The Jordan Harbinger Show - 986: Porn | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

Has technology weaponized pornography into a public health crisis? Michael Regilio takes us through modern porn's ins and outs on this Skeptical Sunday! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday: High-speed internet porn is a recent phenomenon that provides an intense, novel experience unlike traditional pornography, hacking into our brain's evolutionary desires for new mates and triggering dopamine responses similar to drug addiction. Pornography use, especially among adolescents and young adults who grew up with easy access to internet porn, has been linked to erosion of gray matter in the brain's prefrontal cortex, which controls impulse control and decision-making. Porn use has been associated with sexual disorders like erectile dysfunction in young men, as well as difficulties forming emotional bonds and intimacy in relationships. While some psychologists dispute the existence of "porn addiction," neuroscientific evidence shows porn use can lead to compulsive behaviors and brain changes resembling substance addictions. While some political efforts have been made to declare porn a public health crisis, there is little policy action based on scientific evidence to provide resources for treatment and awareness. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Michael Regilio at Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and make sure to check out the Michael Regilio Plagues Well With Others podcast here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/986 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regilio, whose name is impossible to spell. Good luck finding him on Instagram. On the Jordan Harbinger show,

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Today, sexually explicit content, adult entertainment, smut is a word I feel like needs to come back. Triple X or just X, X, X, X, I don't know how you would say that. Porn, whatever you call it, there's no getting around how ubiquitous porn is today. And today's porn uses high-speed internet to create an intense experience, or so I have heard, and the negative effects of today's pornography are not always anticipated by the user or necessarily even considered by the user. Porn and porn flicks, they don't come with warning labels what they used to. But can viewing pornography impact relationships, work, or self-care is the impact worse

than society wants to admit. Comedian and porn aficionado, Michael Regulio, is here to talk about the ins and outs of porn. Okay. For the record, Jordan Adlib, the porn official. Chianado, although researching this episode, I might well be. Hi, Jordan. Let's talk specifically, okay, about high-speed internet porn. This is not your father's porn. High-speed internet access has changed the way porn is viewed while changing our brains wiring. It is necessary to look at the

science behind pornography. Porn science. Okay, that sounds like a movie starring Anthony Michael Hall. By the way, the phrase your father's porn is something I'd rather just never, ever hear again, by the way. That's, no. Okay, all right. Well, it might come up again. But ha! The science behind porn is, of course, neuroscience. And neuroscience shows that high-speed porn changes the way our brain functions and instills addictive traits. But here's the thing. Porn has always been around. You and I were kind of talking at the top of the show, well, it's not just porn. It's high-speed internet porn. And I'm thinking like, okay, is dial-up porn? Is it that much worse or better VH-H-H? chest porn. This is nothing new. Playboys, wet playboys in the forest. Right. Okay. Look, although porn is nothing new, there is no comparing today's porn to anything that existed before. This isn't even your older cousin's porn, okay? See, that's more like it. That's some porn I can get behind that doesn't make me have shivers and, you know, nightmares while I'm awake. I understand. Okay, so high-speed internet porn is a recent phenomenon that didn't exist until around 20 years ago. Porn is more accessible and more extreme than ever before.

These few rain-soaked centerfold magazines that I, and apparently you found in the park as a teenager, are nothing compared to the hardcore high-deaf videos that everyone has access to today. Yeah, so I was hinting at the thing that it's like a code word that all guys who are probably 30, 40 years old know is that there are rain-soaked, hopefully rain-soaked magazines in the woods stuffed in a stump at the BMX track

that your parents have never been to. and my friends and I would find them and say, I think that's a boob, and the nip should be like where that torn sort of leaf dried on there and we can't get it off without ruining it. Can we even know how many people watch porn on a regular basis? It's not something people love to talk about generally except for right now, apparently. Yeah, well, that's true. But the National Institute of Health reports that 91% of men and 60% of women have viewed porn within the last month.

Other statistics vary, but it's hard to get honest feedback. There's that old joke. Nine out of ten guys admit to masturbating and the tenth one is a liar. Well, that might just be the case here with who is admitting to their porn habits. So we just don't know. So those stats, they sound high. Maybe not for guys. Maybe 91% sounds accurate.

It does surprise me the percentage for women is that high. I would say, if you quizzed me on that, I'd say low double digits or even single digits because a lot of women I know would never admit, I'll put it that way, to watching porn. True. And the numbers going up. And evolutionary biologist Thomas Junker believes the rise in females who view high-speed porn is because more content is now being made for women. So the numbers are adding up.

And by the way, the top five porn sites account for over six billion visits per month. No doubt, some of those visitors are definitely women. Just statistically speaking, I'm curious what the difference is between porn for men and women. I'm going to have to somehow figure out how to view porn on the internet. Man, that's going to be some research. But wow, over six billion served. There must be a lot of repeat users in this industry. Okay, yes, those numbers do account for many chronic porn users.

