Porn and Masturbation Healthy Or Addiction?

I wrote a pretty long post (10 pages) on this topic, so I will break it into 2 parts and release the second one tomorrow.

It is no surprise that in today’s age of anything that you desire, being one click away, minors are using the their laptops as tools to explore their own sexuality. Whether it is watching women on free cam sites, talking dirty in chat rooms, or visiting run of the mill pornographic video sites, youth males are exploring as much as they can with the tools they have been given. However, in an era where it’s actually easier to visit a pornographic site, than actually talk to a real woman in the flesh, men are overconsuming pornographic media past a point that is healthy and is moving into the territory of addiction. In this paper I will first talk about the benefits to pornography consumed in adequate doses, then I will go on to explore the recent addiction that has becoming more and more prevalent among youth males today.

Exploring your sexuality is a healthy part of life for every human being, but is a moment that must also be treated with care, as teenagers at a young age still might make decisions that hurt them in the long run. Letting a teen explore their sexuality within borders can help develop healthy sexual relations for life, despite many people taking moral issues with the genre.

Pornography for the longest time and still today, has been attacked and blamed for many of the rape and sexual assault crimes we have today, but no good evidence has actually ever been presented to prove that pornography in moderation yields negative results. In fact, a paper which studied the effects of pornography, published in 2009 in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, showed that not only did no such correlation between sexual crimes and the use of pornography exist, but it showed in author Milton Diamond’s words, “if anything, there is an inverse causal relationship between an increase in pornography and sex crimes.

Despite many crusades against the use of porn and masturbation, in moderation, there are undeniable health benefits. According to sex researcher Rosemary Basson, the release of endorphins while watching pornographic media and ejaculate acts as a type of anti stress and anti depressant in certain situations, relaxes the body and many times helps a deep and more beneficial sleep take place. In addition for males, it lowers the risk for prostate cancer and can even help raise self esteem and the view you have of your own body. Even those in committed relationships can still benefit from masturbation in their everyday lives and the use of porn is only used as an aid for masturbation, with no emotional connection involved. The use of porn in the act of masturbation is primal and in most cases less of human relationship and more akin to a tool, like using a hammer to put in a nail.

So if masturbation is healthy, the real question is, can there ever be such a thing as too much masturbation? The short answer is yes and the reason is not physical, such as chaffed foreskin, but rather emotional and behavioral in the long term. Like anything else, in moderation masturbation is fine, but when it becomes compulsory and you feel as if you “need” to masturbate to function, it might be time to slow down or take a break completely. According to the National Health Service of the United Kingdom, too much masturbation can start to affect your social in many ways. For some, the exhaustion that is often created after masturbation leads people to stay to themselves rather than socialize which can become a cycle and lead to depression. In addition over use of masturbation can lead to the inability to ejaculate during a sexual encounter or impotence and affect other real sexual relationships you are in, which could also lead to depression. So masturbation is healthy, but too much of it definitely can become a massive problem if you aren’t paying attention.

So if masturbation and pornography are healthy in moderation, why do we see such an addiction among youth males in modern day society? We know that pre internet days you might have had to sneak your dad’s playboy from under his bed, but now for most teens, pictures might not do anything. The main problem is teens are not consuming pornography in moderation according to Lynn Margolies, PH.D, but rather are being left alone to police themselves and often fall into a trap where they need to become more and more stimulated. Changes in behavior, an obsession with technology or frequent breaks to their rooms might be a sign that your child might have an addiction to pornography.

However doctor Margolies admits that it is hard to actually diagnose a porn addiction with a teen as part of the era we are living in is completely different than those of the parents raising the children. Teens are more addicted to technology now than ever before and in general hormones make them susceptible to mood swings and other characteristics that may be associated with addiction. There are options like monitoring the traffic and websites of the computer they use, or move the computer out into an open area, but this may lead to a break of trust between parent and child. The goal is to be involved with your child and have them feel like they can talk to you about anything, even their romance life so you can get a better gauge on the situation.

Like the use of drugs, pornography quickly can ramp up to the point where higher exposure is required to feel the same amount of stimulation. According to doctor Margolies, this might take the form of teens exposing themselves to harder or hardcore pornography that they might not have ever would have went to before. Because they require more stimulation due to an increase in stimulation, which is a common side effect of too much masturbation, they might also start to take part in practices that are illegal. For example searching out partners for “cyber sex” while still underage, or stealing credit cards to purchase pornographic camera sessions. Not only does this put your teen at risk for online solicitation by online sexual predators who might claim to be someone other than they are, but it puts them into an emotional spiral of needing to get another fix. Especially in online chat rooms which are filled with horny teenagers looking for potential cyber sexual partners, teens can become easy victims if they are not careful. The best form of prevention is education in these cases, and even if your teen is not participating in internet pornographic usage, it is still wise to teach them about the potential dangers it can have.