Why porn consumption is wide spread when it comes to college students and professionals? Fortunately, no one I have ever known watches porn! That is true about every country or state in the US I have been to. So, apparently, I belong to a very small and very troubled minority. And apparently, it was my money that let the website “Porn Hub” most of which has been free for years, advertise on a billboard in Times Square NYC on October 8th, 2014. In fact, the ad was selected from 3000 submissions from 2000 people around the world. The proud winner? Nuri Gulver of Istanbul. That makes us at least 2002 people who view porn. Mr. Gulver then became the creative director of the website.
That makes one person legitimately watching porn at their work desk. But there are stats that cannot be representative of 2002 people who according to the Times Square ad “All [they] need is a hand.”
According to Forbes Magazine, as of 2001, there was 2 zettabytes (2 trillion gigabytes) of data online. And according to the book “Billion Wicked Thoughts” between “July 2009 to July 2010, about 13% of web searches were for erotic content.” That number has significantly increased since then, but this is the last most reliable data.
The same book states that in 2010, from the 1 million most visited websites on the web 42,337 were porn related.
And SHRM.org reports:
- 70 percent of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday, according to SexTracker. This means that one in five employees access cybersex at work.
These statistics make me wonder if the people I have talked to have told me “the truth, all the truth and nothing but the truth.” And then I wonder why not.
The most common and destructive effect of porn is not addiction, it is guilt! It is amazing how in the 21st century, people still feel ashamed of their sexuality. Thank you, religions.
Porn plays a role in suppressing sexual desires. It has gone far enough that many performers of online porn are virgins in real life. I have spent a lot of time talking to webcam porn performers online which are the 21st century style of porn you can communicate with. They sit in front of the camera in their room, and their world is online. Remember these are performers or exhibitionists we are talking about. Let alone a young girl who has been told to keep her “flower” tight for someone who probably has seen gardens of flowers.
This article is not normalizing porn, as fightthenewdrug.org accused BuzzFeed of doing. Fighting the New Drug is a “non-religious,” “scientific” NGO that tries to help people “make informed decisions” about viewing porn. Because:
- Decades of studies from major institutions have demonstrated significant impacts of porn consumption for individuals, relationships, and society.
The website ‘asks’ on its front page if porn has adverse effects on “friendships, self-esteem, body image, both men and women arousal, relationship satisfaction, sex trafficking victims” and… you guessed it: “The feelings of shame!” The first seven are food for thought, and I am thinking about adverse effects of porn on friendships. But the eighth ‘question’ is as disturbing as “Are we emergency landing on the ocean?”, “Is she pregnant?” and “Do you wanna experience something new, son?!”
Unless you are masturbating in public, no legal sexual activity is cause for shame. Shame makes people hide the truth. That is why no one confesses that they watch porn while almost everybody does. You know how I know that? Because porn is a 12-billion-dollar industry. I also know that most watch it free.
Now let’s ask why people watch porn? Aside from the fact that it is fun.
To some porn is a substitute to sex, or imagination when alone. Even the said NGO says that porn does not have the same effect on everyone. There are people who watch porn in a healthy way.
But porn should not be a longtime substitute for real sex. So, why do people watch porn? Because they do not have access to sex. Why is that? “The feelings of shame!” No one is too ugly to have sex. No one is out of shape enough not to be loved. But as long as a young person is expected not to have sex, he finds other ways to satisfy his instincts.
And this is not a joke!
Watching porn does not deprive you of stuff the Fight the New Drug NGO is telling you. It does not make you secluded from the society and friends. Sex addiction will. Porn won’t.
Watching porn is mostly the result of depravity caused by outside forces, including, but not limited to the “feelings of shame!”
Dr. Shahram Heshmat defines shame on Psychology Today like this:
- Shame is a painful emotion that responds to a sense of failure to attain some ideal state.
Okay. What ideal state are porn viewers falling short of? Celibacy? Early marriage? Suicide? Because according to Dr. Heshmat:
- Shame encompasses the entire self. The thought process in shame involves self-focused attention. The physical expressions of shame include the blushing face, slumped head, and averted eyes. It generates a wish to hide, to disappear, or even to die.
Do you know what the body and mind should go through to make the person want to hide, disappear or die. Can you imagine the pressure one needs to be under to have a “blushing face and slumped head?” This is not cuteness. It is suffering. And it is unnecessary.
The point to be made is beyond porn. It is the shame coming with anything sex related. Watching too much porn is a symptom, not a cause. Or at least more of a symptom and less of a cause.
Someone should confront the holier than thou. They cannot just simply ban stuff. And no one has the right to make another person ashamed of their nature. If a person does not have sex and does not watch porn and does not masturbate, he is not a godly man, he is ill. And expect your deprived, ashamed, virgin daughter to suddenly get pregnant. The problem here, like many other issues, is that the victim is not the believer, but her child or student.
Porn is like everything else. It can be bad in excess. But even then, it should not make the person ashamed. How is a person to get help when they are judged? And again, who hasn’t ever watched porn? I guess you can cast the first stone.