There is hesitation to label them porn addicts, but neuroscientists see no difference in brain function between porn use and other addictive things like drugs. Many psychologists don't agree and say that porn addiction doesn't exist, while others have a more fuzzy take. It's a debate, and I don't fully understand it. So I'm just going to go with the scientists, and I'm going to say if it walks like an addiction

and talks like an addiction, it's an addiction. Addiction or not, what is going on here? That's a lot of crispy socks, Michael. Wow. I wonder how many people even get that. Women are like, well, crispy socks. Sadly, I think just about everybody gets it because that stereotypes been around.

And I've, yeah. That's true. The fact of the matter is it just all starts with evolutionary desires. For billions of years, the top priority for all living things has been reproduction. Now, imagine the environment in which humans evolved. Studies of the earliest human species population show that there was about one person per square mile. So a dude walking the plains of Africa 100,000 years ago or so had very few opportunities to interact and mate. Evolution made sure he took every opportunity available.

The hornyest people passed along the most DNA. And in order to maximize reproduction rates, men evolved to become super aroused by the prospect of a new mate to spread as much sperm as possible. That actually makes a ton of sense, evolutionarily speaking, and I love that the source for this, or one of the sources for this, is per square mile.com, which I can only imagine someone's like, wait, what happens if we quickly need to know how many people there were per square mile 100,000 years ago? I need to make a website that calculates this in a flash. Yeah, it sounds like graduate student project. It does, like an intern at a think tank. So we're ancestors of the horniest humans, which is kind of funny. And also, that's not what you learn in Sunday school or whatever. Yeah, and high-speed

internet porn hacks these desires and sends them into overdrive. Our brain is telling us we're doing a good thing when we watch porn because the potential for new mates seems limitless. I know this isn't your department necessarily, but it sounds like you're saying humans are not usually monogamous kind of by design, at least sexually monogamous by design. All living things are built to reproduce. Certain species are more monogamous than others. When a gray wolf alpha male picks its mate, that's for life. They are nature's power couple. Many other species are the same.

Penguins, albatross, and our national bird, bald eagles, mate for life. Yeah, of course they do. Good old American family values. That's right. But there are animals like bonobos who are just constantly having sex parties. Humans seem to be a combination of those extremes. And by the way, Jordan, I've been to a few bonobo parties. Not that great, okay?

I'm not sure how you scored an invite to those, but I don't really need details. It sounds like a lot of feces tossing. So porn is, speaking of it, porn is stimulating our most primal desires. How is it affecting our brain? Is there science that says like, hey, this is, this rots your brain like the hip-hop and jazz music once was thought to do? One of the most powerful things in our brains is the tremendous dopamine system. The dopamine system motivates us to do everything we need to do to survive, like eat, sleep, and reproduce. And when it comes to reproduction, the dopamine system doesn't leave anything to chance.

So even if there's a slight chance of mating, our brains give us a dopamine boost to motivate us to go for it. Ah, okay. So are we, and again, this might be a little outside the research, but are we motivated to go for sex more than other desires? You know, when you hear those rat experiments, like the rat went for the cocaine water instead of food? It's like, well, surprise, surprise.

But what takes precedence? Food or sex? Or shelter or sex? Is there like a hierarchy here that gets messed up? Well, let's just say studies show that our dopamine production for sex is two times what it is for food. Great dieting idea. The porn diet. The book writes itself.

And look, the fact of the matter is dopamine is the door to addiction. And here's the thing. Dopamine isn't just the pleasure molecule. No, it's the molecule that controls wanting, cravings, and guides you to avoid those unpleasant feelings. The purpose of dopamine is to motivate you to seek behavior that produces more dopamine. I mean, who doesn't love food? And to 2x that, sign me up. So let me guess.

The dopamine machine can't tell the difference between high-speed internet porn and a real-world experience, or there's some fuzzy stuff going on there? No, it's actually just the opposite. It can tell the difference, and the dopamine is motivating people to choose high-speed porn over the real world. Oh. There is more reward from high-speed porn. high-speed porn than sex with a single partner. Because there are diminishing returns of dopamine

with the same partner, high-speed internet porn offers endless opportunities to simulate a new mate. So it's the novelty thing going on here. And by the way, that sounds like the slogan for a porn site, simulate a mate. It makes sense, though. I can't imagine that almost anybody in real life has more options for real-life mates than they do internet simulated mates. And here's looking at Tom Brady, right? It's like, well, that guy can walk out the door and people are like doing weird gymnastics over tables to get to him. And yet, he's in his bed laying down. He's got his phone in his hand.

Like, it's still easier for somebody like that. It's true. I mean, maybe that should be the catchphrase for one of those sites. More sex than Tom Brady. After the FTX thing, he might not be down for any more website promos. But then again, it can't go any worse than the FTX thing. So a porn site endorsement might actually be a good way to clean his brand up a little bit. Yeah.

