Computer keyboard. Photo credit: DeclanTM on flickr


Are you a young man who views internet porn and is having sexual performance problems in real life? Well, now may be the time to stop — according to a report in US journal Psychology Today, “lots of guys, 20s or so, can’t get it up anymore with a real girl, and they all relate having a serious porn/masturbation habit.” “A growing number of young, healthy Internet pornography users are complaining of delayed ejaculation, inability to be turned on by real partners, and sluggish erections”, reported Psychology Today’s Cupid Poisoned Arrow blog, which noted that some men who frequently view pornography find real-life sex too tame to sate their porn-led fantasies .

Porn depletes the body’s erection stimulating chemicals. Psychology Today reported that dopamine overstimulation leads to a depletion of the body’s cGMP vasodilator, the chemical that allows an erection to occur and be sustained. Kicking a porn / dopamine addiction is difficult — it can take up to six months, and there are withdrawal symptoms — but at the end of it, you’ll be able to resume a normal sex life.

Pornography is not just “harmless fun”. Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust welcomed the report in The Daily Mail. “Not only does it depersonalise those who take part in it, but it also has the potential to damage the real-life relationships of those who use it”, he noted.

Porn websites should be limited to those over 35. At tech and science blog CNET Chris Matyszczyk suggested that the internet’s “very ease offers so much of a good thing that the put-upon males of Generation Y just can’t cope, poor dears.” He went on to say he thought porn should be the preserve of more mature adults.

Sex with a porn-schooled lover is not fun. Collegian Claire Gordon noted in Yale University’s The Yale Daily News that porn is “teaching kids, and mainly boys, how to have sex” and that they seek to replicate it in bed. “Too many girls I know have been subjected to the nonstop ram session of a porn-schooled lover”, she observed.

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