Generation Porn
“I can’t even be with a girl intimately without thinking about porn…”
I gesture for him to continue and he does.
“In order to even get-off I have to think about the scenes I watch alone in front of my laptop in the evening.” He pauses then continues more frustrated while he pinches his forehead muscles together. “The worst part is, I feel like I don’t even have control over it anymore. Anytime I get the urge to look at porn, I do. I never say to myself, ‘Self, we shouldn’t look at porn right now because it’s probably melting our brain’ instead I just think ‘Oh, porn…sounds fun’ and I’m right back in front of my computer with my pants down. Like, one time I tried to convince myself I shouldn’t watch for a few days and that lasted about 36 hours….”
He doesn’t stop, more of the confession pours forth. “And the weird part is, you never watch the same porn clip. You may have a favorite for a while, but then you get on these really weird kicks and fetishes and now I’m worried about where I’m headed, ya know? It’s black chicks one week, then Asian, and then the next thing you know people are getting choked in the videos and you’re like ‘How the hell did I end up watching this!?’”
His string of conscious thought over, I nod solemnly, feeling like I’m talking to myself only a few years earlier (with the exception that I might have been further down the rabbit hole).
“I don’t know what to do…” he trails off staring down at the table and folding his hands. “I just don’t know what to do…porn is normal for most guys, right?”
There’s Normal, Then There’s Not True
I remember the days when my friends and I would have to lift Playboys from seedy gas stations to view pornography. By college, however, Napster and Limewire made instant access to pornography available on my computer (granted it gave your computer an STD too due to viruses). It was completely normalized by everyone around me. We all watched it and provided comfort when we were single or “weren’t getting any from our girlfriends”. We joked about it, talked about our favorite porn stars and would trade thumb drives of porn. In the military, it was so normal it might have as well been the same as waking up and brushing your teeth. At one point during my deployment to Iraq, we had 600 gigabytes of porn stored on what’s called a SIPR line. It’s a secure internet connection that requires you to have a Secret clearance to even view the connection. More and more I believed it was normal. I thought the fact I was slowly increasing my consumption just meant I had a good libido.
Some things weren’t adding up, however.
Most girls were not sex crazed like in the videos, let alone would want you doing half the things you saw in the videos. But porn kept teaching me “this is normal…but what you’re experiencing in real life isn’t normal so push the boundaries”.
However, with the alarming and rapid expansion worldwide of pornography consumption we’re having psychologists, sex therapists, and even major men’s magazines like GQ pointing out “something is very, very wrong.”
Emotionally Detached
The misconception is that this is solely a men’s problem. However, recent surveys show that one in three visitors to pornographic websites are female and almost 50% of young adult women agree that viewing pornography is an acceptable way of expressing one’s sexuality. With the rise of the Internet and accessibility to porn, we’re quickly discovering (mainly through science) that it’s digitally rewiring our brains in the way we have traditionally experienced intimacy with other people. One of the leading psychologists in the world, Philip Zimbardo, has linked pornography consumption to ongoing problems with today’s male youth resulting in a fear of intimacy and connection that is replaced with isolation and a lack of social skills. Psychotherapist Phillip Hodson, of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, observes that women are now also using it as a quick way to have sex without emotional investment, just as men traditionally have. “For women, just as for men, the internet is able to satisfy that need in rather a raw, crude sense, quickly and easily. Why serenade someone and go through all the courtship rituals with another person when you have Google?”
2-minute clips are quickly replacing all the things that make us human and the joys we experience in dating, courtship, and marriage just so we won’t feel so lonely. Instead of fulfilling a desire it becomes a vacuum that turns into a coping mechanisms ultimately resulting in an addiction. Counselor Jason Dean states:
“The PC becomes an erogenous zone. The more you keep trying to put porn out of your mind, the more it keeps popping back in. The brain then learns that porn is the only way to cope with anxiety.”
Not That Big a Deal?