At least porn is real. Right, true that. This is the underlying promise of porn, and high-speed porn delivers that. People are hacking this response and getting a dopamine kick for a new partner every few seconds. It's pleasure on steroids. Pleasure on dopamine, anyway, I suppose. And now young guys, I've heard Scott Galloway say this, and I don't remember if it was on my show

because he's been on a few times or other show, but he said, now young guys basically can have more simulated partners in one lonely afternoon than most men of the previous generations have had in their entire lives. Yeah, and scientists used dopamine to measure the addictive potential of an experience. A 2019 study in Australia showed porn to subjects and measured a dopamine spike

at the initial viewing. The more the subject watched the same porn, the less dopamine they released. When the researchers showed them a new porn film, the researchers said their brains and boners sprang to attention again. Well, that does explain the never-ending new content on porn sites

or so I've heard. I guess you don't rewatch your favorite ones like you do old Seinfeld episodes. Rarely do I watch Seinfeld for sexual content. There was the episode with Elaine's Nipple that I rewatched several times. Can't see it. Can't see it. All right, look, it's not just the sexual content, but the novelty that sends dopamine skyrocketing.

Like you just hinted at earlier, in 30 minutes, you can see more members of the opposite sex erotically displaying themselves than the total number of other mostly closed humans our ancestors who could see during their entire lifetime. This is all new to the human experience, and it's the frequency of dopamine spikes that cause addiction. Everyday things become boring compared to the non-stop dopamine show a human gets in front of their laptop touching, well, the top of their lap. Thank you.

Yes, it's not just a laptop, though. It's any screen, right? Are we including phones? And although desktop porn seems so comically antiquated and quaint. I have to imagine this includes phones because, again, from what I've heard from friends, most of their porn habits happen to be through their handheld devices while they're handholding their other devices. I knew you're going to go for that one. Look, the fact of the matter, for the porn addict, it's not even about the phone or the screen. You don't have to be in front

of a screen to be affected by porn use. It's also the things that trigger people to go watch porn. Just seeing a woman in a bikini while driving down the street can create a strong craving for internet porn in users. I don't know why that's funny, because I guess where I'm driving, there's nobody who's just hanging out in a bikini. But dudes just see a woman in a bikini on the beach, theoretically, or whatever, and it makes them want to just go home, bust out the laptop, and then not actually engage with the woman in the bikini, but go straight home and bust up Bourne Hub or whatever.

Okay, now you get it. It's not surprising that high-speed porn has similar effects on the brain as narcotics. Daniel Lieberman points out in his book, The Story of the Human Body, that the Sweetest Thing an ancient hunter-gatherer could find was probably a piece of fruit about as sweet as a modern-day carrot. Huh. Now you can buy a pound of sugar for a few bucks. Farmers in the Andes chew coca leaves for a mild boost in energy, extract that energy-boosting power, and you wind up with the highly addictive cocaine. It's like we're a little too smart for our own good.

We've conquered survival faster than our brains can process. We learned how to exploit the programming that paired survival and reproduction with pleasure. With a few taps on our phone, we have unfiltered pleasure completely separated from its original purpose of survival and reproduction. That does make a lot of sense. Although I have to kind of call BS on the carrot thing. What about berries? Is this guy just going to ignore the fact that fruit has existed since the dawn of time theoretically? How is a carrot the sweetest thing that's around? Like an apple, which is not going to be a rare thing, is everywhere. And so are raspberries. They grow like weeds. And the Bible says apples have been around since the beginning.

So there you go. There you go, buddy. Checkmate. Scientist. Yeah, I don't know about that. But I get where he's going with it. And also the whole coca leaf thing makes sense and extracting things from nature

and then turning them into crazy. I mean, even all kinds of high fructose corn syrup would be a good example. Yeah, exactly. It's just we're refining everything and then it goes straight into your veins. And it's like, wait, you were supposed to have a 1% diluted version of this and you were supposed to absorb it 100 times slower

and now you're shooting it up or smoking it. I would imagine the addiction worsens when things like a VR headset are used. I know that's sort of primitive tech, but it's so new it makes me get vertigo and want to barf instead of, you know, simulate much of anything, but I can only imagine that's going to make things worse. Yeah, VR is relatively new, and it is being studied. Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK have pointed out that VR changes the experience of porn.

A user goes from detached observer to virtual participant. If you're Jonesing for a little release, maybe release that wallet and support one of the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers does keep the lights on. All the links, deals, and discounts and ways to support the show are all in one place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also search for any sponsor, any promo code using the AI chatbot on the website as well. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I almost feel, and this is a tangent that I won't go on, but I almost feel like that's better versus watching random people get after it. At least you're kind of like somehow being involved seems more help. Well, now I don't know. I'll leave it to the scientist. Continue. I mean, it's getting a little holodeck and I don't know. It's getting a little her.

