 Viewing pornography is actually nothing new. People have been doing it for hundreds, if not thousands of years. But it's only today that we're beginning to see pornography being distributed on such a widespread and easily accessible scale. This is thanks to the internet, with some people claiming that porn takes up a huge percentage of total web content. Because porn's widespread accessibility is so new, psychologists are still trying to find out what effect it could have on the human brain. It's all very new and unexplored territory for researchers. But people are already coming to some pretty interesting conclusions. Here are five psychological facts about porn addiction. One, you can develop a tolerance just like drug addiction. In the context of addiction, tolerance refers to a situation where someone becomes more and more acclimatized to the addictive behavior, to the point where they need more and more of whatever it is they're addicted to in order to receive the same effects. According to an article published in the Journal of Behavioral Sciences, porn addiction may function in a similar way to a drug addiction. What this translates to is the addict needing to seek out porn more often and viewing more extreme or illicit types of porn to receive the same effect. Interestingly, a 2016 study published in the journal Neuroimage actually examined people's brains with the FMRI, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, while they were watching porn. What they found was that while watching porn, there was elevated activity in the ventral striatum, which suggests that the brain's pleasure centers were releasing dopamine. There's still a lot of research left to do on this subject, and we'd love to hear your thoughts about it. Two, some studies have suggested that porn addiction does not affect sexual health and function. One of the most repeated facts about porn addiction and porn use in general is that it can negatively impact healthy sexual health and function. But is this really true? More recent studies have challenged this, and one published in 2015 really stands out, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The researchers studied men in three different countries and came up to the conclusion that porn had no effect on male sex disturbances. They also state that linking porn to sexual dysfunction is probably wrong, and it's more likely due to stress and other factors. This is only one study, but there are others to back this up as well. Do you agree with what this study is saying? Three, porn addiction could be fueled by the Coolidge effect. The Coolidge effect is an interesting phenomenon that could have a substantial role in porn addiction. Simply put, the Coolidge effect is seen when males seem to become more aroused whenever a new female partner is introduced. It could be caused by male evolutionary programming to fertilize as many females as possible, how does this affect porn? Think about it. Almost endless new females are available to view on the internet, and viewing one female after another can actually fuel arousal for prolonged periods due to the Coolidge effect. This could be one reason as to why porn addiction could occur. Do you believe the Coolidge effect has anything to do with porn addiction? We'd love to hear your ideas on this one as well. Four, porn addictions can impact the way we behave in relationships and intimate situations. This is probably one of the most important things about porn addiction. How does it impact our relationships? An article published by the American Psychology Association tried to tackle this important issue. They cited various studies that suggested men experienced lower levels of intimacy with their real partners after using porn. These studies also suggested that porn use in men resulted in lower sexual quality and even depression. On the other hand, those same studies also touched on some very interesting things about women in porn. According to these studies, women watching porn resulted in increased intimacy and improved sexual quality in the relationships they were engaged in. Five, neuroplasticity and porn. We'll end things with a very interesting concept, neuroplasticity. This is the ability of a person's brain to change and refers to increases in gray matter, rerouting of synapses and other interesting changes that can happen in the brain. These changes can result in different types of behavior in the individual and even different types of emotion. Obviously, the younger a person is, the more neuroplasticity they have as young people are constantly learning and changing. But what does this have to do with porn? Because teen brains have higher degrees of neuroplasticity? Some have suggested that their brains are more vulnerable to being rewired by porn. This could make it harder to resist addictive things in general and form lasting compulsive habits, such as viewing porn regularly, like many parts of porn addiction. This is an area which still needs tons of research, as these are all very new concepts. Does this theory make sense to you? Are teen brains really more vulnerable to porn addiction due to neuroplasticity? We'd love to hear your thoughts. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe to see more content from Psych2Go. Thanks for watching.