Porn is ruining your life

Watching porn regularly may seem harmless but it’s been linked with depression, poor performance in bed and unrealistic expectations when it comes to sex. It’s not an issue unique to men either: as we all know, women regularly watch porn too.

For many, university is a time of sexual exploration. Some consider porn to be part of this exciting learning process, but it can seriously harm your ability to perform when it comes to the real deal. A state of arousal becomes increasingly difficult to achieve, which is unsurprising when you’ve been watching things you’d ordinarily find morally reproachable to get some sexual satisfaction. Watching porn has desensitised you to the beauty of the opposite sex.

This issue isn’t just a problem for sad, lonely singles locked in their bedrooms, loathsome eyes glued to their laptop screens indulging in the sort of content which makes mothers cringe. People in relationships have to deal with it too. In watching porn you undermine the beauty of your other half. Are they not enough? Whether you’re engaged in a sexual relationship with your better half or not, a porn habit overrides the reality of your love.

You might be addicted to porn, even if you don’t know it. Watching porn floods your brain with dopamine, a pleasure hormone. That torrent of chemicals happening over and over again rewires your brain and watching porn becomes a reward mechanism.

Do you watch porn more than once a week? How long do you think you could go without watching porn? Have you even considered a life without porn? Perhaps you’re a slave to the porn industry.

It doesn’t matter where you are, laptops are for essays

As it happens, there are more slaves today than ever before. At least 20 million human beings are traded like commodities every single year, and your consumption of porn is proliferating the problem.

For many slaves in the sex industry, pornography creates a psychological hold. In the same way drug addiction can bind prostitutes and sex slaves to their trade, illicit photographs and videos follow individuals in the unlikely event of escape. As many as half of all prostitutes are forced to make pornography – the dead look in her eyes can be explained by the gun pointing at her head off camera.

You don’t need this as much as you think you do

Porn generates huge revenue for traffickers particularly,  and now here comes the tragic bit: child porn. The younger the individual, the greater the profits received for images and videos. Every time you click, you encourage this industry to grow, whether you’re watching child porn or something entirely less sinister.

In a study of prostitutes from nine different countries, 49 per cent admitted to have been forced into porn while 47 per cent claimed to have been harmed by clients attempting to copy scenes they had seen in porn. It correlates that those who consume porn regularly are twice as likely to use prostitutes.

Interviews with women who had escaped the porn industry reveal even outside the world of slavery, porn is an exceptionally manipulative and exploitative trade. The women in porn, whether they were originally sold a glamorous promise or not, often end up using drugs to numb their pain and struggle to find a way out. You try to make it difficult for an employer to find that embarrassing neck and nominate video: imagine seeking employment when there are videos of you having sex, or even just naked, all over the internet.

Living without porn allows for a heathy mind, a healthy body, healthy relationships and – perhaps most importantly – will help the world on its way to being free from slavery. I appreciate the addictive nature of porn, and if you watch it at regularly you’re probably addicted, but it’s possible to quit and the benefits of doing so will soon become self-evident.