Indulging into problematic porn leads a person to an isolated zorb. Since exploring prohibited content consumes a lot of time, the person ends up spending a lot of lone time, away from the real social life interactions. The vicious circle is such that people keep looking for a lone time; escapes social interactions, keeps looking for an opportunity to be alone so that they can surf adult content. This goes to such a peak that the person becomes socially disconnected.
Story of Jason
Jason (name changed), a young and dynamic guy of 22yrs of age, who has been exploring life and advancing in his career quite promisingly. Like any other boy in adolescence, he had happened to first get exposed to the adult contents when he around 14yrs old. It was out of the curiosity every adolescent has at that stage. Never minded much then, since it was just out of experimentation and a peer influence.
Years passed; Jason was sailing well in life. By the time he had entered college, things had started to change. The change was in terms of the lifestyle, academic stress, long internet usage for competitive academic work and a social disconnection. His current day- to- day schedule has started getting dull, circling around academics, self-study and huge assignment load. This stress was getting intense and he hardly had any ways to relax and unwind himself. Internet became his only companion, be it for studies and leisure. His social life wasn’t very great, and he was mostly to himself. Although Jason has been a social person, loved going out and had a healthy social circle, but his current academic load altered his lifestyle, and left not much opportunities to socialize and taking a break.
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His internet usage gradually started taking a turn. He started exploring watching adult content to experience a slight kick to his boredom; experiencing a mood stimulation at the beginning. Slowly this behaviour began to increase. He resorted to porn for relaxation and respite; so much so that watching porn became his regular habit all throughout his leisure.
After almost a year of indulging into porn watching behaviour, he has by now realized what has gone wrong and what all have been affected. He had lost focus on academics, had heaps of pending work, sleep- wake cycle had got disastrous. He wouldn’t sleep the whole night. His nights would be spent on watching and surfing adult contents, and his heart would never be satisfied and he would go on and on.
Jason then spent longer time in watching porn, the frequency increased. He would develop urge every now and then, and he would end occupying most part of the day in watching porn. He wanted to stop, but was not able to resist his urge. The more he wanted to stop the more he would keep thinking about it and more it would get difficult for him.
He just couldn’t stop himself. He thought he would focus all his energy over studies and not think about it. But nothing was working. He started getting petrified about it. He was not able to understand what to do.
Jason’s emerging Social Disconnection
Realizing that his porn consumption has abnormally increased he decided to try distracting himself by going out and meeting people. While going out and interacting with people he has found out that he is not able to relate to people, he is feeling nervous, often not able to figure out what to say, how to initiate a conversation. He was no longer able to take part in any conversation with others. This made him feel more conscious and nervous. He couldn’t talk to people with an eye contact. He realized that he is unable to maintain an eye contact while talking.
Whenever people would discuss about their leisure time activities and were planning to get together over outings, library trips, trips to amusement park, he would get a little taken aback, of how to discuss his leisure activities, because all he would do is indulge into porn while not studying.
That’s when he realized how much damage porn watching has caused. Also, he felt that since he has been away from socializing for past some time, he was not able to communicate well; he felt as if his social skills had got rust over them.
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Jason started to feel very awkward to meet people. He started maintaining distance from them. Although earlier his excessive work load had kept him away from people and now, some sort of peculiar habit that he has developed over the time.
If we see the case of Jason, we can figure out the circle of events; how habits are inter- related; how one thing leads to the next; what consequence porn addiction has brought about to Jason’s social life, and how socio-occupational functioning has been disrupted.
Problematic Porn watching leading to poor Social Skills
This story of Jason shows how getting stuck into a monotonous routine and stress can possibly lead to the formation of a maladaptive habit. His academic stress was high and he didn’t have a healthy outlet to relieve his stress. Humans need a respite. They need a channel to vent out; express themselves, cope with the stress. People find a mechanism to cope with the stress, either adaptively- meaning in a constructive and productive way or maladaptively- meaning destructive ways.
Jason developed a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with his academic stress and monotony. He resorted to watching porn at his leisure time activity, which led to the behavioural addiction. One, it was maladaptive, two, it consumed a big part of his day, and three, it kept him away from socializing with people.
This entire mechanism has made him lend into a situation when he feels socially disconnected. Since he has spent so much of time being alone, he lost that confidence to interact with people. Also, he was extremely nervous to speak when people would ask about his leisure time activities. He remained under that threat to have been asked about his day-to-day activities.
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Of course, it was awkward to tell people that he indulged into porn whenever he has time for leisure, but what was more distressing for him was that he could not share with anyone that is undergoing a situation where he is unable to control himself from watching porn, and that it is causing him a lot of difficulties.
This made him stay away from people. His thoughts were occupied with his pile of pending work, his inability to control himself, his disrupted sleep pattern leading him to miss classes and lectures, his difficulty to share his problem with others. He thus thought, avoiding socialization is a better option.
He was losing his confidence to talk to people, he would remain under some unexplained fear and without much realization, his porn watching behaviour has drastically impacted his social life. The same issues are commonly reported by many individuals like Jason who are undergoing similar challenges like him.
People never usually anticipate what could problematic porn watching behaviour may likely to lead to. This maladaptive behaviour badly hits the social skills of an individual, gradually this impairment or dysfunctioning of social skills might possibly lead to developing some serious mental health issues like Social Phobia.
People develop a misconception of resorting to porn instead of real-life sexual relationship, considering that initiating and maintaining relationship would be a complex process and porn watching would be better option to channelize the sexual energy.
Spending so much time with self, disrupts the social functioning of a person, and this is exactly what problematic porn watching behaviour does.
