Name: 【TEDx】The great porn experiment | Gary Wilson | TEDxGlasgow
Uploaded: 2016-07-19T04:07:33.000Z
Duration: 16 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm gonna have a little song  about Internet porn.

The widespread use of Internet porn is one of the fastes moving

most global experiment ever  unconsciously conducted.

Nearly every young guy with Internet access  becomes an eager test subject.

Canadian researcher  Simon Lajeunesse found

that most boys  seek pornography by age 10.

Driven by a brain that is suddenly  fascinated by sex.

Now, users perceive Internet porn  as far more compelling

it's not mere nudity but novelty  that gets arousals skyrocketing.

Subjects watch 22 porn displays. See that spike?

That's where searchers switch to porn the guys hadn't seen before.

What happened? The erections in their brains fired up.

Mother nature likes to keep  a male fertilizing willing females

he needs more and more time  to make with the same old you.

But if you keep switching females -- the bottom line -- well she's not the same.

He can get the job done in 2 minutes flat  and keep going until he's utterly exhausted.

Without the Coolidge effect  there would be no Internet porn.

This old mammalian program  the Coolidge effect perceives

each novel female on a guy's screen  as a genetic opportunity.

To keep a guy fertilizing  the screen his brain releases

the "go get it" neurochemical dopamine for each novel made or image.

but as long as  the guy can keep clicking

he can keep going  as so will his dopamine.

With internet porn a guy can see  more hot babes in 10 minutes

than his ancestors could see  in several lifetimes.

The problem is he has  a hunter-gather brain.

A heavy user brain rewires  itself to this genetic bonanza

so it carefully becomes associated with this porn harem.

Such behaviours that are associated  with this are being alone,

voyeurism, clicking,  searching, multiple tabs

fast-forwarding, constant novelty shock  and surprise.

Are we the first generation  to masturbate left handed?

Now, real sex, in contrast, is courtship, touching,

being touched, smells, pheromones,  emotional connection,

Now, what happens when our guy finally gets with a real mate.

Well, researchers don't know  much about the effects

In 2009, when Lajeunesse  tried to study porn'’s impact

he couldn't find any college age males  who weren't using it.

So the first serious dilemma is that studies have no control groups.

Imagine if all guys started smoking at age 10

We would think that lung cancer  is normal for all guys.

Undaunted by his lack of non-users  Lajeunesse asked 20 male students:

Is Internet porn affecting you  or your attitude towards women?

But they've been using it for about decade  then pretty much non-stop.

This is like asking a fish  what it thinks about water?

Researchers haven't asked porn users  about the symptoms

Zimbardo described in "The Demise of Guys."

Arousal addiction symptoms  are easily mistaken

for a such thing as ADHD,  social anxiety, depression,

concentration problems, performance anxiety,  OCD and a host of others.

Now, healthcare providers often assume  that these conditions are primary

perhaps the cause of addiction but  never really the result of an addiction.

As a consequence they often  medicate these guys

without really inquiring about if they have an Internet addiction.

Guys never realise  that they could overcome these

symptoms simply  by changing their behaviour.

Now, the third problem is it's hard to believe that

sexual activity can cause addiction  because sex is healthy.

Internet porn is  as different from real sex

as today’s video games  are from checkers.

Watching the screen  full of naked body parts

won't automatically protect one  from arousal addiction.

In this Dutch study -- here's the title --

they found that in fact of all activities  on the Internet

porn has the most potential  to become addictive.

This ancient programme,  the reward circuit,

evolved to drive us towards  natural rewards

As a consequence extreme versions of natural rewards

For example: high-calorie foods or hot novel babes give us extra dopamine.

Too much dopamine though can override  our natural satiation mechanisms.

to junk food and almost all of them  will binge to obesity.

This is also why 4 out of 5 Americans are overweight

Now, in contrast the natural rewards  drugs such as

cocaine or alcohol only hook about 10% of users whether they are rats or humans.

This binge mechanism for food or sex was once an evolutionary advantage.

In essence, it is getting it while  the getting is good.