Is Watching Porn Bad?

Pornography is more accessible than ever, and millions of people visit the most popular porn sites every second. So, is watching porn bad? Watching porn can harm relationships, mental health, and self-esteem. While watching pornography often feels good temporarily, you may be surprised to discover the negative effects it can have on you.

Is porn addiction a real condition or just a bad habit? In this Clinical Conversation, Begin Again Institute therapist Matthew Russell, MA, LPCC, explains how porn addiction develops, the difference between a habit and an addiction, how early experiences and intimacy disorders can play a role, and what questions to ask yourself if you’re concerned about your own porn use.

Watch: Is Pornography Addiction Real? How to Know When It’s a Problem

Not sure where you stand? Take our free, confidential porn addiction quiz.

 

Negative Effects of Porn

It may be easy to think of pornography as being “victimless” because you think that viewing it doesn’t hurt anyone else, but viewing pornography can be harmful to yourself and others, including your partner. 

There are adverse effects to watching porn. Porn, more often than not, depicts degrading acts, misogyny, and unequal pleasure, and it can create unrealistic expectations and mental health issues for viewers. 

The negative effects of watching porn include:

• Psychological Effects. Regular pornography viewing can give you unrealistic expectations of sex, desensitize you, make it more difficult for you to be satisfied by real sexual experiences, and increase feelings of anxiety or depression. Overall, viewing porn can leave you feeling guilt, shame, or inadequacy.
• Relationship Issues. Viewing pornography may cause issues in your relationship, including hurt or betrayal, reduced intimacy, and less relationship satisfaction. Your partner may be hurt by the fact that you’re viewing pornography and think it’s because they don’t satisfy you or aren’t good enough. These feelings can cause real problems in your relationship.
• Social Effects. Spending significant time viewing pornography causes you to isolate yourself from others. It means you spend less time on positive activities you enjoy and can cause you to neglect your responsibilities. It also can cause you to have negative views of others, including degrading views of women.
• Addiction. Pornography can quickly become a way to escape from negative feelings, rewiring your brain and causing an addiction. As an addiction forms, you begin seeking more pornography and more explicit things to view to get the same feelings. This behavior has a negative impact on all aspects of your life and can cause relationship, financial, and even legal issues.

How To Know if You Have a Pornography Addiction

Is watching porn bad? While you may not consider the viewership itself to be negative, an addiction isn’t a good thing. So, how do you know if you have a pornography addiction?

Porn addiction is when a person compulsively views porn to the point that they become emotionally dependent on it. They can’t stop, and their pornography habit affects their everyday life. Porn addiction is a hypersexuality disorder, which is an obsession with sexual fantasies or urges. 

You may be experiencing porn addiction if it becomes a major focus, interferes with your daily life, and you can’t quit, despite trying. If porn has disrupted your relationships, finances, or work, it’s probably time to get help.

Signs of porn addiction include:

• Increased porn use
• Feeling guilty about watching 
• Inability to control your urges
• No longer enjoying sex
• Watching porn in inappropriate settings
• Spending excessive time watching porn or money on porn
• Increased tolerance for more extreme or violent porn
• Consuming thoughts of porn
• Neglecting responsibilities to view more porn
• Experiencing low self-esteem
• Having difficulty controlling your emotions
• Losing track of time due to watching porn 
• Hiding your porn watching from loved ones

If you think you may have a pornography addiction, but you aren’t sure, take our porn addiction quiz. While the quiz isn’t a diagnostic tool, it can help you get a better understanding of whether your porn viewing is cause for concern.

What To Do if You Think You Might Have a Porn Addiction

Now you’re concerned that you might have a porn addiction. What do you do if you’re wondering, “Am I addicted to porn?” The best thing to do is to contact a mental health professional who can help you understand whether there’s cause for concern. 

Beyond that, you can try to stop watching porn. If you find you can’t, it may be indicative of a bigger issue and a sign that you need to seek help.

