Porn is depleting testosterone in young men

Fuck you, OP, for posting from the Murdoch Sun.

The issue has been obvious for years but nobody will get a grip on it

So many low energy pale guys

There's a crisis of masculinity going on in the US at least, young idiots are withdrawing from society and devoting their lives to being online assholes, and there's a huge increase in toxic masculinity (assholery) among those who are out and about.

I had one of those "failure to launch" brothers back in the day, my parents threw him out on his ass around 1980. There was no tolerance for this shit, before the helicopter parents decided that coddling was the answer to every problem.

This correlates with what a lot of studies have been saying for several years now. There is so much exposure to porn today, and at younger and younger ages. It is causing erectile dysfunction in young men and teenagers -- something unheard of before. Dr. Aaron Spitz, a leading urologist, talks about it in his book on the penis.

I don't think any of the gurls on here are too depleted.

When the fuck did Datalounge become so anti-porn?

Go peddle your prudish, no-fap agenda elsewhere, OP cunt!

The most recent study referenced in that article is from 2013.

Nice try, OP.

Not shocking that young straight men would rather retreat from society than deal with needy young women

At to be clear, this testosterone shortage does not affect raging homosexuals who will fuck each other hell or highwater 🙃

Some fellas are late bloomers.

Why would porn decrease testosterone? I can imagine how it might create feelings of indifference or boredom towards “regular” sex and that leading to difficulties, but why would watching porn and thinking about sex MORE decrease testosterone?

I jerk off to pornography every single day.

How’s your testosterone levels, R13?

One thing I find BIZARRE - I live in London and London just seems to be full of attractive girls walking around on their own. It's so odd. I think sometimes I see these young women even on Saturday evenings at 8PM walking along on their own. Why aren't they with their BFs? or at least with friends on a Saturday evening?

I point it out to my BF when we go out - "Girl on her own. Gurl on her own. Girl on her own..."

[quote]Why would porn decrease testosterone?

All I can think of is that it makes guys who don't measure up withdraw from the dating / hookup pool.

OP is CroMarg Taylor Greene.

"Marjorie Taylor Greene pushes a national ban on 'adult' websites: 'I don’t even know why it exists'"

I agree porn is very damaging especially to very young children who get their all their "sex ed" from it and thanks to unlimited internet from smartphones have access to it 24/7. But honestly porn only reflects the capitalistic, misogynistic and dopamine addicted reality of our society where sexual exploitation and objectification is rampant due to the fact it makes a profit for a small powerful minority and people are deprived of social interaction. Banning it would solve absolutely nothing. We need a cultural reset but we aren't ready for these conversations.

[quote] Banning it would solve absolutely nothing.

Not even impotence ? Too much appears to loss of sensitization.

When they compared that amount of pornography watched with experiences of ED, they found that of those below age 35 who watched 300 minutes per week, 30 percent had ED compared with 10 percent in those who watched less than 30 minutes. In the 35 to 45 age group that watched 300 minutes per week, 40 percent had ED. However, in general only 5 percent of participants were watching 300 minutes or more.

The team also checked the association between ED and porn addiction, and found a much stronger connection. (There is some disagreement among addiction experts whether pornography can be called a true addiction, but most agree that too much has negative consequences.)

The research team defined porn addiction among their participants by using a specific validated cyber porn addiction score which consist of eleven questions. In the group below age 35, with a high porn addiction score, 45 percent had ED. Dr. De Win also pointed out that it is important to note that in the group under age 24 about 12 percent already had a high porn addiction score.

More Men Reported Dissatisfaction With Partnered Sex Because of Porn Watching

“More then 50 percent with ED problems during partnered sex don’t have a problem when watching porn. This is an important finding,” wrote De Win. The same is true for those with ejaculation problems during partnered sex. Quality of sex life with their partner was lower if they watched more then 300 minutes, but this finding is stronger if there is a high addiction score.

R19 300 minutes a week is insane. That is 5 hours worth and a sign of something mental. And it's very much an issue with young guys who are exposed to this stuff too early. Even before smartphones, porn was all over the internet. Sex ed classes should tackle this subject but parents would of course go insane if they attempted to. But parents aren't having the conversations with their sons about how bad porn can be for developing sexual health.

I agree that porn is a big social problem, young heterosexuals who mistake it for a source of sex education are universally disappointed when they try porn-style pickups or sex in real life, and they don't understand that the problem is porn. They think that something is wrong with themselves, or the opposite sex.

However, I think that the single biggest factor in today's crisis of masculinity is not porn, but economic forces - the disappearance of living wages and job security! A man has to earn at least part of his feeling of masculinity, and now that it's incredibly difficult for a man to get a job that will support himself or his family, that's a path to a feeling of masculinity that has closed for many, so they seek to find their feeling of manliness in the uselessness of sports or cars, or displays of toxic masculinity. Living wages mean so much to so many people, it's one of the biggest things wrong with our society at the moment, and people don't realize how much the absence of secure jobs that allow a bit of independence mean to people on a personal level.

