Consider This from NPR - Masturbation Abstinence Is Popular, And Doctors Are Worried

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

More than two decades of growing internet use has surfaced fears about the social and psychological impacts of nearly unfettered access to pornography. But many researchers and sex therapists worry that the online communities that have formed in response to these fears often endorse inaccurate medical information, exacerbate mental health problems and, in some cases, overlap with extremist and hate groups.NPR's Lisa Hagen speaks about her reporting with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Before we begin a warning, this episode will discuss intimate sexual behavior. It turns out, on the internet, a lot of people are talking about masturbation, more specifically about abstaining from masturbation. According to a study done by urologists in 2022, it's one of the most popular men's health-related topics on social media. They found the topic had a billion impressions on TikTok, over a million Instagram posts. But the thing is, none of the posts the researchers found came from actual doctors. And if you go searching for more information, you can very quickly find yourself in communities that are rife with medical misinformation,

misogynistic posts. Communities that some researchers worry could be recruiting grounds for extremists. Today on Consider This, NPR's Lisa Hagen is digging into this subculture, where it came from, and what everyone should know about it. She talks to NPR's Aisha Roscoe about what she learned about the phenomenon known as nofap. Hey, Lisa. Hey, Aisha. So first things first, for our listeners who may not be on these corners of the internet, and I didn't know about this, what is nofap? So the word fap is an onomatopoeia spawned on the internet and it refers to the act of male masturbation. So in general, no fap means no masturbating. But it's complicated. There's a company called NoFap, a Reddit forum called NoFap. More generally, it can refer to a whole cluster

of online self-help communities where the purpose is to abstain from masturbation and pornography. This world also includes influencers and coaches, many of whom are charging money to help men suppress urges to self-pleasure. That's the most beta thing you can do. That's the weakest thing any man can do. If you find yourself struggling with some urges, you just gotta give them the old kung fu slap. So if you are about to dishonor yourself in front of the computer by watching some porn, remember that I am watching you. Okay, okay. That's a lot going on. So I should say ideas about not ejaculating have been around for a long time.

But this set of popular beliefs about abstinence is a specifically modern development that's framed as being based on science and self-improvement. It promotes the idea that pornography is addictive and that using it to masturbate causes a whole range of medical, psychological, and social problems. So what you'll see is that users in these communities suggest that if someone stops masturbating for 90 days, their brain supposedly

reboots, like a computer, and then they can resume living a normal, fulfilled, usually heterosexual life. These abstinence forums suggest that all sorts of other benefits will also follow, like more confidence, more interest from women, and increased testosterone levels. Okay, like, it's a very attractive concept, right? But what's behind these ideas? In masturbation abstinence communities, you'll see many people say they worry about what porn might be doing to human relationships or psychology. And for what it's worth, the evidence is mixed on questions about who might be harmed by porn. Obviously, people can have a whole range of objections to pornography. Some are religious, others object to its sexist or racist tropes, or they have strong beliefs about working conditions in the adult industry. It's a complicated issue. online masturbation abstinence communities, some extra context is helpful. These groups emerged around the same time as what's called the Manosphere, which is a collection of online

spaces devoted to the idea that men are under threat because of things like feminism or modern life. And of course, this idea doesn't just exist online. A recent national survey found that four out of 10 Americans believe society has become, quote, too soft and feminine. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson even did a whole special on this for Fox called The End of Men. The decline of manhood, of virility, of physical health, all of which together threaten to doom our civilization. So in masturbation abstinence groups, internet porn is often framed as a major factor in this supposed decline, and abstaining from masturbation is held up as the cure. One post I saw, for instance, a user said, the future of earth and western civilization depends on men abstaining from masturbation. And definitely not all nofappers are as serious as that.

There are plenty of people just experimenting with this practice as a form of self-improvement, for instance. And I should say there is plenty of totally reasonable advice in these spaces, like eat better, exercise, get enough sleep, or, you know, find a hobby. But I guess, like, is it, you know, when you start talking about masculinity and Western civilization and all this stuff, like, who are these people in the NoFap universe? From what we can see, most people in NoFap forums are men. One very early survey found that the NoFap subreddit was 95% men. You also see posts from users who say they're under 18. And how, like, big is this? Is this some small little

tiny corner of the internet? Or is this, is this like a whole lot of people? Yeah, so the NoFap subreddit has a million plus users. And a 2022 study by urologists found that on TikTok, there are more than a billion impressions on masturbation abstinence related topics and over a million Instagram posts. The study also found that none of that content was created by doctors. So this is kind of big. But NoFap did actually become a company, right? Like, who started it? So it's this guy Alexander Rhodes who started the NoFap subreddit when he was a college student who spent a lot of time on the Internet. Around 2011, he was on Reddit and he saw a study that's since been retracted over ethical concerns, but it claimed that men's testosterone levels increased after a week of not masturbating.