Yeah, with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarjo. Jo. Joaquin Phoenix, yeah. I mean, we might just reach the point where somebody goes home puts on their headset and spends the evening with their girlfriend. I don't know. I mean, it's just not conclusive either way. Yeah, better than shit. shooting up a shopping mall if you're like one of those violent incels. But that's another,

that's another show. It's a good point. I'm convinced that there could be a correlation there too. Look, there's no doubt the VR adds to the dopamine kick. And any addict will tell you the constant dopamine spikes come with a price. When we slam the pleasure center of the brain with that much dopamine, the receptor shut down. So to get the same high, users need more and more porn. It's not unlike gambling and drugs. Anything that gives us the sweet, sweet dopamine rush. This dopamine cycle is a universal symptom of addiction. And this is exactly what scientists see in the chemistry of the minds of high-speed porn users.

Behavioral addiction causes the same dopamine responses as in substance addiction. So isn't then high-speed internet addictive itself? Does surfing the web itself boost us with dopamine? Because when I first discovered the internet as a kid, and this wasn't even like clicking on colored banners. This is navigating using a keyboard and a black-and-white screen. I was beyond addicted to it as a kid.

It was wild. And all I really had access to were certain academic papers and, like, crappy chat rooms that were mostly inactive, that were about computers. But it still was like the coolest thing that I'd ever seen in my life. And this, again, no pictures, not even a color screen at that point. I mean, of course, yes. The internet itself can be very addicting. We know that.

Even if you're just looking at innocent content, I myself have sacrificed valuable. time with my family to watch way too many human beatbox videos. Seems worth it. I'm more of a Dr. Pimple Popper Whistling Diesel video guy. Oh, no. Okay, I have some idea of what the Pimple Popper thing is, and I will say that if it was around when I was 15, I would have been a fucking star. Okay, but what is Whistling Diesel? So my kid wants, Jaden always likes watching videos before we go to sleep. And it's like he just wants to watch one video with that, and he always wants to watch car videos. And this guy Whistling Diesel is like this idiot. And by idiot, I mean brilliantly funny guy who's good at playing dumb, but is a mechanical genius.

And what he'll do is he'll buy like a Hellcat sports car, which is kind of like a souped up charger Mustang thing. And he'll put those Amish wagon wheels on it. And he'll burn it out and drive it through town. Or he'll get like a monster truck and drive it in water. And everyone's calling it, the cops are everywhere and there's helicopters. And he's like, well, we check. This is actually legal. but they don't like it. It's dumb. But, you know, there's a reason to get 23 million views on a video

because it's amazingly fun and funny and seemingly mostly innocent. Wow. I don't know how we got on this, but yeah, the videos that we see online on TikTok that are not porny, a lot of them are also kind of addicting. I'm not addicted to Whistling Diesel, but you see outrage content or just nonsense conspiracy stuff. There's got to be an addiction element to that stuff because otherwise it's, I mean, it is destroying people's lives and relationships and people choose that over like their family. I know. I mean, that's another episode altogether that I've had friendships fall apart over this stuff. But look, there's a lot to say about internet addiction. But there's no doubt high speed porn makes it worse. Viewing port is

associated with the erosion of the prefrontal cortex, which drives things again like our impulse control and willpower. When you combine the already addictive nature of the internet with the fact that our brains make us super motivated by anything sexual, you see how high speed porn can have such negative effects. So you said erodes the prefrontal cortex. Tell me more about that, because that sounds like one of those things you read in a science article, and it's like, well, it doesn't actually erode, and it's not actually the prefrontal cortex, and it's not true at all. It's a good question, and I looked into that one a lot. And I guess right now where the science is, there's no causal link that is conclusive, but there is no doubt from dozens of studies that erosion of the prefrontal

cortex and reduce gray matter correlates with porn use. So, look, we've said it before, we'll say it I'm not an expert. This is past my pay grade. I'm trying to learn here, though. But what remains unclear is whether porn use is shrinking the gray matter of dudes or dudes with small gray matter watch more porn. I'm guessing also the younger you are, the more negative the effects. Do we know the age kids are seeing this content? Because the outrage internet that I'm addicted to would say that 12-year-olds are watching porn, which doesn't surprise me at all. Because if I was 12 and I had a smartphone or a computer with internet, I would be seeking this stuff out for sure. I'm sure I would have. Absolutely. And I mean, just in my own life, when one of my 12-year-old nieces grabs my phone, she can navigate into parts of my phone. I didn't even know exists. She hands it back to me two seconds later. It's got a different screen, different buttons. I'm signed up. Like, they are quick. They are good. So they're going to see it. And the fact of the matter is studies show most children view porn by the age of 13. But 15% they viewed pornography online before the age of 11. Again, this is difficult to conduct. So the numbers could be higher. I mean, who's going to

