What Porn Does To Teen Brains

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dr Voon the O. O. N of Psychiatry professor at
the University of Cambridge conducted the first major study of
porn's impact on the brain. In she and several colleagues
scan the brains of young men who had reported having
compulsive porn habits when shown pornographic images. The men's brain
activity mirrored that of a of drug addicts who are
shown photos of drugs. Researchers saw the reward processing areas

(00:22):
of the brain were more active than men with compulsive
porn habits than in young men from a control group
viewing the same material. Okay, so it doesn't affect everybody
the same way, which I suppose, isn't that surprising? Same
as drugs and alcohol and gambling and a lot of
other things. You know, it was a couple of weeks
ago you were advocating what sounded like exactly that societal

(00:43):
agreement that porn is terrible and there are maybe we
just need to believe that, maybe we just need to
find our terms porn. When I think porn, what I'm
thinking of as porn, I think it is terrible, and
I would love to eliminate it from the planet. I
think it would be better for everybody, but that does
not include erotica. Uh or you know, Okay, maybe that's
our problems definition. Well, I think that's why terms like

(01:07):
softcore porn and hardcore porn exist probably, Um, and I'm
just looking at it as a yah you know, continuum spectrum.
Yeah I don't, Yeah, I don't. I don't know, But
I don't think that's where your average fourteen year old
is ending up. Right. Oh, I understand that completely. I understand.

(01:30):
That's why it's important you deal with the subtleties of
what's healthy and what's not, and not trying to demonize
all erotic of course, like I said, I think that
would make you a crazy person, right right, Well, or
there are plenty of people who are probably screeching at
the radios right now who, for reasons of religious belief
for or their particular morality, think, um, you know, it's

(01:54):
just it's all bad. You know, I've seen a pro
athletes saying, real men don't use porn, just any erotic imagery.
What's theever is unhealthy, it's sick, don't do it? Um,
you not. Different people have different opinions. Yeah, man, I
don't know how we're going to deal with this as
a society. I think, I honestly think, I think, I
honestly think a woman's revolution on this is what's going

(02:14):
to change it. I think that women are gonna are
are coming around because I've read many articles about this
in recent like in the last nine months, probably, But
I think women are coming around. This is not working
for us this whole we're liberated, we get to be
sluts just like men have been sluts, and I think
women are figuring out this is not working to our benefit. Well,

(02:37):
that's undeniable. And you know, it's funny. We're talking about
porn and I shied away from getting very specific about
anything at all, but having just been reading about this, um,
there needs to be a woman's revolution where women say openly,
proudly and fairly aggressively, don't slap me, don't choke me,
blank my blank or there that only exists in porn.

(02:58):
That's not normal. Yeah, Well, I think I think, like
I said a couple of weeks ago, I think it
can go the direction of like drunk driving, where it
was socially acceptable to drink to drive drunk up until
whenever it was decade twenty years ago, and then there
was just so much social pressure that that changed things.
I think social pressure coming from women particularly and then

(03:19):
maybe some men joining in that looking at porn regularly
is not cool. It's like, drive it underground at least,
where are you talking about the sick hardcore porn again
or all? Because that's too vague. Well, I don't like
I assume that what most people are looking at is
not what I would consider just erotica. But maybe I'm wrong,

(03:41):
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know, but um, I think
it will be seen as not cool, but that's your thing.
Whereas I think now my my, my sense of it
is that it gets a pass because it's kind of
the enlightened, you know, free sexual libertinism is definitely at
lee in vogue, especially on the left. Can can that

(04:05):
turn back culturally? I don't know. I would have never
guessed that lots of things turned back culturally. Armstrong and
Jetty