Until two decades ago, sexual disorders in young males under the age of 40 were rather rare: lack of desire, difficulty in achieving orgasm, or impotence, when present, had mainly psychological causes such as performance anxiety, phobias, obsessions, or, in some cases, depression; more rarely such disorders were caused by anatomical, hormonal, circulatory, or neurological abnormalities. Sporadically, finally, they were caused by the use of psychotropic drugs such as anxiolytics or antidepressants.
In a study conducted in 2002, for example, among European males under the age of 40, the rate of erectile dysfunction was as low as 2 percent while in a later study in 2011, the rate had already risen to 22 percent. The following year, a Swiss study even found a 30 percent rate of erectile dysfunction in the 18-24 age group while a 2014 Canadian study calculated, in male adolescents aged 16-21, a 26 percent rate of erectile dysfunction, poor sexual desire 24 percent and problems with orgasm 11 percent . After just two years, in 2016, the study was repeated and found 47.9 percent poor sexual satisfaction, 46.2 percent poor desire and 45.3 percent erectile dysfunction. And we are talking about very young men! So what is happening to young European and American males?
It is true that over the past two decades the psycho-emotional health of young people in Europe and the United States has deteriorated and the use of psychotropic drugs has increased sharply (both of which can disrupt sexuality), but these factors do not explain the collapse of interest in partner sex even among mentally healthy young people with hitherto normal sexuality.
Instead, some correlation has emerged between viewing online pornography and sexual disorders: it is not known exactly what is the limit beyond which pornography ruins real sexuality between men and women, but in 2015 a U.S. study found that the percentage of 18-year-old students with low sexual desire was 0% among those who did not watch online porn while it was 6% in those who watched it less than 1 time per week and went to 16% in those who watched online pornography more than 1 time per week.
Effectively, research testifies that the exponential growth of sexual disorders among young people began after 2006, the year when the first online porn portal, You Porn, ("evolved" later into the current and very popular Porn Hub) opened its virtual doors, which gave people a new toxic recreation made of sexually explicit movies that were very easy to access, free, always new, and visible in anonymity (and thus respecting holy privacy): all textbook requirements for entangling in the spiral of addiction.Indeed, neuro-imaging studies with Functional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (f-RMN), have shown that during online porn viewing, the brain turns on the same areas of gratification and pleasure turned on by drugs. And therein lies the rub: online porn stimulates the brain areas of pleasure with unnatural intensity, strong enough to make them less sensitive to the more natural and gentle stimuli of real sex. It is very common among people to believe that online pornography stimulates fantasy and desire and is therefore good for couples' sexuality; but this may be true if we are talking about small doses of pornography enjoyed by an adult male audience whose sexual desire is lessened physiologically and is positively affected by an awakening stimulus; it certainly does not apply to testosterone- and libido-filled 20-year-olds who certainly do not need fantasy stimulation. Giving agli teenagers the opportunity to access pornography online so easily and for free is like putting drugs under their noses and saying, "Be careful because it is fun but to be used in moderation."
Speaking of adolescents just entering the world of amorous emotions and first sexual experiences, vulgar and often brutal and abnormal online pornography has a devastating effect not only on psychosexual and sentimental maturation but, with the artificial and abnormally intense pleasure it causes, it is capable in the long run of forcing and impairing the delicate brain mechanism of gratification-reward that presides not only over sexual pleasure but over all pleasures; this is especially dramatic for adolescents since well-functioning pleasure circuits underlie that subtle appetite for the good things in life that allows motivation to be kept alive for a long time until they are achieved. No great endeavor of long gestation can be achieved by those who have become accustomed to craving only strong and immediate pleasures such as drugs and pornography that can replace the healthy and gentle uplifting motivations of a young person.
It is true that man has always created small virtual realities with paintings, novels, poems, cinema, and television, and it is true that he has always sought pleasure by unbundling it from natural sources in order to concentrate and enjoy it for its own sake: eating for taste and the pleasurable feelings of fulfillment it gives and not for nourishment; running for the thrill of speed and not for real haste; traveling not out of necessity but for leisure; having sex for the pleasure it brings and not to demonstrate love or to procreate. The attraction for pleasure with the tendency to desire more and more intense and easy pleasures is a typically human inclination that has guided for better or worse the evolution of society. But today's problem is quantitative because since there is the Internet it has been possible to travel from Alaska to the equator watching whatever one desires from the comfort of one's couch; starting with the sexual anorexia of young people caused by excessive viewing of pornography online, it should be noted that anhedonia is not for them limited only to sex but often generalized to all aspects of life and this is in good part caused by the second-hand digital reality that makes them already satiated with a life not lived but a thousand times seen in the images and shorts of You Tube & Co.
Turning back to the particular case of damage from online pornography, it sometimes happens that not even the andrologist connects a young man's functional impotence with the excessive use of online pornography; on the contrary, it often happens that the specialist himself speaks of a generic psychogenic impotence and it is not uncommon for him to prescribe accordingly, perhaps to a 30-year-old, Viagra or the like, which nothing can in the face of impotence from satiety and disinterest in partner sex.
To sum up, in males, virtual porn gives real sex unfair competition for the following reasons:
- it does not cause performance anxiety, no need to promise love and fidelity, no need for condoms, and no risk of disease or pregnancy.
- it is possible to fulfill all erotic fantasies, which cannot happen in real sex.
- there is the novelty element every time: the expectation of finding new movies even more exciting than the previous ones amplifies the attraction and addiction to virtual porn
- with online porn viewing, the brain areas of gratification and pleasure are stimulated more intensely and for longer than during couple sex
Since online pornography is often viewed by underage teenagers with as yet little known but surely deleterious consequences, I conclude by asking: is it right that the internet remains incensible because it is a sanctuary of a democracy in which the freedom to choose what to watch is celebrated even when its audience is incapable by age of making thoughtful selections and moderating itself?
To say that the internet is free by statute smacks of a bit of unctuous hypocrisy when it is well known that too much democracy, with its freedom of choice, can become an unholy vigilante: with universal acclaim and without getting its hands dirty or getting tired of banning, it leaves people free to self-destruct.
A psychotherapist trained in cognitive-behavioral medicine, as well as psychopharmacology (Tranquillanti: come liberarsene, 2017, and Farmaci antidepressivi: effetti collaterali, 2020), he is interested in the occurrence of psycho-emotional distress among medical, social, environmental and lifestyle causes. On the subject, he wrote the book Quarant’anni di riflessioni in 2015. His website is www.angelomercuri.it
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