An argument I commonly hear is that “porn isn’t really that big a deal”. The problem with that type of thinking is the statistics and the rampant rise of addiction we’re seeing in addition to disturbing new information. Pornography generates more than the MLB, NFL, and NBA combined. It generates more than CBS, NBC, and ABC television networks combined. That sounds like a big deal to me. Perhaps more disturbing is that the number one searched pornography term in the U.S. and worldwide is “Teen”. Child pornography generates 3 billion dollars annually, and we seem to want our porn to look younger and younger. Because pornography is an arousal addiction it’s always moving and evolving (much like my friends story in the beginning) and leads to places you don’t want to go.
Years into fighting my addiction I discovered pornography was like adopting a cute lion cub that I kept in the closet and never showed to anyone. I could take it out and play with the baby lion when I wanted to. I would feed my cub and feel content, but somewhat awkward that I was keeping a lion in my closet. Over time though the lion grew and grew the more I fed it until it got big enough to knock down the door and told me when it was time to play. And it was no longer cute, but terrifying.
Many wonder, what are the spiritual implications? I tell people it’s like sticking your tongue to a frozen pole and ripping it off, and then doing it over and over again until you’re numb. But at that point who cares about what you believe spiritually? You’re already numb. I tend to let the statistics speak for themselves instead: 50% of Christian men claim to be addicted to pornography, and yet the church tends to remain silent on the issue because many of their pastors are knee deep in it too (54% of pastors admitted to viewing Internet porn in the last year and 30% admitted viewing within the past month. But let’s be real, it’s probably more than that and if I’m straight with you, I’ve even fallen into that category at times due to relapse). Instead of silence, what needs to happen are conversations around the issue in our churches and synagogues that are filled with love, grace, and acceptance to help men and women walk away from the screen and repair their relationships, lives, sexuality, and especially their marriages. We need to warn them of the dangers the same way you’d warn a child about the dangers of playing in the street. I’m not going to begrudge them if they’re ignorant on the issue, and neither should you.
Am I Addicted? What Can We Do?
I ask a lot of young men to go two weeks without porn and then tell me how hard it was not to look or if they were unable to do it. Most say it was really, really hard or just straight up failed. Just like a cigarette smoker quitting cold turkey, you can try and say you’re not hooked, but your body is gonna tell you differently.
Most, though, will still act like they have it under control. But denial is only going to drag you further under the tide, whereas admitting you might have a problem is going to point you towards help. Awareness is only step one. Step two is action.
My action plan looks like this:
- Get Informed — Research the truth about pornography and the industry. See what science and psychology are really saying. Learn about sex trafficking and the correlation between pornography. Visit sites like xxxchurch.com and fightthenewdrug.org to get those facts. Then make an informed decision. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel stated: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor. Never the victim.”
- Get Accountable — I use a great little program called X3Watch that monitors all my web and phone activity (cause your phone is a mobile porn hub these days). It doesn’t block anything or interfere. However, if I head to shady sites my wife is going to get a report of everything I viewed. If you’re single, put your mom as the person who gets your report. That’ll guarantee you’ll probably never look at porn again if she gets that report.
- Tell Someone — Like I’ve stated, most in our culture think porn is normal, but it’s slowly eroding the way we view women, our young men, our young ladies, our marriages, and love in general. Instead of intimacy, we’ll be constantly on the search for superficial satisfaction that leaves us emotionally bankrupt. So share this blog. Share a stat. Or if you’re stuck, it’s time to tell someone you trust that can help walk you through it.
At our deepest core, all of us have the desire to find love and be loved. We want that for ourselves, and eventually want our children and future generations to experience love and intimacy. But how will a generation know how to spot the dogs when they come barking if we’re running with the herd?
Don’t run with the herd. Stand out. Our love (and sex) lives deserve better.
For those struggling we also recommend SA 12-Step groups and x3Pure and X3Groups
