What happens when you view porn?
Porn doesn’t just have emotional or relational consequences. From a scientific point of view, pornography has a significant effect on your brain too. Here’s what happens when someone watches porn:
Like a drug, porn hijacks the reward pathway in the brain and creates new neuro-pathways. Each time someone views porn, those neuro-pathways become stronger.
Viewing porn floods the brain with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that controls the brain’s reward and pleasure center.
Over time, a porn user develops a tolerance, resulting in the need for more and extreme types of pornography for arousal.
In addition to rewiring the brain, addictions such as drugs and porn shrink the brain’s frontal lobe, the part of the brain that is responsible for logical problem solving and
decision making.