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Original poster

The effect of porn on teenage boys and young men

414 replies

DeviTheGaelet · 15/01/2017 18:12

Did anyone else hear the section on R5 about porn addiction the other day? They spoke to a doctor who is looking into the defects of porn on men. A study in Italy found 40% of young men were having erectile issued, of those 60% were psychologically caused ( I think those were the stats).
The doctor suggested that watching porn during adolescence is training men to be aroused by purely visual stimuli and the visual stimuli are not realistic. As a result they are not being wired to find the smells and touch of actual sex arousing. As a result they are having election issues.
He described porn as "stunt sex" and said it was creating a generation of men who's sexual relationships were with their hand and a screen rather than another person.
I found it really interesting. We talk a lot on here about the harm porn causes women and girls but I've not heard so much about the impact on boys.
I think this should be discussed in PSHE in schools. Maybe this will be the personal impact many men need to see how harmful porn can be.

OP posts:
girlwiththeflaxenhair · 16/01/2017 10:36

Yes, but you find any negative comments about porn "tedious", don't you, girl........

Eh ?

SpeakNoWords · 16/01/2017 10:37

You were using it to describe sex, not using prostitutes.

girlwiththeflaxenhair · 16/01/2017 10:39

Oh for heavens sake.

qwerty232 · 16/01/2017 10:42

This isn't fair.

Girl said that some men use masturbatory aids rather than have sex with real women. Which is a fact - some of them do. She didn't infer that to be a good thing.

Presumably some women use vibrators rather than real men for sexual satisfaction. Has anyone got a problem with that?

girlwiththeflaxenhair · 16/01/2017 10:43

Why don't you quit with the nasty personal insults speak and the claims to be able to mind read.

SpeakNoWords · 16/01/2017 10:45

namechange do you think that most men wouldn't say anything in those circumstances? Showing naked pictures of a woman to work colleagues surely is inappropriate behaviour and ought to be dealt with with disciplinary action. Plus, surely it's against the law, somehow? I don't know enough about the legalities.

makeourfuture · 16/01/2017 10:46

"I believe this is already starting to happen in Japan. The population is plummeting partly because Japanese male under-40's are decreasingly interested in sex with real life women."

Hikikomori. There have been a few things written about this. There is an economic element.

SpeakNoWords · 16/01/2017 10:47

"Why don't you quit with the nasty personal insults speak and the claims to be able to mind read." I have no idea what you are referring to. Please report any post where I have made any nasty personal insults towards you or anyone else.

HerOtherHalf · 16/01/2017 10:50

Is the proposed UK ISPs option in thing going ahead?

I'm not sure what the proposal is but if you look at the attempts to make ISPs accountable for allowing access to pirated media it will almost certainly not have any meaningful effect. The powers that be can't even eradicate the online distribution of child pornography and there they have both the law and public opinion very much on their side.

Given the nature of the Internet, I believe education of our children is the only option we have. Unfortunately not enough is being done to provide us with the tools to do that. I had to deal with my son when he was a teenager both in relation to him being caught using porn and also to him having offensive chats with girls online. I used his sisters as analogies to get him to understand that the girls he was looking at or talking to were human beings. How would you feel if your sister saw that when using the computer? How would you feel if someone was saying things like that to her? Why is it alright for other girls but not alright for your sisters, etc etc . I think I got through to him but I was very much winging it. Nobody had ever briefed me as a parent how to deal with this sort of thing. We never had any communication from the school to advise what, if anything, they were doing to teach morality in the digital age or what we could do to support them. It is a massive and growing problem and it needs to be taken much more seriously than it is currently.

growapear · 16/01/2017 10:55

surely a good thing that any pornhounds are unable to maintain either an erection or a relationship no ?

PhilODox · 16/01/2017 10:58

makeourfuture There is an economic element.
Yes- and this is likely the case in Italy too, where young people, males in particular, do not leave the family home until in their late 30s/40s even.
How can one have normal, healthy adult relationships with potential life partners when living at home? It was different in the past when the societal expectation was strongly against pre-marital sex.

Sorry- I didn't explain IsP thing. I thought there was a proposal for all UK ISPs to make access to pornography opt in only?

namechange102 · 16/01/2017 11:03

speak well I can only go on what my Dh said. I think I have been pretty naive in the past regarding the prevalence of porn as a 'norm' in men's lives. It certainly came as a surprise when I first realised dh looked at it. I used to think he was a pretty decent guy with high moral values, but if he looks regularly and reckons most men do, it sounds like a large proportion of men just see it as normal behaviour and would therefore not challenge it. Pretty sad, really.
Why, do you think they would?

weeonion · 16/01/2017 11:08

Part of my work involves educating young people about porn. Few of their parents have ever discussed it with them. I would say nearly all have been exposed to it by age 11.

