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2. Porn: boys will be boys

Can porn physically change the structure of your brain and even shrink it?

Hold on. We'll get to that in a while.

With the wide spread use of high-speed Internet porn, we are in the middle of the fastest moving unconscious experiment ever conducted on a global level: nearly every young guy with Internet access becomes an eager test subject. That's the conclusion of several experts, including physiology teacher Gary Wilson, who presented a TED Talk on the subject.

It all starts with a 10-year old boy—that's the age when, according to research, boys usually seek pornography for the first time. High-speed Internet offers him not only nudity but constant novelty at a click of the mouse.

Our boy gets hooked.

The primal portion of his brain, focused on basic survival and reproduction, sees every new female on-screen as an opportunity for matting. It then releases dopamine, which keeps the boy clicking and clicking for more gratification—pretty much like a rat in a lab. A heavy porn user's brain begins associating sex with behaviors such as being alone, voyeurism, clicking and searching, multiple tabs, constant novelty, shock and surprise.

Real sex, in contrast, is courtship, touching and being touched, smells, pheromones, emotional connection and interaction with a person. So what happens when this porn user finds a real mate?

He realizes he's in trouble.

The increase of dopamine production promotes a cycle of binging and craving that numbs the brain to pleasures of everyday life while making it hyper-reactive to porn. Finally, the user's willpower erodes, his brain changes and porn addiction settles. Symptoms include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, social anxiety, depression, performance anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Erectile dysfunction

It's hard to believe that something healthy as sex can be harmful, but as Wilson notes, "Internet porn is not sex: it's as different from real sex as today's videogames are from checkers. From all activities on the Internet, porn is the most addictive."

According to sexual addiction expert Dr. Victor Cline, repeated exposure to porn accompanied by masturbation triggers the first phase of the addiction. The second phase is escalation, requiring more porn exposure to achieve the same buzz and sometimes leading to a preference for porn over sexual intercourse. The third phase is desensitization, when the user views as normal what was once considered repulsive or immoral.

Finally, in the acting-out phase, the addict runs an increased risk of making the leap from screen to real life. This behavior may manifest itself in the form of promiscuity, cheating a partner, voyeurism, exhibitionism, group sex, rape, sadomasochism, or even child molestation.

Another serious problem with porn addiction is erectile dysfunction—which no blue pill can cure. A survey shows that Internet porn is killing young men's performance: tuned into the porn hypergratification that's provided by constant novelty, shock and surprise, the men's brains are sending weaker signals to their genitals during real-life sex. The libido drops to the point that an erection becomes impossible, even while watching porn.

Like in a classical case of addiction, there is an increasing desensitization of the brain. It will then try to compensate that by seeking more novelty, shock and surprise, until it's overstimulated to the limit and can no longer respond. The teenage brain is extremely vulnerable to addiction because its reward system is fully developed, whereas its restriction system is not: a teenage brain is all accelerator and no brakes.

Until a few years ago, there was no way of studying the impact of porn in human behavior because it was impossible to form a control group of non-users. That spoke volumes about the pervasiveness of pornography among men. When porn addicts began to seek help and break their habit, they became the control group that was missing.