Watching porn: Is it bad or beneficial for you?

Many people are known to watch pornographic content, but do you know about its health effects. There are various studies and much speculation regarding whether one should watch pornography or not or if watching pornography is bad for a person’s health at all. But it is important to note that watching too much of pornography can result in pornography addiction and that is not at all good for your overall health and wellness, especially your emotional (or mental) health.

In many cases, experts have often equated watching pornography regularly with sex education, a means of self-exploration, and this can also help you to improve your relationships with your partner, when watching porn is used in a proper way. But over-watching of pornography can have some negative impacts on your mental health and can also affect your cognitive skills. Too much of porn addiction can affect your daily life and it might also turn to be an unhealthy practice.

To have a detailed idea why people watch pornography, what are the negative effects, how you can get rid of the addiction for watching pornography, and other details regarding watching pornography, then you have to read this article till the end and learn more about pornography.

How to stop addiction for watching pornography? The tips and methods

Understanding addiction to pornography means using or viewing pornographic contents which can cause behavioral problems. Addiction to pornography is a very common condition that can be easily diagnosed and when people with porn addiction are under treatment, then they can truly recover. Some of the best methods that can be considered as the most effective ones for curing porn addiction are listed below:

1. Taking in necessary medications:

One of the most commonly recommended ways in which people can get rid of pornography addiction can be medicines. Many health care professionals advise their patients with porn addiction to take in medicines such as naltrexone, that can help to get rid of the addiction tendencies. Moreover, this medicine is mostly recommended by doctors to get rid of opium or alcohol addiction among people, because, when prescribed, this medicine helps to prevent both the craving for watching pornographic content and the satisfaction derived from consuming it.

2. Going for therapy:

Many people who have extreme addiction for watching pornography are often suggested to join therapy sessions, when you speak to a therapist or a mental health professional, there are more chances of recovering from this addiction. Moreover, when you are talking to a mental health professional, it helps to reduces your negative emotions and helps you understand the possible reasons behind having a porn addiction, which will help you to become self aware and thus you can prevent yourself from becoming addicted again while watching pornography.

In some of the most severe cases, experts may also suggest therapy techniques such as family therapy sessions or relationship counselling which can help you to understand how you can get rid of this type of addiction. Talking to a mental health professional for therapy to get rid of porn addiction is also beneficial because the addicted person has no fear of judgement in this case and he or she can talk about the feelings by becoming free of guilt and talk freely about their compulsions for porn consumption.

3. Be mindful about watching porn:

When a person has intense erotic urges and he or she chooses to watch porn, it is important to keep in mind that the viewing should not become addictive. So, it is necessary to be a bit mindful about watching porn and if somebody has an addiction, then it can be perfectly treated and can be properly managed with determination, a self-awareness of the viewer when it comes to watching porn and the right help from an expert professional.

Impact of watching pornography on your relationships:

Addiction to watching pornography is often considered as one of the major aspects that can affect intimate and romantic relationships negatively. Statistically speaking, such conditions (that is, negative impact on relationships due to watching porn or porn addiction) is found more commonly among men than in women. The romantic or intimate relationship that someone shares with his or her partner gets affected due to porn addiction- this occurs particularly among men because they usually tend to emotionally pull away from the relationship.

Alongside this, when men become addicted to watching porn, then they are most likely to develop secretive ways to watch pornographic contents in order to satisfy their erotic cravings, and they can even become emotionally depressive. Moreover, excessively consuming pornographic contents, mostly among men can adversely impact their relationship with their partner because the partner might feel low as a result of the excessive porn addiction of the man.

It has also been found that men have tendencies of watching pornographic contents that are less emotional in nature, so this can significantly reduce the intimacy between the man and his partner - thus the type of pornographic content that is being consumed by a man can be relevant about how much it can affect his romantic relationship adversely.

Too much consumption of porn videos can also affect the self-esteem of your partner negatively, because when your partner observes you to pull and to reject them only to return to pornographic content, then it might feel humiliating and reducing the self-worth of your partner.

Statistics of people watching pornography all over the world:

It has commonly been found that there are a lot of stigmas that are attached to the very concept of pornography, which are unnecessary. It is now important to get rid of these stigmas and have a clear statistical understanding of the rates of watching porn and pornography addiction among people, so that one can help to prevent the various negative effects of porn addiction.

There are a countless number of people today who are known to have a regular habit of watching porn. But it is not truly easy to arrive at an exact statistical data regarding how many people worldwide are engaged in watching porn videos. This is because pornographic websites are accessed throughout the world and there may be a number of people who are accessing a single website at a time.

But it has been found out in some of the most recent studies carried out in 2019, that revealed its data which shows that almost around 11% of men and 3% of women reported that they were addicted to pornography. But these figures are not absolute because there are different factors on which these statistical values can differ, the most crucial of them is the location, that is, in which country the survey has been conducted.

Apart from these, there are also studies that reveal that men have more tendencies of watching porn and getting addicted to pornography compared to women and between almost around 86% and 96% of men regularly consume porn. But more or less, there is a considerable population that are either self-reported pornography addicts or may have addictions for pornography that need to be treated.

Watching pornography: Is it bad or beneficial for you?

Like any other type of addiction, getting addicted to watching porn can have equal amount of negative effects on your health, because when a person is addicted to watching porn, he or she is more likely to have many various types of adverse effects on their health, which may include conditions such as changes in the brain's reward center, intimacy issues (which will most possibly have a negative impact on the person’s romantic relationships), and a negative impact on your partner's self-esteem.

Though pornography can help in having a proper sex education and a way to explore one’s own self, there can be certain significant negative effects of watching pornography, some of which are given as follows:

1. Porn addiction affects sexual intimacy:

Addiction to pornographic content can interfere with your sexual life, because when you are constantly viewing bodies and intimate relations of others, it is quite natural that you would not only make comparisons in terms of bodies, but also performances, when it comes to sexual intimacy, which can be detrimental to the sexual relationship that you share with your partner.

2. Mental health disorders can develop:

In many cases, experts have noted that increased consumption of porn contents can result into various types of mental health conditions, depression being the most common of them. Apart from this, people with porn addiction also develop conditions like anxiety, mood swings, along with problems related to substance abuse as well.

3. Affects from thinking abilities:

It has often been claimed that when you are already addicted by excessive consumption of porn contents, then it is more likely to interfere with the proper thinking skills of your brain. Moreover, it is clear from studies that extreme porn addictive can also damage cognitive and behavioral skills. So, it is important to get rid of porn addiction to get your brain back to its healthy functioning state and have better thinking, cognitive and behavioral skills.