I reached out to Rhodes multiple times to talk. He never accepted an interview request, but here he is on an Oregon radio show in 2012. You know, it was just like a kind of a joke, you know, and a lot of people were talking about like, hey, you know, let's see if this actually works. Let's not masturbate for a week. And this was all occurring in the comments. So then really what's necessary in my eyes was just a place, a centralized location where everybody could kind of try this technique out. So that's when Rhodes created the subreddit along with a dedicated website, NoFap.com. And as it took off, he trademarked it and started a company that he says is a peer support group for people with problematic pornography use. To this day, NoFap says it is not anti-masturbation and it's not anti-porn.

So how does Rhodes and his corner of the internet get so much more popular? So the year after starting the subreddit, Rhodes linked up with a guy named Gary Wilson. He's a former massage therapy instructor in Oregon and he ran a website called yourbrainonporn.com. Wilson was not a doctor or a professor, but he did do a viral TEDx talk.

And in it, he argues that internet porn is a hazard for men's brains. With internet porn, a guy can see more hot babes in 10 minutes than his ancestors could see in several lifetimes. The problem is he has a hunter-gatherer brain. The video now has a warning from Ted that several of Wilson's assertions aren't supported by medical or psychological research. So it carefully becomes, his brain becomes associated with this porn harem. This talk got 16 million views. And today the message of NoFap is strongly aligned with Wilson's arguments about pornography,

which is that watching porn is addictive and causes things like erectile dysfunction or brain fog, or it can even change what you're sexually attracted to. Major media outlets then started running stories suggesting abstinence as a potential cure for pornography addiction, including the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, and NPR's Here and Now. Many of these features didn't include scientists or doctors, and they often focused solely on the founder of NoFap, Alexander Rhodes. When we come back, we hear what it's actually like to be a part of this community. We're back with Consider This with reporter Lisa Hagen. Lisa, you've been talking to people in masturbation abstinence communities. Can you tell me more about why is this message resonating with people and what brings them to these communities?

Yeah, a lot of these users are writing about loneliness or insecurity, sometimes a lack of sexual experience. All these things are pretty standard if you're a teenager, which, you know, some of these users are. But I spoke to about half a dozen users and former users, and everyone said at first, there's a relief that comes with connecting with other people who are struggling with the same thing you're struggling with. One guy I talked to was named Tim. He's in his 60s. And he and everyone else we're featuring in this story from these communities didn't want us using their last names. They're concerned about people from their lives hearing about their relationships to masturbation and porn. Tim described his

relationship with porn as pretty average. But at some point, his wife came to him and said his porn use was destroying her self-esteem. and if he didn't stop, she would leave the marriage. So he tried, but he struggled. And for him, that was a sign that he had an addiction. And he says finding the NoFap community worked for him, which means he hasn't masturbated since October 2016, and is planning on continuing that streak indefinitely. He said masturbating again would be a threat to his sobriety and marriage. So he doesn't plan on masturbating because he looked at it as an addiction. So, I mean, I guess he had a good experience with this. He feels like this has worked for him. But I understand you've talked to

some people who didn't have the best experience with this. Yeah, so another guy I talked to named Derek. He's 24 years old, originally from Kentucky, and he grew up hearing in church that masturbation is a sin. He told me that he used to watch porn for a couple hours after school, and he was also struggling with erectile dysfunction. He felt terrible about that, but then he found NoFap forums. I had felt like I had found all of my answers, pretty much, and it was like a weight off my shoulders for, you know, for the time.

He told me instead of focusing on being a sinner, he now saw himself as an addict. He was hooked on a product, porn, which is giving him erectile dysfunction. So he decided to try the 90 day reboot, no masturbation, 90 days, but could not make it that long. And it made him feel awful. Every single time that I would fail, it was just a constant loop of, oh, we're doing so well. And then, oh, I messed up. And it was just,

I would beat myself up throughout the entire process. He doesn't go on NoFap forums anymore. And he feels comfortable with the amount of porn he watches. And when he looks back, he says of porn he watches. And when he looks back, he says he wishes he hadn't spent so much time in high school stressed out over this stuff. I guess, but what does science say about this? Are there actual medical benefits to abstaining from masturbation or porn? Like, does it keep your testosterone in your body if you don't masturbate? Right. It has a logic to it. But I talked to a urologist who's familiar with,

and I should say publicly critical of the nofap world, Dr. Ashley Winter, and she basically told me no. I have seen claims on social media saying that semen retention can boost your testosterone levels, cure erectile dysfunction, make you more manly, make you stronger, cure depression, make you more successful, clear your skin. There is no medical evidence that it does any of those things. To be clear, NoFap.com doesn't say all these things. Winter is referring to what she's noticed on various forums. Anecdotally, I've seen posts in masturbation abstinence communities where people believe these effects are real. I put out a lot of requests to talk to people in these groups and didn't hear back from most, but what I've been hearing from a lot of researchers who study

