this has never happened before today we have three experts in the field with three different opinions debating the subject of porn this is the first time i'm going to have a word in one corner we have dr reena malik the sex scientist helping millions of couples enhance their sex lives in the other corner we have dr kate the psychiatrist specializing in helping people with attitudes to pornography and more who is up against erica luss who runs a large pornographic production company no one can sit on the fence here is porn a better to plan society that's enough and especially for people who haven't really had that right to pressure to understand our sexuality but i think what we're clearly seeing is a trend of hit the intention let me just share with all that i'm afraid of it is doing way more to the brain than we ever realized so the first thing that we know is that but they're going to suggest that couples that lose pornography together have better sexual encounters and women who lose pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates and remember that women's sexuality have been so much about policing others and you see it with orgasm gap but my devil's advocate would say that there's a significant number of women interested in looking a certain way that they're often seeing on pornography i'm a bit suspicious about this because we'll miss you that statement is from 10 years ago there's also unrealistic expectations about performance that create change and small penis anxiety is a real thing and it's often from watching pornography the real problem is we are not giving sex education to our young people they are lost but it doesn't have to be an addiction it's the way that you relate to it it is something that people can control and parents can learn how to have these conversations with their kids there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use versus that let's start with instructions dr rena who are you and what you do so i'm a urologist which is essentially a medical and surgical doctor of the gentry urinary tract but i see myself more as a visual opinion leader in the space of sexual health and urologic health so someone who can talk to and speak about complex concepts in addition to sexual health in a way that people can understand can you give me sort of a view of the variety of things that you've worked on your career the types of patients you've worked with and the subject matter broadly that you've addressed and are confronted with in your life work absolutely so as a urologist we're trained to treat anything in those areas of the gentry urinary tract so that can be kidney cancer prostate cancer bladder cancer sexual health erectile dysfunction female sexual dysfunction kidney stones children's issues but then when i did a fellowship in called female pelvic medicine reconstructive surgery or urology oncology so i initially trained in dealing with voiding dysfunction um and problems with bladder leakage overactive bladder prolapse those sorts of things and subsequently extend my practice into sexual medicine so i take care of patients with issues with erectile dysfunction arousal disorders ejaculatory dysfunction um libido issues uh lubrication issues a whole bunch of different areas of issues that people deal with when it comes to sexual health that's okay same question to you sure so i'm a psychiatrist by training but i had kind of a roundabout way to get there so i failed out of college through video game addiction and then went to india to find myself studied uh to become a monk for about seven years and then wound up going to medical school becoming a psychiatrist and now the majority of work that i do is actually like focus on the internet so what i noticed when i was training was that if you look at like academic psychiatry or psychiatry we focus on things like depression or bipolar disorder anxiety but i saw that there was a whole lot of evolving mental health problems for the digital generation video game addiction pornography addiction and i noticed that most of the psychiatrists weren't focused on those that we kind of had an opioid epidemic that's still going on a lot of problems with alcohol and marijuana but there are all these digital addictions that are emerging and those are the people that i work with now erica yeah who are you i'm erica i'm independent adult filmmaker i'm an entrepreneur i made my first short film explicit short film 20 years ago and then i developed a career in this space of indie adult cinema and are you a director yes of adult films yeah i direct films i produce films i also run the company to set the stage on where we ought to pornography i found some statistics which i thought were quite pertinent to the discussion which is the first statistic is that 30 percent of all internet traffic roughly is related to pornography 35 percent of all internet downloads are pornographic in nature 79 percent of young men view pornography monthly 64 percent of young adults actively seek out pornography weekly or more often one in five mobile searches are for pornographic content 58 percent of men and 38 percent of women watch corner work and pornography web searches receive more traffic than netflix amazon and twitter combined interestingly i found another statistic which said that pornography in poland has increased 310 percent between 2004 which i guess when you got into business and 2016 some other sort of potentially adjacent trends that were interesting were that the percentage of men aged 18 to 24 reporting no sexual activity in the past year increased from 18.9 percent in 2000 to over 30 percent in 2016 and similar increases in sexual activity are seen in men and women similar decreases in sexual activity have been seen in men and women among high school students the percentage who have never had sexual intercourse increased from 45 percent in 91 to 70 percent in 21 and finally the average age of first exposure to pornography is now just 11 years old and 64 percent of young people report that they came across pornography by accident so i guess my first um point of discussion that i wanted to raise is is pornography a benefit to people in society i realize that this question is intentionally short and narrow but that's the basis of the first conversation is porn it can be it can be definitely and especially to the others who haven't really had that right to pleasure to desire to the sexuality remember that women's sexuality especially has been so much about pleasing others i think that it can help women to find you know their own desire to understand their sexuality to see others what they like what they are doing and to turn their liberty on liberty on which is obviously one of the things that so many women