by Sathiya Sam – https://www.sathiyasam.com/
We have been getting a lot of questions about how porn specifically affects the brain, and something tells me you may have some of the same questions.
In case you didn’t know – I was a university researcher for several years before becoming a local church pastor, so the whole neuroscience thing through a Biblical lens is kind of my jam 
.
The male brain is changing in some pretty disturbing ways these days. To give you an idea…
- Men under the age of 40 experience erectile dysfunction at about 25-30% (!!!!!!!!). This is insane. Back in 2000, the rate was <5%.
- About 80% of pornographic content depicts violence, anger, or very intense sex scenes.
- Porn increases divorce rates by as much as 56% (and the divorce rate is already pretty dang high)…
These alarming trends can all be accounted for by a concept in neuroscience called desensitization.
Let me ask you something…
Have you ever walked into a room that had a funny smell? Like Uncle Rick let one rip real bad right before you walked in and now he’s trying to play it cool and pretend he didn’t do it when he’s the only other person in the room and it’s very obvious he did it?
(You know what I’m talking about…)
What happens about 30-45 seconds later? The smell starts to disappear (assuming Uncle Rick has no more gas left in the tank, so to speak).
You may tell yourself, “Oh the rancid fumes of Uncle Rick’s crop duster have finally blown away!”
Not so.
What actually took place was a process called desensitization.
In other words, your nerve cells got used to the stimulus (those poor nerve cells) to the point that the fart fumes no longer register. Our nerve cells are responsible for detecting CHANGES in stimulus, rather than stimulus itself.
This is also why when you squish in the backseat of a car with a bunch of people, at first it feels uncomfortable and you’re very aware that your legs are touching other people’s legs. But after a while, you don’t even notice.
The legs didn’t go anywhere. Your nervous system simply became desensitized because there were no changes in stimulus. The only way you’d become aware of the legs is if someone (or you) started to shuffle around.
When you watch porn regularly, your brain experiences arousal desensitization.
Remember the good ol’ days of puberty where the pretty blonde-hair, blue-eyed (or black-hair, brown-eyed for my fellow darker skinned readers) taking a glance in your direction was enough for you to pitch a tent?
Well if you continue to watch porn, those glances no longer do the trick. Porn provides abnormally high amounts of stimulus that nothing in real life can compete with.
And as you keep watching highly-stimulating content (aka. porn), your brain’s threshold to experience arousal starts to elevate.
Then after a while, you notice that the same kind of content you used to watch doesn’t cut it.
So you try some “new” stuff.
The kind of stuff you used to judge other people for watching (or doing).
It’s not because you’re so messed up and dark. It’s because your brain has become desensitized and is looking for a new way to experience arousal like it used to.
But in the process…
The threshold becomes SO high, that when you engage in normal sex, it’s not enough to register any kind of arousal. Hence why 1/3 men under the age of 40 are dealing with ED right now.
When the Bible says that we are transformed by the renewing of our mind (Rom 12:2), there is a hidden principle in there that we must grasp…
How we think determines how we function.
Which is why desensitizing your brain is a big deal. A desensitized brain leads a zombie of a man. Numb, disconnected, and fragmented.
Talk soon,
Sathiya