admit, like even to a researcher, I started looking at that stuff when I was seven. Or my kids are looking at it because I'm a terrible parent and can't stop them from doing it, even though you're not a terrible parent, because even if you won't let your kid use the internet or have a phone, some shit-head kid at school has a phone and the parents don't care that he's showing porn to all the girls because they scream and run away when he does. I mean, that's the whole thing. It's just way too young. And there is some innocence lost in the coming of age with high-speed porn for sure. it's amazing how much has changed since those old mags in the woods. And I know you and I've probably had a similar conversation, but whenever you talk to guys or gals your age now, does it not come up

where you're like, I'm so glad that the dumbest thing I did was not posted on social media because it didn't exist. Like the time that I did this horrible thing or that this horrible thing was done to me, there were no camera phones. Nobody really knows about it except who was there. And those two out of the five people have already forgotten about it. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a side topic. But yeah, whenever I see like a breaking story or just something online about 17-year-old says outrageous thing, I'm like, don't care. I don't care. Yeah. You should get a full pass for everything. I got a full pass because I did and said stupid things and it was never recorded and just disappeared into the ether. These kids have a permanent record of it. So let young kids be stupid. Like if you're 17 and you said something outrageously stupid, I don't care. I don't care. You get a pass. I'm with you. Because it's easy for us to follow the progress. of porn news. The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953. An entire industry of adult magazines was thrust into mainstream America. Thrust. When VCRs became the thing in the 1980s,

porn movies came right into the home. In the 90s, the brand new World Wide Web allowed porn to flow into the home endlessly. For the first time, people could access porn whenever they wanted with just a few clicks of a mouse, and they often chose porn. A decade after this, smartphones, were in everyone's hand, and porn was more accessible, affordable, and anonymous than ever, which, by the way, are known as the three A's of addiction. Ah, accessible, affordable, and anonymous are the three A's of addiction? Is that, like, things that make addictions really easy, is that it's accessible, affordable, and anonymous? I never heard about this.

Yeah. I mean, I came across it in the research, so to the best of my understanding, yes. I mean, it makes sense, right? You can't be addicted to something if you can't get it and you can't afford it. And if you have consequences or people know you're doing it, it's a lot harder because you have a shame element and social pressure. Absolutely. The anonymity has really changed. Nobody's getting carded by the clerk at the video store for renting a copy of Edward penis hands anymore. Okay, pulling back the curtain a little, I want to thank Jordan for editing the show notes with the proper quotes around Edward penis hands. He got me on that one. You are a master punctuator. Yes. But this anonymity is why high speed porn is so.

appealing. Yeah, it just makes our primal brains are going nuts for this and some people can't stop watching, I guess. I mean, it seems like some people are just more predisposed to this than others, maybe, as with all addictions. I mean, novelty-packed, high-speed porn keeps your attention for hours on end. A lot of evidence shows this exposure changes the brain chemistry, like we said, just like drug addiction. A study at Germany's Max Planck Institute found that men not classified as having an addiction showed addiction-related brain changes when exposed to how. high-speed porn. The more hours spent viewing porn corresponds with that reduction in gray matter. Again, it's a correlation. They don't know yet, but our brain's gray matter is something you don't

want to have less of. You're right. If it walks like an addiction and talks like an addiction, yada, yada. So also this reduction in gray matter, so we don't know the causation, but it sounds like if there is causation, is porn actually making us less motivated, less clear thinking? It seems like an overreach, but I'm going to say it anyway. Watching porn literally, makes us dumber in some ways? Is that real, potentially? I'm trying to find out, but studies like the one we discussed, which I read about in Wired Magazine, they straight up were asking the question, is porn shrinking our brains? I mean, this is a legit concern. And again, the evidence is inconclusive. And if everyone keeps shrinking their brains watching porn, we will never get an answer to this.

Right. Yeah, I'd love to research this, but hold on, I'll be right back. I got to go return some video tapes. Yeah, I'm kidding. Look, addiction or not. Dependence on pornography is known to interfere with relationships and cause some people dissatisfaction in their own sex life. It can even cause people to lose the ability to just function in daily life. Accessing pornography is so easy and provides instant satisfaction and interacting with porn is way easier than interacting with a partner who has real needs, desires, goals, problems, etc. on their own. Yeah, that does seem like a recipe for problematic relationships. We were talking earlier with the movie Her, where the guy orders the AI robot girlfriend, those are going to be extremely popular for people who don't want to, I don't

know, compromise on anything or deal with complex emotions. And I would imagine that right now, porn serves as an escape from these same problems inside of a relationship, just like a substance might also do. You know, oh, my wife is bugging me again because I never pay attention to her and I work too much. Let me have a bottle of Jack Daniels instead of figuring out why I'm terrible at relating to other people and being vulnerable. Right, exactly. If an individual's porn use leads to negative effects in the relationship, the individual is likely to deal with relationship issues by relying even more heavily on porn. High-speed porn can, for some, be an escape from relationship issues while providing them with basic sexual satisfaction. Several studies say porn use can be a warning sign

