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Dr William Struthers answers the question “How does porn affect people?”

Neuroscientist and author, Dr William Struthers explains that he has seen pornography effect people in a variety of different ways. For some people, they are caught up in a cycle where they can’t stop watching porn, they begin to use it to self medicate their problems. These problems could include stress, low self esteem, or when someone is feeling anxious or angry.

For others it may not become a life altering problem, yet in subtle ways viewing porn does effect the way they view other human beings. This in turn effects even their non sexual relationships with the people around them. Similar to second hand smoke, this means that people who don’t even view pornography are being effected by it.

Transcript:

I’ve actually seen it affect people in a variety of different ways. Some people, it affects them in such a way where they get caught into this cycle where they really can’t stop watching. And it becomes a way that they self medicate themselves with their problems. So whether it’s that they’re stressed out, or they’re anxious, or they have low self esteem, or they’re angry, or any combination of those things, Pornography acts as the sav, as the medication that they use to help them deal with their problems. And at the end of the day it doesn’t really help those problems.

Now other people will use pornography in such a way that it doesn’t become sort of pathological, it doesn’t become a major life altering problem, but what it does do, is it does change in very subtle ways, the way they think about human beings, the way they think about men and woman and their value. And it pollutes they way that they, kind of engage other people, even outside of the context of sexuality. So what we’ve got, is we’ve got pornography coming in and what Iike to call second hand smoke, a second hand sexuality, even though you’re not the smoker and you don’t have a addiction to nicotine, it still goes in and it corrupts your mind, and corrupts the way that you think about people.