An addiction isn’t likely to go away on its own, but there are some things you can do to attempt to overcome porn addiction, like installing porn blockers on your devices and enlisting the help of an accountability partner. You also can attempt to identify what triggers you to view pornography and do your best to avoid those things or replace the porn viewing with a more positive behavior. 

Getting Help for Porn Addiction

The best next step, if you’re concerned, is getting help for porn addiction. A variety of effective methods for porn addiction treatment exist.

Porn addiction treatment options include:

• Psychotherapy. You can work with a mental health professional to understand the past events that led to your addiction. Over time, you can recognize maladaptive behaviors, determine your unmet needs, and implement coping strategies.
• In-Patient Treatment. An in-patient treatment center can help you remove the stressors of daily life while you work with mental health professionals on healing and recovery. In-patient treatment also addresses any additional mental health issues that may coexist with the addiction.
• Intensives. Intensives help you become steeped in the work of recovery for a short, intensive healing period.
• Support Groups. Talking to people with similar experiences can be extremely validating, empowering, and healing. 

How Begin Again Institute Can Help

Whether you think watching porn is bad or not, being addicted to pornography has negative effects on your life. If you’re ready for help, Begin Again Institute is here.

We offer a 14-Day Men’s Intensive to help you stop destructive behaviors, heal from the root cause, and jumpstart your recovery. For a faith-based recovery option, try our 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive. It provides the same foundational healing methods, but it is steeped in the Christian faith.

Healing is possible. Contact us today.

Video Transcript

Is Porn Addiction Real? | How to Know When It’s a Problem 

Clinical Conversation with Matthew Russell, MA, LPCC
Begin Again Institute

Greg (00:08): If you’ve ever Googled, “Am I addicted to porn?” at two in the morning and then close the tab before you finish reading? This video is for you. Today I’m sitting down with Matthew Russell, a therapist at Begin Again Institute, to answer the question that stops most men before they even start. Is porn addiction real? Matthew, clinically, how do you define porn addiction?

Matthew (00:35): Well porn addiction if you really want to conceptualize it was just a manifestation of what a bigger problem is. And the bigger problem is it’s an intimacy disorder. They’re sacrificing meaning, that’s sacrificing meaningful relationships for counterfeit versions of connections. And pornography addiction is just one facet of that.

Greg (00:55): So that makes sense. How do you know then if what you’re dealing with is an addiction versus just a bad habit? What makes it an intimacy disorder?

Matthew (01:05): So it’s a great question ’cause it’s a deep answer. But ultimately, is it interfering with your personal life? Is it interfering with your professional life? Are you finding yourself more isolating and spending more time with self-soothing behaviors, i.e. pornography or other versions of that, than you are with your children or with your spouse or with your friendships? And those are tough questions that you have to ask yourself and be honest. You have to be honest with yourself. And if the answers are yes, then you might have a problem.

Greg (01:40): That makes a ton of sense. So if that’s the case, if these things are interfering with someone’s lives, how does that happen? Like, when does it move from habit to addiction? When does it move from normal behavior to problematic? Is there a cause?

Matthew (01:56): Yeah, then and the causes likely happens in early childhood. And that’s why we really have to delve into what was your childhood like? What was home life like? What was your relationship with your parents like? And that’s the formative years where usually the introduction to content like pornography is introduced, which can be overwhelming to the young mind. And so a lot of the addiction formation, the pornography, the sex addiction, ultimately what I say the intimacy disorder, is developed then and carried on through young adult life.

And these things are often predate your spouse, predate your partner. And so you’re you’re carrying this addiction. You know, we might not show up as an addiction because it’s so secret, but it carries on into that relationship and usually manifests even deeper until eventually a discovery.

Greg (02:47): So it’s starting early on in my life. Is it just because I watch it, all of a sudden I am addicted to it? Or is there, are there other factors? Like why would why would me being exposed to it early in my life mean that I would develop an addiction, so to speak?

Matthew (03:03): Yeah, you know, it can be compared similarly to the, you know, drug use or alcohol use. Not everybody gets addicted to it right away. However, those are good sources for, you know, making yourself feel better or a coping strategy. What we call sometimes a maladaptive coping strategy. And porn is no different in that sense. It’s just different because it’s a internal pharmacy that you’re tapping into, not an external like alcohol or or or drugs.