that divorces in the future. The study doesn't, however, resolve whether watching porn is a cause of divorce or a symptom of an already unhappy relationship. Yeah, that would be tough, right? Because if you're in an unhappy relationship and your wife is like, I'm not sleeping with you anymore because I'm grossed out by you and can't stand you, you're going to go to porn for that release, but that's not like you using the porn as causing your unhappy relationship. Then again, if you never want to sleep with your wife, because you're like, well, I can't deal with one person when I can go look at crazy tentacle crap on the web, now you got another issue that's going to compound over. time, I would imagine quite a bit. So is there a lot of that studying in porn? Do studies show whether

people use porn to escape problems or is porn causing the problems? I guess that's the question I should have asked in the beginning instead of theorizing. Well, it's a tough one, but there is evidence that suggests it is both, but the research does not show a definitive cause and effect. Regardless, the problem that these changes in the brain cause, whether from or because of porn, are rarely the reason men seek help for addiction. The driving factor for men to seek behavioral changes in their use of porn is erectile dysfunction. When guys realize that a real live woman can no longer turn them on, but logging on to a porn site does, they tend to admit they have a problem.

That's scary that that can happen. I mean, erectile dysfunction. I've heard that can be hard, Michael. And I'm not just talking about older men here. No. Today, porn use is directly linked to erectile dysfunction in years. young men under the age of 30. Wow.

Yeah, and it's not just problems with the hardware. Porn use has also been linked to an overall lack of ability to make emotional bonds. The great porn experiment, a TED talk with Gary Wilson, highlights not only just how common porn use is among young men, but that the porn free-for-all that floods the web is one big unconscious global experiment. When researchers first tried to study porn use in college-age men, they ran into a huge problem. It wasn't that they couldn't find any. willing to admit their porn habits.

I know where you're going with this. They couldn't find a control group of men that was not using porn. One researcher concluded, guys who do not watch pornography do not exist. That is really funny because you'd think, oh, go to Brigham Young University with all the guys that are really religious and it's like, oh, we're supposed to tell the truth on this one? Okay, maybe I've slipped up a little bit. I mean, this does sound like college. I remember it just being widely talked about, not even like a tab.

Baboo. Guys would be like, all right, get out of my room. I got to handle something. And you're just like, all right. I mean, it was just really, really, really open. Because half of us had internet for the first time in 1997 or eight when I started college. They were like, get out of here. I got to use this. Wow. Yeah. Wilson's TED talk points out something else remarkable. The technological revolution and the advent of high speed porn didn't happen until the 1990s. So when older guys give up porn, the negative effects from porn addiction are overcome in a short amount of recovery. time. When guys who grew up with the internet and always have had access to high-speed internet porn give it up, their addiction is much more difficult to overcome than the elders.

Speaking of novelty seeking, check out the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Once again, thank you for listening to and supporting the show. Our sponsors are all in one place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals or use the AI chatbot to find any promo code anywhere on the show. Consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Sunday. That does make sense, right? Because if 1990s guy has to give up porn, all he does is trashes, playboys, toss out some blurry, overused, demagnetized, whatever, VHS tapes, and maybe refrain from the weird section of his local blockbuster or something. But nowadays, you'd have to, what, block all these random websites from being available in seconds on every device that you own.

You need skills for that, you need apps for that. It'd be like trying to kick heroin with a stash of heroin literally in your pocket at all times. What does that say about the future of sex? Can we divert sex from evolving into a fusion of the real and virtual world? I mean, it's going to be like AR or augmented reality sex at some point, which sounds just weird. I mean, that's my fear as well. But let me just be clear about one thing. These older guys are using high-speed internet porn. What researchers believe is that because they formed these neuro pathways, these sexual neuro pathways in their mind in a time before high-speed internet porn, and they used to be turned on by the normal things that guys are turned on by, in other words, a girl, the company of a young

lady, they can revert back. But these younger guys that are creating these neural pathways in their brain and those formative years with high-speed internet porn, they have trouble turning those pathways off and turning on the pathways that would allow them to find just normal. I say normal, and that's the wrong word, to what we grew up with, boy, girl, relationships. Or just human-human-human relationships? Yeah, sure. I suppose. You're right. To be fair. That was heterocentric talking on my part. I usually don't worry about that, but if we're trying to be specific about real people, we should just include real people who are actually having sex with each other. Because people get upset about that enough as it is. So we might as well

include, I don't want the LGBT community to get away with not also being pissed off at us right now. We want everybody angry. Yeah, and we also don't want the LGBT community to get away with not being addicted to porn. It's everybody, you know. That's right. You guys, gals, and whatever other pronouns are you should also be just as, be just as upset and out of control as us hetero debag guys who can't get off the web. So, I mean, but you were asking about like this fusion of technology and porn. And the fact of the matter is the lines are blurred. But the part of it is there are companies that not only want more porn consumption, but study how to get people to spend more time on their websites engaging with and buying their content. So this is about the porn business itself, yeah?