sexuality and psychology are some really serious concerns about whether nofap-style abstinence could be exacerbating anxiety and depression, unlike the confidence boost that's being suggested. Because if you can't maintain that strict abstinence, that's going to make you feel bad about yourself. Yeah. So you also talked to men who were concerned while they were interacting with these no-fap groups that they were addicted to porn. But then it sounds like some of them are changing their minds about that afterwards. I guess my question is, how do you know if you're addicted to porn? Are there

guidelines? Can you be addicted to porn? Yeah, I think the answer on this really depends on what you mean by addiction. A lot of people on NoFapForums believe they have serious problems with porn and masturbation, but there actually is no official porn addiction diagnosis in the U.S. It was considered and rejected by the psychiatrists who compiled the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual. I spoke with one of the lead doctors on that committee, and he told me ultimately they couldn't decide on a specific point at which the really wide range of normal human sexual behavior officially becomes abnormal.

Internationally speaking, the World Health Organization did approve a condition called compulsive sexual behavior disorder. That entry is really specific about how it's not something you should be diagnosing in adolescence or because of moral judgments about masturbation. Like, to qualify as a disorder, we're talking about sexual behavior that gets in the way of, like, health, hygiene, responsibilities over six months or more. Okay, but it sounds like a lot of the men that you talked to still at some point felt like they were out of control. Like, why did they feel that way?

What's going on is that people's feelings about porn play a really big role. Some surveys on men seeking treatment for porn addiction have found that they often have much lighter porn habits than men who masturbate a lot more and feel fine. One example found that among people who say they are porn addicts, the average frequency of porn use is less than 10 times a year. I talked to Joshua Grubbs, who researches addiction and psychology at the University of New Mexico. He was actually raised to be devoutly evangelical and Christian conservative, and he got his bachelor's degree from Liberty University, which was founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell. That's where he remembers hearing a lot about pornography addiction.

And I remember there was even this speaker who had cited the statistics from a recent survey that some company had done that showed that 50% of all Christian men were addicted to pornography. And I remember being 18, 19 myself at the time and thinking something about that doesn't make sense. So later when he became a researcher, he started studying these ideas more seriously and he kept finding this one thing over and over again. We would basically ask people, do you think that viewing pornography is morally wrong?

Does it trouble your conscious? Do you think this is a bad thing to do? And if they said yes, but we're still using, they were just dramatically more likely to say that they must have an addiction. So if they feel like there is a problem with viewing porn, then that's when they start saying, I'm an addict, I'm addicted. And is that the same for people who are very religious as well as those that are not religious? Yeah, this applies to people regardless of where they stand religiously. Grubbs, by the way, says none of this means we should ignore someone who's troubled by their porn use. He says more than one in 10 American men probably have some level of concern about this. And there are many researchers working on finding evidence for what might be the right response. There's evidence that cognitive behavioral therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy can be very helpful.

But Grubbs says the stuff dominating internet abstinence forums and influencer videos, it's just, it's not that. Abstaining from masturbation is not a reasonable or, in my opinion, ethical treatment goal. It's a model he says sets people up for failure. Grubbs says wanting to view less porn is a reasonable goal, but porn addiction recovery has become an industry. Okay, yeah, because we heard earlier all of those influencers. How much money is there to be made promoting masturbation and porn abstinence? Let's take the NoFap accountability website, for example. It offers accountability groups over the phone for anywhere

from $20 to $120 a month. NoFap.com, by the way, doesn't claim to be a source of therapy or medical care, and there are therapists who feel masturbation abstinence groups are unproblematic. But other influencers offer personal coaching or subscription content. There are rehab centers and retreats that offer pornography addiction recovery programs for like tens of thousands of dollars. Grubbs is a licensed therapist, so he to be sure that we're providing evidence-based care and care that helps and not harms. If someone is looking for a therapist, a place to start would be with someone with a certification from ASECT, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. When we come back, masturbation abstinence, misogyny, and the Proud Boys. We're back with Consider This. So we've talked a lot about how the ideas in masturbation abstinence communities can be damaging to someone's mental health or even their pocketbook.

But are there other harms that you've heard about? Yeah, another big issue is that these masturbation abstinence spaces tend to contain a lot of anger toward women. I spoke with Kelsey Burke. She's a sociologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the author of the book Pornography Wars. She says in some masturbation abstinence communities, the leap from what seems to be self-help to more extreme misogynist messages is not very big. Undergirding arguments about porn addiction is that the sex industry, which is made up of mostly women who are sex workers, that they are the source of temptation and that they are, frankly, ruining men's lives. All of the NoFap users I communicated with talked about misogynist posts in these forums. The NoFap organization itself has stated rules against this kind of stuff. They say they try to moderate their forums. But I saw plenty of posts like this during the months I've been reporting on these communities. And, you know, there are young teenagers in these spaces. Yeah, I mean, that is, you know, it's scary because your kids get online and you try to monitor what they're looking at.

