While sex can provide a multitude of benefits, like better health as well as boosting your intelligence, watching too much porn can actually make you ‘dumber’. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but science appears to support that notion. Let’s look at what porn does to your brain and how it may be making you… stupid.
It’s All In The Head
Studies have found that men who watch porn have less grey matter in their brains. In layman’s terms, that’s where the brain’s nerve-cell bodies are located, i.e. where you form reasonable decisions and ethical justifications. Of course, this does not inherently imply that “watching porn makes you dumb,” since it just demonstrates a link. Perhaps men who have smaller brains are just more drawn to porn!
Pornography, similar to other drugs, triggers a dopamine release in the brain, and it’s why so many people can’t stop looking at it, to the point where it’s addictive. To understand how porn makes you dumb, we can take a look at how children’s brains function. We know that kids aren’t considered as smart as adults, and this is due to their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, which leads to poor, impulsive, decision making and difficulty regulating emotions. There’s a reason why teenagers behave the way they do!
However, research has found that porn decreases the amount of “grey matter” in your prefrontal cortex. This causes hypofrontality, which is characterised by decreased cerebral blood flow in the prefrontal cortex of the brain and makes you more compulsive. This side effect fuels the addiction and develops an unhealthy cycle that could have a negative effect on your daily activities. While grey matter has been linked with intelligence, many scientists still debate how directly it affects cleverness, since there are more subtle characteristics that determine how smart you are.
Another study discovered that males who frequently watch porn have smaller striatums, and when they were shown sexually explicit content, their MRIs revealed decreased function in the part of the brain that processes motivation. Individuals with reduced striatum volume may require more external stimulation to experience pleasure, which may lead to higher porn viewing. This is why it is so difficult for people to kick their porn addiction. Their brain’s ability to battle the impulse reduces since it isn’t performing at full capacity due to all the porn they’re consuming.
Other Side Effects Of Porn
Getting ‘dumber’ isn’t the only downside of watching too much porn. Research has also shown that excessive consumption of porn could possibly cause problems with men’s sexual performance, such as erectile dysfunction. Too much porn can desensitize a man from sex, making him unable to get excited by ordinary sexual encounters. This is similar to what occurs when someone consistently drinks more and more alcohol, building a tolerance to it, and eventually having a harder time feeling inebriated.
Your brain grows immune to the amount it’s accustomed to and in turn needs higher doses of the source to maintain the ‘dopamine reward system’. When your brain is so used to artificially stimulated dopamine, natural sources just don’t do it for you anymore. For some porn users, this may even lead to them looking for more unconventional and extreme forms of porn just to get that boost of dopamine back.
Closing Thoughts
While it is an intriguing phenomenon, there is still much research and evidence needed on whether porn actually affects your intelligence. Regardless, porn isn’t really doing anyone any favors. Too much of anything is bad, just like too much of anything else in life. We’re not saying you should quit watching porn entirely, just not to the point where it could potentially alter your brain functions!
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