No. What I'm talking about is the business of porn. The companies making money streaming endless porn content. These companies are making decisions based on the fact that as porn use goes up, their revenue goes up. All industries study our habits in hope of finding ways to profit. I want to be clear that the porn industry is part of the problem. They are actively trying to get us to watch more porn and normalize the addiction through personalized algorithms, porn games, and subscription perks. Porn games and perks sounds as corny as it gets. Maybe I'm just an old fart who doesn't understand the magic of whatever like stepmom

themed candy crush clones are out there, but a porn game just sounds absolutely ridiculous. Look, I'll just say, I'll leave porn Tetris to your imagination. It's got to be real. Trust me, it's wild. and people will pay big bucks for porn. I guess like with everything else, we just need to follow the money, yeah? Yep. Online porn is very big business. Porn sites receive insane website traffic.

Pornhub reports that in 2019, 42 billion users visited their website. Jesus. Think about those numbers, man. That's 115 million visitors a day. About 5 million an hour. 80,000 dudes have logged on to Pornhub since you and I started talking. That's insane. That's just one porn site. And again, I'll say it again. That's a lot of crispy socks, man. I didn't even know that that many socks. No wonder our underarmor's doing so well. Look, globally, porn makes about $100 billion annually. In comparison, the NFL made $18 billion last year and Netflix made 28.

So the porn industry is making more than twice the NFL and Netflix combined. Okay. Those are big companies and we're comparing it to a whole industry, but I get the point. So did the pandemic contribute to these numbers at all, or has porn always been this high? I kind of wonder if people getting locked in are like, well, now I'm really not socializing. So here we go. Yeah. Now you're on the trolley. Usage has always been a huge number. But on average, porn sites increased revenue by between 25 and 40 percent during the pandemic shutdown.

Wow. Content providers of porn are a motivated industry that relies on people returning to their sites over and over again. I'm sure they hooked more than a few new users during the pandemic. Well, is there a safe level of porn? Can we know how much porn is too much porn? Is there sort of a guideline or anything here? Like how many high-speed porn sessions can you have before your brain develops these negative changes? Unfortunately, that's just not how it works. There is no magic number. It's just if your daily life or relationships are affected negatively, you're consuming too much porn. But if life isn't interrupted, chances are maybe you're just meeting your needs. But without scientific guidelines, it's kind of like

you're not addicted to porn until you are. So the term too much porn, it's subjective. But not all porn turns people into addicts, or is it just kind of a, all of its bad? I don't know. What am I getting at here. Is it all bad all the time? Of course not. Look, I'm not trying to be a Debbie Does Downer here. Got it. See what you did there. Thank you. Thank you. Porn itself is not bad. And this is where controversy lies. Some studies of porn users found a significant positive effect in their lives, and porn use by couples have also had some relationship benefits. These findings are why some psychologists have not classified porn addiction as a condition. But for what I'm reading, even if it's a positive in your life today, porn is a slippery slope that can quickly turn negative.

Why the disconnects between scientists and psychologists, I always kind of figured they were two sides of the same coin, but the more I research anything, the more I see that that's not necessarily true. Yeah, it all has to do with the diagnostic and standard manual of mental disorders, or the DSM. This is the book that lists all mental disorders. Currently, porn addiction is not listed as any kind of disorder or condition. While some psychologists, maintain that porn is not an addiction, others are less sure. But here's the thing. It's not that the DSM has rejected porn addiction as a mental disorder. They have yet to even consider it as a health issue worth their attention. Wow, how are they so behind on the scientific findings? Is that always the

case? Is the DSM always sort of lagging here? Again, I wouldn't be entirely sure of that one, but the problem in this case is that interested parties spin this information to meet their narratives. The porn industry will spend it this so that it helps sell their products. But I also came across individuals in my own life that found my research into this subject concerning. No one wants their favorite pastime threatened. Do you know what I'm saying? So no one wants to think something they're doing on a regular basis is problematic. And people did say to me. They came back to me and they were like, yo, the DSM says porn addiction isn't even a real thing. By the way, they're telling me this after four hours of masturbating to porn. They would call me up to feeliously.

