It’s unsettling that by age 11 boys are usually subjected to pornographic images. Yet few materials on the subject address such a youthful audience. It can be surprisingly difficult for parents to find a good way to discuss pornography. You don’t want your child to see sex as "forbidden" or "dirty," but no matter how sex-positive you are, you sense that porn isn’t the best way to gain a sex education. Alas, tweens just don’t find “Because I said so!” persuasive.
Many parents ignore the issue, hoping that it won’t become a problem. After all, Playboy didn’t hurt our generation, right? However, today’s extreme Internet porn affects the brain more strongly than earlier porn. As my husband quipped, "sort of like the difference between cocaine and green tea." It more easily becomes habit-forming.
I learned this in a surprising way: Porn-addicted visitors showed up on the forum of our website, which happens to explain how sex affects the brain by discussing parallels with the neurochemistry of addiction. It seems Google put "sex" and "addiction" together, and suddenly men from around the world who were struggling to stop using porn swarmed in. Among them were men in their twenties who had been hooked on Internet porn since they began using it in their teens. Far from enjoying life more, they were desperate to quit.
Here’s a forum post that helped me understand:
Bored? Masturbation. Angry? Masturbation. Sad? Masturbation. Stressed? Masturbation. I went from being the first of my class to the very bottom, until I dropped out for good. I found a Web job, making good money with my porn one click away. This was my life, and I didn’t recognize I had an addiction until I had surgery and masturbation wasn’t an option for fifteen days. On day three, I was literally shaking, and I began to connect the dots. Other symptoms: irritability, inability to focus ("staring at walls syndrome"), mood swings, headaches (sometimes quite strong), sense of pressure in my genitals, flashbacks, paranoia, self-defeating thinking, depression, hopelessness, and fear that I will never have sex because I’ve learned no social skills since diving into porn eight years ago as a teen.
We also heard, "No matter how many orgasms I have, I never feel satisfied; I just finally collapse in exhaustion, and start again the next day." "To get off, I need extreme material that I never would have viewed before." "I’m more anxious or depressed, and I have a strong desire to avoid other people." "I can’t stop the flashbacks." "When I have sex with a real woman, I can’t get an erection." "I can’t stop the flashbacks."
How could this happen? Isn’t porn just a harmless bit of fun? Maybe not. My husband teaches anatomy and physiology and has a passion for mulling over neurochemistry research. Here’s some of what we learned and shared with our visitors:
Today’s Internet pornography is not like adult magazines of the past. It’s free of social constraints; it’s easily obtained and available in privacy around the clock. It’s free of charge, making it perfect for kids’ bank accounts. And it’s always novel. Novelty-on-demand is extremely enticing. Studies reveal that the brain loves it. It’s why slot machines lure gamblers. Each pull of a lever, or mouse click, offers a delicious moment of anticipation: “Oooh! Just one more!”
Today’s Internet porn is highly stimulating. An image of a naked body can evoke a strong reaction, but a video of naked women being raped, or performing acts that shock the viewer, has far more emotional impact than yesteryear’s Playboy. It triggers a greater release of exciting neurochemicals (adrenaline, dopamine) in a primitive part of the brain. Dopamine is behind all our drives. It’s the “I gotta have it!” neurochemical. The highs, and subsequent lows, of dopamine perpetuate all addictions.
Both adrenaline and dopamine swiftly wire intense experiences into the brain. This wiring process is how the brain creates memories, and depending upon where we put our focus, the brain can learn useful habits or demanding compulsions. Once wired to seek intense sexual stimulation, the brain automatically scans the environment for anything it arbitrarily associates with it. (These things are called cues). Cues, such as being alone in the house or seeing a sexy ad, trip a switch. The primitive brain takes over, and it can be very hard to ignore. Some men report that a cue can send them into an altered state: autopilot. These subconscious impulses continue long after the user consciously wants to quit using.
This brain wiring isn’t easily undone, which is part of what makes return to balance so agonizing for some. The site visitors who succeeded in unhooking themselves from porn use generally had to declare a moratorium of about two months on all sexual arousal in order to "reboot" their reward circuitry (in the primitive limbic system of the brain). Interestingly, my husband turned up research that suggests that a protein called Delta Fos-B lingers in addicts’ brains, promoting relapse until it clears out.
The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor. All addiction involves long-term, sometimes lifelong, neuroplastic change in the brain. … The same surge of dopamine that thrills us also consolidates the neuronal connections. Psychiatrist Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself
You may be assuming, just as your primitive brain does, that more intense stimulation will lead to more satisfaction…and less need for porn. Actually, the reverse is true. The more intense the initial stimulation, the lower the lows afterward, due to neurochemical events in the brain. A Dutch scientist analyzing brain scans of men ejaculating commented that they looked like scans of people shooting heroin. What goes up must come down. The more intense the highs, the more unsettling the lows as the brain recovers. Post-ejaculatory neurochemicals can fluctuate for days. It appears likely that these fluctuations (especially lows in dopamine levels) are the cause of mood swings and behavioral changes, which most of us fail to connect with over stimulation of the brain. Kids, for example, may be irascible, unable to focus on schoolwork, and oversensitive simply because their brain chemistry hasn’t yet returned to equilibrium. (Think lingering hangover.)
Masturbation is normal, but the more one reaches for super stimulation such as Internet porn, the less responsive the brain tends to grow (even though it is searching ever more eagerly for exciting stimulation). Result? A user may need increasingly shocking stimulation to achieve the relief of arousal and climax.
What’s a parent to do? Here are a few tips:
1. Encourage questions, and don’t be afraid to share your candid thoughts. Also, accept that kids must make their own experiments. It’s part of approaching adulthood.
2. Avoid shaming kids in connection with sex. Shame increases the addictiveness of sexually explicit material. It makes it even more exciting because it becomes guilt-producing, forbidden, and risky (more adrenaline). This could lay the groundwork for a subconscious link between sexual arousal and shameful, forbidden or risky activities, which may haunt a child into adulthood. (Think Ted Haggard.)
3. Instead of discussing porn in terms of “perversion” or “naughtiness,” discuss it in terms of over stimulation versus the natural stimulation of discovering masturbation and sex oneself. The greatest risk stems from the neurochemical charge of shocking, unrealistic, ever-novel scenarios dreamed up by filmmakers who find hooked users profitable because "hits" increase ad revenues.
4. Teach kids how their brains work. Sexual impulses come from a very primitive part of the brain that is focused on making lots of babies. We have another, newer, part of the brain that helps us make sound choices.
5. Be prepared to explain why “more” is not going to lead to “greater satisfaction.”
6. Humans are tribal, pair-bonding primates. Friendly interaction soothes stress. When kids have good skills for connecting with others, the need to console themselves in isolation is less. Help them realize that the rush of Internet porn is not a substitute for learning the social skills we all need for healthy interaction.
MORE RESOURCES:
The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge (This book explains how the brain learns. It includes a chapter on porn and discusses its effects on young, plastic minds.)
Things You Didn’t Know About Porn by BodyWisdom (This is a science-based audiobook for boys and their parents on the risks of Internet porn.)
The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable North American Appetite, by David Kessler (This new book about food addiction describes in depth the same mechanisms in the brain that also make Internet porn addictive.)
Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food, Taming Our Primal Instincts by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan (This book is a hilarious, informative look at the reward circuitry of the brain and how it can drive our choices without our awareness. It doesn’t address porn directly.)
