Scientists Can’t Agree on Whether Porn Use Affects our Brains

Scientists just can’t seem to agree on what porn does to people’s brains. You may recall that, a few weeks ago, neuroscientist Nicole Prause, PhD, informed the world that brain scientists have never found any true evidence that porn acts on human brains like a drug, despite the explosion of “porn addiction” treatment programs. Butt here we are again, this time with a different neuroscientist writing for The Conversation about research showing that the brain can treat porn like an addictive substance. And, more than that, Rachel Anne Barr from Canada’s Université Laval claimed, “porn appears to be hijacking our neural wiring with dire consequences.”

Passages like the following from her essay lead this reporter to believe that Barr may have a bit of an anti-porn bias going in: “Science is only just beginning to reveal the neurological repercussions of porn consumption. But it is already clear that the mental health and sex lives of its widespread audience are suffering catastrophic effects.”

She went on to cite various studies that backed up (some more so than others) claims that porn causes sexual dysfunction; hijacks brain plasticity; influences users to be more aggressive and perhaps violent (a theory which has been debunked time and again for decades by other scientists); and—the clincher—”Porn use has been correlated with erosion of the prefrontal cortex—the region of the brain that houses executive functions like morality, willpower and impulse control…which predisposes an individual to behave compulsively and make poor decisions.”

Online media, of course, has rushed to repeat the claims Barr—who, it should be noted, is a PhD student and not yet a PhD holder. Headlines like “Binge Porn Kills Orgasm in Sex With Real-Life Partner, New Study Finds” abound. Never mind that Barr was not actually citing the results of her own studies, but rather writing an essay about various findings from the neurological research field.

Still, this all seems like another good reason to talk openly about pornography. Whether it’s true that porn causes damage to the prefrontal cortex or not, most of us start with some degree of impulse control, right? So, when we talk about “all things in moderation,” let’s start to include porn in the “all things.”

For too long, we’ve been embarrassed by frank conversations with friends or family about sexuality. But that means that most of us are left to our own—clearly horny—devices when it comes to sex and porn. And many of us overdo it, which seems to be leading scientists to believe that too much porn isn’t good for us.

Whether the science is right or not, the answer isn’t to repress porn, as so many governments here and around the world are trying to do—and failing. Even Barr admitted that porn has always been around, and now that the internet is here, it’s not going anywhere. But we could learn to live alongside it, to use it responsibly, and to move on. It would be helpful if scientists could reach anything like a consensus about what pornography actually does to our brains, though. Then we could back up those much-needed conversations with agreed-upon science on the matter.

Scientist stock image by Chokniti Khongchum from Pexels