Seriously angry at me. How dare he say I'm addicted? You know, but what's really going on? I think, to be honest with you, reach some of these people, I think someone needs to make a porn that teaches about the problems with porn to get those people to listen. I mean, if you're pitching a movie idea, I am not interested at all. Okay, fine. Look, in the end, regardless of the DSM's choice to not label porn addiction, a mental health issue, the science shows that for some individuals, it is a serious problem that needs treatment. But how can somebody seek treatment if there's no defined condition? Because if you go and you say, I'm addicted to porn, they'll go, well, in my book, that's not a thing, so it has to be something else or not a problem. Well, you know what? That's the funny thing. When you look up porn addiction, I found just about every place that deals with addiction definitely deals with porn addiction, you know? Well, that's good,

I suppose. Yeah. I mean, they're saying it's not addiction, but every place has port addiction facilities and programs and treatments. This feels like a good place to talk about all the spin one finds when researching high-speed porn use. When looking into the negative effects of porn, I found a lot of information coming from groups who had moral and religious objections. Of course. They too are spinning the information to meet their narratives. I didn't come across anyone saying it'll make you go blind, but I came across more than a few websites that insist that looking at porn is a one-way ticket to hell. Meanwhile, pro-porn people say that looking at porn is a one-way ticket to heaven. Like many behavioral issues, people believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts. Is anything being done to bring awareness to the dangers of porn addiction? I know some folks out there sound the alarm like the guy who did the TED Talk, but I mean actual authorities or health officials, not like guys on social media or in a podcast, but politicians. I mean, because of saying, look, if someone's going to solve a big problem, it's certainly going to be a politician.

Am I right? No, you are not. And I'm super, look, I'm very suspicious of politicians, particularly when it comes to these porn laws. It's clear that so much of it is from religious lawmakers who have these moral objections to porn. There is little action I found based on the scientific facts. Lawmakers in Idaho, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and at least a dozen other states have adopted a resolutions declaring pornography a public health crisis. That just sounds like they're politicizing the condition, though, because what does that even mean? What does that do? Yeah, it does nothing. It just shames people. Right. It's virtue signaling is what it is, you know? Yeah. This year, Louisiana now requires an ID be uploaded to log on to porn sites, but these steps do

little to help with people already addicted to high-speed porn. What experts recommend is deleting all porn from your devices and installing parental locks. Yes, parental locks. You're an adult. It still makes it harder to watch porn. And the best way to kick an addictive porn habit is like kicking any other bad habit. Replace watching high-speed porn with a different habit like exercise and identify the triggers that encourage watching porn. Okay, so these solutions are similar to any addiction recovery from the sound of it? Yes, and once people understand our primal sexual desires, overcoming the urge to get our dopamine

from high-speed porn should be easier to control. We were once more like bonobos, mating with any opportunity that presented itself. Throwing poop everywhere. Yeah, it's true. But that's the thing about evolution. It allows us to evolve. Sitting for endless hours in front of high-speed porn while ignoring the real world isn't anyone's idea of an ideal life. Allowing computers and screens to simulate sex while inhibiting opportunities for real intimacy isn't anyone's version of their best life.

No one is dying from high-speed porn addiction, but that doesn't mean they're not missing out on having a life. Well, curbing our porn enthusiasm is pretty, pretty difficult. So thanks, Michael. That was a, that was an exceptional, a triple exceptional conversation. And I appreciate your newfound expertise as a connoisseur. Once again, as a connoisseur of scientific pornography research. Thank you, Jordan. Thanks, everybody for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday can go to me,

Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. Show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts are in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, and discounts, ways to support the show are all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Michael Regilio, tell him where to find you. On Instagram, you can find me at at Michael Regilio, and that is R-E-G-I-L-I-O or at micro-Rogiliocomedy.com, where I'm currently in New York City for a month and doing shows and lots of opportunities. Oh, great time to be in New York as well. Thank you very much.

Enjoy yourself out there. This show has created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, so do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. There's a porn reference in there somewhere, but I'm not going for it.

Share the show with those you love, and if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you'll learn, and we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show about how hormonal birth control can affect a woman's personality and even influence who they pick as a partner. They found that women who are on the birth control pill, rather than experiencing a big surge in the stress hormone cortisol in response to stressful things, they don't have any increase in cortisol at all. It seems like something in the birth control pill is actually causing women's stress response to go into overdrive.

And in fact, this sort of a pattern is something that we usually only see in the context of chronic stress. Right, so people who have, for example, PTSD or people who, you know, grew up in the context of trauma, this isn't normal. This isn't something that we see in otherwise healthy, high functioning people. Sex hormones have their fingers in so many pots in the body that they're going to be influencing our brain because there's probably no place in the body that has more receptors for sex hormones than the brain. Our sex hormones are part of what gives us, you know, our sort of joie de vivre. It's like part of what makes life exciting and it turns the volume up and makes our whites whiter and our brights brighter in terms of our sort of experience of the world. We've been really, really cavalier about this idea that we should change a person's personality and who they are and their experiences in the world so that way they don't have menstrual cramps. We don't yet know whether or not the birth control pill is influencing the way that women's brains are being organized.

And there's almost no research on this. It's like nobody's really stopped to ask the questions. To hear more from Dr. Sarah Hill about the problems with taking birth control, check out episode 280 of the Jordan Harbinger show. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know. with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format.

Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your

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