I am on mobile so cant fo links but childline and think u know have some good information on their sites and ideas on how to engage with young people on this.

growapear · 16/01/2017 11:10

I think an interesting thing here (I'm a man btw) is that looking at porn used to be something that was shameful. Boys/men like to look at pictures and films of (certain types) of naked women or women having sex, but in the past this activity, which does bring them pleasure - was regarded as something to be ashamed of. Someone spoke about their son using porn and being caught - his reaction would be one of feeling ashamed of himself for looking at it, a dirty little secret is how it used to be. That is how I felt as a teen when my mum found a copy of Fiesta my mate had stolen from the newsagent. My mum was not moved to say anything about that, but these days it's a whole different scale.

In some respects the mass availability of porn strikes me, as a man, as somewhat inevitable given the desire men have to look at naked women. In the past it has been tempered by ideas of virtue and shame, those appear to have been relaxed somewhat.

SpeakNoWords · 16/01/2017 11:13

namechange, I don't know, maybe I'm too optimistic about it. I know my DP would say something in that workplace situation and my brother and Dad definitely would too. But I can see that's not exactly a representative sample! I wonder what the stats about how many men would watch porn.

qwerty232 · 16/01/2017 11:16

I In the past it has been tempered by ideas of virtue and shame, those appear to have been relaxed somewhat.

Added to which there is the anonymity and ubiquitous accessibility of porn. In the past you had to risk embarrassment queuing in the newsagents with a copy of Fiesta. Now you can access anything you like with a smartphone.

girlwiththeflaxenhair · 16/01/2017 11:20

done speak.

namechange102 · 16/01/2017 11:21

I know this isn't a very good analogy growapear, you say that men like to look at naked women and today that pursuit seems to hold little shame (whether he is in or out of a relationship, by all appearances) .... Women often like to be 'romanced', so would it be just as acceptable for the majority of us women to seek (interactive) romance from ppl other than our partners?
Not having a go, but interested in your (male) viewpoint.

namechange102 · 16/01/2017 11:23

And don't say that's what romance novels are for, they're only the 'mayfair' equivalent Grin

makeourfuture · 16/01/2017 11:30

Phil,

Well I am nervous acknowledging it here, as I know it may be seen as an attempt to minimise the impact on women/girls. But it isn't really meant as "what about the menz", just that our society is going through changes. Some men (many?, most?) are reacting poorly.

I must say that hitting a youngster when they are in early teens with massive doses of pornography....right when the brain is going through a lot of changes....

Beachcomber · 16/01/2017 11:35

I wonder how they will expect us to sort it out for them?

BertrandRussel, at the moment it seems to consist of an expectation that we wax our fanjos, develop a death grip and participate in increasingly hard-core sex acts practically on the first date.

qwerty232 · 16/01/2017 11:45

I wonder how they will expect us to sort it out for them?

No one is going to sort porn it now. They couldn't if they wanted to. It's out of the box - done. The internet is not policeable, and neither is social media and the online data-currency markets with which it interfaces.

What should be the real question is what role is porn to play in women's lives? Is porn inherently predicated on male desire and female disempowerment? Can there be porn for women? Can there be a sexual capitalism which serves female sexuality? There is no theoretical reason why not.

qwerty232 · 16/01/2017 11:47

Meant: No one is going to sort porn out now.

qwerty232 · 16/01/2017 11:50

At the moment, men own most of the 'means of production' as it were. Whoever owns Pornhub or whatever else will be a man. Hence there are zillions of videos of 18-25 year old women having their faces ejaculated on. But suppose women ran porn empires? That could be radical.

growapear · 16/01/2017 11:52

I know this isn't a very good analogy growapear, you say that men like to look at naked women and today that pursuit seems to hold little shame

I think it does still hold some shame, just not as much.

If all expressions of male sexuality held no shame I'm afraid to say we would be in a considerably worse place than we are now. I don't how to say this without sounding alarmist but the explosion in pornographic material in my mind is a result of the unshackling of male sexuality - a lid has been kept on it by ideas of virtue and shame for a long long time but now technology has allowed those "barriers" to be removed and this is the result. It makes me sound like a pearl clutching conservative but there you go.

I am reminded of the viscous (female) compere of a comedy club I used to go to who's warm up was to find young couples in the audience and "advise" the woman that all the men ever wanted was blowjobs and anal sex. There was nervous chuckling amongst the audience of all ages.

Women often like to be 'romanced', so would it be just as acceptable for the majority of us women to seek (interactive) romance from ppl other than our partners?

Can't really imagine how this would work as from a male perspective, romance is the act of persuading a woman she should have sex with you by being especially nice to her over a period of time. Without the end goal - are men really interested in romance ?

Sorry for being cynical - just being honest lol