[...]

I thought it was plastics and other chemicals.

I'm the person who wrote about women alone everywhere in London. I'll pots two pics from a walkabout video to help prove my point.

Why do you keep bringing up women out alone, R25? Are you a member of the Taliban, and horrified that women are leaving the house without a male relative to protect their virtue?

Seriously, I don't see how that fits into this thread.

^ you're too stupid for words.

Yeah Im hardly believing porn itself actually depletes testosterone in a young man's body, that's some Republican fundamentalist talking point dressed as a study. If anything it's environmental factors.

Western society has made women feel incredibly independent, girls are taught from a young age not to depend on males, so they aren't going to stick around waiting for a young insecure man to develop. To r15's point, the other end of this is more women who are perpetually single, but no one will touch on that because it's not politically correct. Let's be real, most of us gay men are support systems to that single woman in her 30s and 40s who won't budge on her standards, so she remains single.

I read the article. It's a whole host of factors that affect testosterone, which we all knew before - poor sleep, stress, poor diet, lack of exercise. The article links porn and gaming to poor sleep - so I guess there's a link.

Women are also discovering they are happier single and childfree. For centuries, women had to tolerate and sacrifice for men because of strict patriarchal norms. Now women are becoming more independent and educated and quickly outdoing men. That is why conservative men are pissed and the war in abortion took hold. Also the incel movement took wave. But these angry men won't look at the big picture and see that our hyper-capitalist globalist world with stagnant wages and rising costs of living are a huge factor in all of this. The traditions of getting marriage and having children while maintaining a middle class income is becoming impossible. Who's to blame women who are the automatic caregivers for opting out?

It's not just porn. Society, in general, is over-saturated with hypersexualized imagery. Comparing the entertainment industry today to what it was 40 - 60 years ago will reveal a stark difference in how sexuality was portrayed in media. Men are becoming desensitized and as a result, require more extreme forms of sexual imagery to become satisfied sexually.

There used to be mystery and anticipation of seeing sexual images for young men who are now Gen X and Boomers who had to fight for a peep at a Playboy magazine. Millennial men and Gen Z were not only able to be exposed to porn more easily because of the internet, but their everyday entertainment was/is far more sexually gratuitous right down to the lyrics of popular songs.

No joke, this song was played (frequently) at my high school dances. Uncensored. At a dance for 14 - 17 year olds.

They should get 100 high testosterone dudes and divide them into two groups. Give the experimental group of guys rooms at a Motel 6 and require them to watch porn 8 hours a days for 6 months, with unlimited lube and pizza and beer. At the end of the experiment, re-measure their testosterone levels and compare them against those of the control group, who only got pizza, beer, and Jane Austin novels.

Exactly R4, they choose to live like losers and blame women, "society," everything but themselves for their unhappiness.

I resent when they try to frame it like we should be sympathetic towards incel types. My compassion is for people who are actualy oppressed, not for whiny angry manchildren.

"Who the fuck watches 300 minutes of porn a week?"

Are you knew here? There are probably thousands of DL posters who not only watch pron in mom's basement 24/7. but they know the stars "stage" names as well as their real ones, where they're from, and the most intimate details of these pron stars lives, as well as being able to name all the films any one pron star has done and the names of their co-stars.

In other words, they're obsessed with pron and the people who make it.

R33 Same and I don't get other gays who are empathetic to these assholes. The more I listen and learn, I know come to accept how misogynistic gay men have to be to side with these straight white male losers who also hate or are jealous of gay men. These assholes will say "I wish I was gay so I can get paid" yet ignore the discrimination and homophobia gay men face. These incels are often middle class straight white or Asian boys (my observation) in the suburbs who spend all day online, living with their parents and don't make any effort to improve themselves. And they are also racist more often than not. Fuck them.

[quote] How’s your testosterone levels, [R13]?

Through the roof - I’m on the verge of becoming an alpha male. Give me a hot hole and I’ll absolutely annihilate it.

Population is declining

"To [R15]'s point, the other end of this is more women who are perpetually single, but no one will touch on that because it's not politically correct."

A hell of a lot of women have realized that they really truly are better off single, than in a bad relationship. Or in a bad marriage with kids on the ground, and having to choose between the hell of single parenthood and the hell of staying in a toxic relationship.

Of course not all these women with high standards are happy about being single, but from what I see, straight women are much more realistic about marriage and relationships than straight men are. The women know how much money it takes to maintain a "middle-class lifestyle" or to raise children, the women know how many marriages break up because of arguments over mundane things like housework, spending, or whose has to stay home from work when the kids are sick, and so on... so lots of today's young women hold to their standards even if they don't like being single. 100 years ago everyone thought a woman's safest option was to marry anyone she could find, these days the safe option is actually being single.