are struggling with the way that porn is being produced and consumed is starting to cause way more harm than good i mean the the statistics that you really just machine gun out right like it's like one thing after another thing after another thing of things that are you know very scary like each statement that both y'all made i can think about a specific person that i worked with where it's like yeah i've seen that problem i've seen that problem um you know early exposure so when you get exposed to pornography before puberty so everyone thinks that pornography is about you know like sexual loss and this kind of stuff and i think in a in a good way it can be but what i've seen a lot of for adults is that children are getting exposed and i've seen like a very scary correlation between early exposure pornography like seven eight nine years old right so i think your statistic was the average is eleven yeah that's average which means there are people that are higher and people that are lower and when something i don't know why exactly but when we get exposed to pornography very early it makes some kind of alteration in our brain that makes us way more likely to addictions not only pornography but other things so i think that there are you know sexuality is a healthy part of human existence um a lot of the current research suggests that masturbation is also like relatively speaking not unhealthy it's somewhat healthy and so pornography can be a part of that i think especially listening to erica and how pornography can be used to elevate horizons increase awareness um there can be benefits but i think what we're clearly seeing is a trend of it being damaging so i would say that i agree with erica completely i think there's actually something to suggest that women who use pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates have more frequency of sexual encounters because they're learning about their bodies and we can't know exactly why that is but we know there is a correlation in that specific way so when people are using pornography for sexual curiosity um for pleasure um they're generally showing good for the most part without any signs of addiction or concerns of compulsion and use of pornography they're using it in a good way they're having better sex because of it now in terms of using it as a couple there's also really strong correlations that couples that use pornography together have better sexual encounters and better sexual satisfaction so i think there's a lot of ways that pornography is used in a positive way and not to undermine that there are people who struggle with it absolutely but i think yes there are some benefits it allows people to experience fantasies to see different types of sexual cultures as erica mentioned i think that that that is an important side of pornography in terms of um using that to learn what you like and learn what you want to try in your relationship if that's applicable much of the literature that i've read about and studies i've read about show that if you consume pornography you're somewhat desensitized to the real thing i.e sex in your relationships and when we look at those stats and sexlessness people having less sex than previous years people losing their virginity later and later i wonder if that is we've sort of been desensitized to the real thing because of pornography absolutely so i think that there is certainly people who they use pornography as a way to achieve pleasure and that is the sole way that they achieve pleasure so they are constantly using pornography and sometimes probably with a certain style of masturbation and those things cannot be replicated with penetrative intercourse of any kind or you know manual intercourse with another person and so in those cases then it becomes difficult because your brain habituates to that style of stimulation and excitement and visual sensations that they're getting from watching pornography and so that does happen to some individuals i would say it's not the large majority but certainly we're seeing more of it what is the impact though on the brain especially a young brain that is exposed to pornography yeah i mean there's no there's no studies on kids looking at pornography so i couldn't tell you exactly but you may be able to talk a lot more about this yeah i mean so like first of all i think this is a fascinating discussion and if i can kind of track back and freestyle for a bit so i thought it was so interesting because steven asked this question right and he's like you know is pornography a problem and i thought it was so interesting that the two women at the table had the more positive answers and the dude is like it's bad right so i think the first thing to understand is that and it's so for me it's eye-opening to hear both y'all talk because i think so much of it is like your experience right we're talking about pornography as if it's an isolated thing but the biggest takeaway that i already have is that there is a relationship between the human and the pornography erica was talking about you know how the pornography can be used to help the human understand sexuality become more familiar with pleasure that we have your desire yeah and we have this orgasm gap and then and then you know she's really saying you know we don't i forgot exactly what you said something about we don't see it very much or you said that the problems of um you know sexuality relating to pornography or i thought you said not that common which is which is something that i'm not saying it's common or uncommon i think that's just such an interesting selection difference because i work with people who have pornography and like death grip syndrome because i've never heard it discussed is like very common so it's exactly it's a twitch chat degenerate way of describing what dr malik did a great medical job of describing which is that so what happens is our body can acclimatize to a certain kind of simulation so when um oftentimes what happens when and i haven't worked with too many women and sexual stuff way more men um so that there's a selection bias there too but oftentimes what happens is that boys or men will start to masturbate without any kind of lubrication and so there's a they almost train their bodies physiologically to climax with a certain degree like a certain you know pounds per square inch of force and a certain sensation which they get used to not only at the physiologic level but also at the neurological level which dr malik alluded to that there's a certain kind of um visual stimulation that they almost get used to brain climatizes to in order to achieve sexual climax and then what happens is when these people have a sexual relationship for the first time the sensations and the