And you also try to tell them, you know, just because people get online and say stuff don't mean you have to take everything to heart. But kids are impressionable. So these things can be very influential. Aside from the misogynistic language, like, what else are users encountering in these online forums? So for people who monitor these spaces, another big worry is that it's potentially a recruiting ground for extremists. I mentioned the anti-feminist manosphere earlier. That sociologist, Kelsey Burke, told me that masturbation abstinence has been appealing to various kinds of extremists for a long time.

We have historical evidence that white supremacist groups from 100 years ago were instructing men that they shouldn't masturbate in order to sort of maintain their virility and strength. To be super clear, some white supremacists have ideas about not masturbating. But we are not saying that everyone who abstains from masturbation is a white supremacist. Now, today, the Proud Boys have a rule against masturbating.

And the NoFap founder, Alexander Rhodes, did do a guest appearance on a talk show in 2016 hosted by the future head of the Proud Boys, Gavin McGinnis. And McGinnis gave NoFap a huge shout-out. Guys out there, go to NoFap.com. If you have a problem with porn, check out Alexander's program and participate in it. Rhodes has said that at the time, he only knew McGinnis as a comedian and co-founder of Vice Media.

Rhodes has strongly denied any ties with extremist groups, and he's sued critics who've alleged that NoFap, the company, has worked with or supported them. And Burke, that sociologist you heard a minute ago, says it's not accurate to say that being in masturbation abstinence groups leads people to extremism. But she worries about people who may be socially and emotionally vulnerable finding themselves in groups like NoFap, and then ending up somewhere else. Like, for instance, Gary Wilson, who did that TED talk about porn addiction, white nationalist David Duke recommended that same talk on his blog, where he makes unfounded anti-Semitic claims that pornography is a Jewish plot to undermine white men. And ideas like that do migrate onto the forums. I talked to another former user of NoFap.com, Chuck. He's a 39-year-old in Colorado. On the message board, there would be people saying that the Jews are controlling the porn because they're having Black men have sex with white women, and that's going to deplete the

white race. I haven't seen that specific post, but I have seen recurring conspiracy theories on both the subreddit and NoFap website forums. Some posts are explicitly anti-Semitic. Others use vaguer language about a global elite or Illuminati. But these are narratives that echo the worldviews in some extremist spaces. Okay, so these people are aware of each other in this idea. It seems like there are so many people who are involved in these conversations about nofap on the internet. Why does it seem like there is relatively little scrutiny of nofap theories? Reporting on these communities can be hard. I spoke to researchers, I looked into reporting by other journalists and court documents, and what I found was that some supporters

of masturbation abstinence have harassed critics by calling employers, targeting them with misogynist or anti-Semitic slurs, or even violent threats. Academics have told me that all of this makes for a chilling effect on people wanting to do more research in the area. NOFAP founder Alexander Rhodes has used a different approach with critics. He sued and threatened to sue scientists and media outlets. He sued his own mom. And all this legal action followed people's attempts to draw attention to overlaps between Rhodes' community and the extreme right. We haven't found any evidence that Rhodes has worked with these groups, threatened anyone, or done anything illegal. And I should say the NOFAP website says it supports scientific research, and Rhodes' attorney once characterized him as open and receptive of honest and fair criticism.

So you did mention a lot of kids might be on these forums. Is there anything that we as parents can do about this? Yeah, I mean, I don't know how likely it is that your kid is going to say, hey, mom, I have a porn addiction and I'm on Reddit trying to not masturbate about it. But I think generally speaking, you know, frank conversations about sex, pornography, and the internet are really important. And that can be hard to deal with as a parent. But there are resources for that. And I guess as a closing thought, I think we as journalists should take the opportunity to look at communities like this more closely. I think when large media outlets, including our own, report on these ideas and the

people involved in them, it's important to put them in context and fact-check the claims they make. And you know, these ideas we're talking about, people in power have heard them. More than a dozen states have passed resolutions declaring pornography to be a public health issue, using a lot of the same language and reasoning that you hear in the masturbation abstinence universe. So it's probably time for journalists like us to revisit some of these beliefs now that we have more information. Well, thank you so much for your reporting, Lisa. Thanks for having me, Aisha.

That was NPR reporter Lisa Hagen speaking with NPR's Aisha Roscoe. Read more from Lisa's reporting at the link in the episode notes. This episode was produced by Ariana Lee. It was edited by Brett Neely and Jetty Schmidt, with help from Liana Simstrom and Irene Noguchi. It was engineered by Valentina Rodriguez-Sanchez. Music contributed by Ramteen Arablui. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.