Bump

Is it really that porn decreases T, or were these guys already low T and that's why they're home watching porn more than guys who go out on the prowl?

R40, the studies show that daily or frequent porn use can shrink the parts of the brain connected to the penis and erectile function.

In this video, Dr. Aaron Spitz explains this issue to his son (who stopped masturbating to porn after he learned of its effects):

The relevant portion starts at about 17:00 minutes in:

A recent paper from a respectable scientific journal says differently.

[quote]Results indicated that *frequency of pornography use was unrelated to either erectile functioning or erectile dysfunction (ED) severity* in samples that included ED men with and without various sexual comorbidities or in a subset of men 30 years or younger (p = 0.28–0.79). Masturbation frequency was also only weakly and inconsistently related to erectile functioning or ED severity in the multivariate analyses (p = 0.11–0.39). *In contrast, variables long known to affect erectile response emerged as the most consistent and salient predictors of erectile functioning and/or ED severity, including age (p < 0.001), having anxiety/depression (p < 0.001 except for a subset of men ≤ 30 years), having a chronic medical condition known to affect erectile functioning (p < 0.001 except for a subset of men ≤ 30 years), low sexual interest (p < 0.001), and low relationship satisfaction (p ≤ 0.04)*. Regarding sexual and relationship satisfaction, poorer erectile functioning (p < 0.001), lower sexual interest (p < 0.001), anxiety/depression (p < 0.001), and higher frequency of masturbation (p < 0.001) were associated with lower sexual and lower overall relationship satisfaction. In contrast, frequency of pornography use did not predict either sexual or relationship satisfaction (p ≥ 0.748).

R42, the study concludes by saying:

[quote]we do not dismiss the idea that heavy reliance on pornography use coupled with a high frequency of masturbation may represent a risk factor for diminished sexual performance during partnered sex and/or relationship satisfaction in subsets of particularly vulnerable men (e.g., younger, less experienced).

Nice try, go shift the goal post somewhere else.

R44, you seem very keen to try and show that heavy porn use is no big deal. I think I will trust a leading urologist like Dr. Aaron Spitz who has seen thousands of penises and who has read lots of studies on this subject. Young men are having a lot of ED problems today and that didn't just come out of nowhere.

[quote]we do not dismiss the idea that heavy reliance on pornography use coupled with a high frequency of masturbation may represent a risk factor for diminished sexual performance during partnered sex and/or relationship satisfaction in subsets of particularly vulnerable men (e.g., younger, less experienced).

^ gee - they're geniuses. LOL.

How many of these guys are fat?

Video game playing, loser shut-ins who still live with their mammas are low-Ts? Groundbreaking!

Good thing thing I'm old then.

There's clearly an overall reduction in testosterone in modern men, but to say it's porn's fault is reductive and merely attempting to find a hot-button correlation (which we all know should not be confused with causation). Porn is always used as an attention-grabber.

Marjorie Taylor Greene needs to watch a lot of porn!!!

"There's clearly an overall reduction in testosterone in modern men, but to say it's porn's fault is reductive and merely attempting to find a hot-button correlation"

The real reason is probably a combination of factors - processed foods, physical isolation, lack of exercise and activity, etc. Those are the sort of thing that affect human hormonal levels, the body's internal systems are always adjusting themselves to circumstances.

Too much porn does cause problems with real-world relationships and partnered sex, but that doesn't mean it messes with hormonal levels, so I agree that the urologist is right and the clickbait is wrong.

"Is it really that porn decreases T, or were these guys already low T and that's why they're home watching porn more than guys who go out on the prowl?"

The article actually doesn't link porn directly to depleting testosterone. It's more that porn is linked to poor sleep and other health indicators that can lead to depleted testosterone. Basically many people watching TONS of porn isn't sleeping, eating well, exercising. Correlation, not causation.

"Basically many people watching TONS of porn isn't sleeping ..."

I meant "... aren't sleeping ...."

I don't think so. You don't have desire to jerk off to most junk OF videos. The quality of porn stars is on the downswing. e.g, Malik Delgaty is a superstar nowadays, but he'd be a normal model in 1990's and early 2000's. I'd like to see Malik take a dick up that bubble ass though. :D

A lot of modern studio gay porn is boring despite the higher production values. The guys seem bored or severely drugged up. It went from niche with interesting stories and charming porn stars who had some charisma and genuine sex appeal to manufactured assembly Ken dolls with stupid plot lines (how many my girlfriend is in the other room plotlines can they recycled?) and uncomfortable, unrealistic positions designed to make memes from.