videos, minors videos, and much worse content. Being one of the world’s leading media industries today, they are obliged to their audience to start monitoring their content.

It is important to distinguish between favorite and compulsive addiction. It is not the concept of that causes damage in this scenario. What the industry has made with it is problematic and damaging. The industry leaves no opportunity to make money. But the bigger problem is that there is no censorship and there is a lack of mountains of illegal content available. There are sex/trafficking victims, sexual abuse victim videos, minors videos, and much worse content. Being one of the world’s leading media industries today, they are obliged to their audience to start monitoring their content.

How Affects All Genders

Research shows that the more early men use pornography, the more likely they are to struggle to develop intimate relationships with real women. Some of these men prefer to sex with real humans. Addiction blurs the line between reels and the real thing. Addicts expect sex from women. It makes them angry when they don’t receive it.

culture doesn’t just affect men. It also changes the way women and girls think about their bodies, sexual orientation, and relationships. All groups that have fought for liberation understand that media images are part of the systematic dehumanization of oppressed groups. The more pornographic images are filtered into mainstream culture, the more girls and women are stripped of their full human status and become sexual objects. This has a terrible effect on the sexual identity of girls, as it deprives them of their sexual desire. Images have now become extreme, and acts that almost did not exist 10 years ago have become commonplace.

Pornography is a complex and controversial topic to address because it affects people’s lives in many ways. When tackling pornography in a scientific setting, the prejudices surrounding this issue must be withheld. Although a limited amount of research has been done due to the moral and social stigma surrounding pornography, it is worth investigating the current debate surrounding it. Many aspects of pornography are difficult to translate into scientific conversations because their definitions are unclear. It can affect the lives of different people in different ways. You need to understand how it is affecting you based on the changes you are seeing in your life and around you.