But how you access that internal pharmacy is use of counterfeit versions of connection, women or men or sex. And so it starts off using it as self-soothing behaviors. And then you use it as a bad habit, of what I’ve heard and understand it is. It starts off that way, but it turns into a vice, it turns into a place where they can go feel better about themselves. It’s secret, it’s very accessible, nobody has to know about it, and you can do it all by yourself. And then it turns into an addiction.

Greg (04:11): Yeah, that makes sense. There’s a you know, skeptics might say it’s just porn. Millions of people watch it. Why is it a big deal? What like from a clinician’s perspective, what are your thoughts on that?

Matthew (04:22): Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I compared it to alcohol and drugs, you know, not everybody gets addicted, and that’s true for pornography too. But it’s also a slippery slope. It’s dare I say more accessible, especially for children and adolescents, than it is alcohol and drugs, where it’s literally on their phone. It’s on their computer. Look, mom and dad are away so I can go access whatever I want, and it can turn into something that is very prominent in their life.

Greg (04:56): Yeah, that makes sense. I’m hearing you say, right, like it’s ubiquitous in a sense. It’s everywhere and it’s very easily accessible. And some people end up using it, you said maladaptively, right, as a soothing behavior. I wonder why some people move into it becoming problematic. Like for some people it becomes problematic and for others it doesn’t. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Matthew (05:21): Totally. And that’s where we really have to delve into like, what was your childhood like? You know, what were your relationships like with your parents? Cause going into the attachment style lens, you know, we need to connect.

As humans, we all need to connect. We need that nurturing nature from mom. We need that model from dad. We need that affirmation, validation. Am I being seen? Am I being heard? Am I being loved? And in healthy relationships, those build meaningful relationships, which gives us a reward, right? And a child never questions who they are when, they’re when they’re properly loved, when they have that secure attachment.

But in the absence of all those meaningful relationships of what makes a meaningful relationship, they seek for something similar. And that’s where pornography or sex comes in, which completely hijacks their nervous system. You know, they find that instant gratification without the work of building a relationship. And so you know, in the absence of that they’re gonna find it. And it’s again accessible, it’s easy to get, it’s gratifying, and it’s also a counterfeit version of love. And so it’s like a heroin hit, right?

Greg (06:37): Yeah. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. It it’s almost like if I if what I’m hearing is it’s not about a person being born with some genetic predisposition to be addicted to pornography, but rather it’s a result of experiences in our early life and then the presentation of that self soothing tool that gives us the joy or the gratification or the validation that we’re looking for. For some, depending on what they went through in their early lives, it can become problematic.

Matthew (07:08): Absolutely. Yep. And then you compound that with let’s say a person is bullied all the time. They’re feeling isolated already and so they’re gonna find something to connect to. And what’s ever readily available is more likely what they’re gonna cling to and especially for young young men or young boys, you know.

They are very visual creatures by nature. And so just being exposed one time by, you know, these exotic images and content, it’s gonna be drawing. It’s gonna make them feel good and feel connected. Even though it’s a counterfeit version of connection, they’re drawn to it and then they’ll continue to go to that.

Greg (07:45): That resonates. Yeah. Well, so if you’re standing in front of somebody who’s trying to figure out if this is problematic for them, what would you say to somebody who’s trying to understand that?

Matthew (08:00): Yeah, you have to really look at yourself and ask yourself some hard questions. Is it interfering with the relationships that are meaningful to you, your spouse? If you’re a father or a mother, is it interfering with your relationship with your children? Are you finding yourself, you know, difficult to concentrate at work? Are you isolating yourself from, you know, your friendships? Are you starting to fill that void inside? You know, even though you’re doing well on the outside, are you filling that void, that numbness, that disconnection?

And if you ask, if you answer those honestly, then it might help you understand that you might have a problem, an intimacy disorder. Are you lacking the meaningful relationships in your life? What happened? Where did it start? You know? And those are some symptoms though of that you might have a problem.