from a visual perspective you know auditory perspective because the sounds that we hear in these big you know fast food pornography productions are nowhere near the sounds in real life um and so the the inputs of an actual sexual act make it very difficult to have a satisfied sexual life and so i think there's a lot of subtlety to you know dr malik said when couples watch porn together there are also studies that show that as you increase your pornography consumption that correlates with relationship dissatisfaction but that could be a chicken or the egg problem am i watching more porn because i'm unhappy with the sexual relationship or does watching pornography decrease my satisfaction in the relationship and so i think there's just like so much here to explore yeah yeah i think your point about the couples usually if there's a discrepancy in one partner is watching more porn than the other then there's just decreased satisfaction certainly um and i think that your point to saying that you're seeing a lot of it well that's people come to you for this problem right so you're seeing this exclusively um i think in the general population um and maybe they're not coming to the urologist as often right um but certainly i'm not seeing as much of it it's not reported in terms of like people complaining about it in studies and again these studies are small numbers they're not generalizable to the entire population but i would say that it's not as common as i think we let on but the other important thing to add is that there's because it's so nuanced there's a big moral component people have a belief about what pornography is good or bad and so when they watch pornography if they have a moral incongruence and they think it's bad to watch pornography they are more likely to report having a problem with pornography so there's a lot of nuance here in terms of how pornography can be beneficial or harmful to a specific individual and how it affects that specific individual's brains while it's going to send the same pathways um you know as any sort of strong visual stimuli the way your body sensitizes to those pathways is very individual what about pornography in the brain then in terms of its impact on dopamine and how that then will cascade into other areas of our lives yeah so i mean i'll launch this one um so i think that the biggest takeaway that i have is it is doing way more than we ever realized so the first thing is if you get exposed to pornography early on in life and this accidental exposure by the way the most common story that i hear and this is such a weird like anecdotal statistic is um if you're if you have an older brother and you're a younger brother i see so many pornography addicts who have older brothers and the most common story that i hear is you know older brother is post-puberty and is watching pornography which is like a little bit more understandable and acceptable and then your younger brother wants to do whatever you're doing and they get exposed to it at an early age so the first thing that we know is that early exposure correlates with an increase in potential for addiction that's probably somewhat neurological and potentially somewhat um sociological or family oriented because if you think about what kind of seven-year-old will get exposure to pornography maybe parents aren't in the house as much so there could be other risk factors but we absolutely know that when you activate in an artificial way the dopaminergic circuitry of the brain it sensitizes the dopaminergic circuitry and makes it more vulnerable to dopamine later on this is something called the kindling effect we see this also for example in like marijuana as a gateway drug the reason marijuana is a gateway drug is not because it makes you immoral it's because once we start activating certain circuits in the brain during brain development it changes the way that they develop the second thing that we see is that pornography is used as a method of emotional regulation so if you look at like i was trying to figure out what effect does pornography have in the brain and so i was thinking about okay which part of the brain does sex come from and it turns out that every part of the brain every neurotransmitter is involved in the sexual act because the purpose the evolutionary purpose of a human being is to procreate so all of our circuitry is designed for this thing so we see that there's absolutely an emotional regulation component because when we get aroused like our brain doesn't care about you know anything else in our life when it comes to the act of procreation so we see a lot of emotional regulation which then becomes an emotional crutch so i see a lot of this now where people at work will watch pornography it's not about masturbation or lust it's about emotional regulation i've seen a huge spike in second screen pornography so we'll be working over here and i'll just have porn like running over here like this is a really common story and it's an emotional regulation effect now the third thing that you the question you ask about is dopamine so here's a really fascinating thing so absolutely messes with your dopamine when it messes with your dopamine it messes with your motivation because dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter involved in motivation so as you watch more pornography you just stop being as motivated about the other things in your life and the really crippling thing the really scary thing from a relationship standpoint is that if we look at falling in love falling in love is primarily the function of dopamine so when we look at a relationship there's initial attraction which it comes from like the thalamus and our sensory inputs what do i see where oh she smells great her laugh is beautiful right that's all sense And then we get into the stage where we're in love, when I can't get enough to this person. I'm just sitting with this person. We're not talking. We're not doing anything.
We're just holding hands. Oh, I'm so in love. So like literally what creates that feeling is dopamine. And when we start using pornography on a regular basis, our dopamine stores start to deplete.
We start to develop dopamine tolerance. And like literally what I'm seeing clinically matches with this because it's harder for people to fall in love. When I talk to younger people now who are in their 20s and 30s and struggling to date, you go on a couple of days. But what's the problem?
There's no chemistry. There's no spark. That comes from dopamine. So I think we're seeing all kinds of really scary downstream effects from unregulated pornography use.
I can't help but feeling that what you're talking about is a very masculine experience somehow. And that when we're talking about porn addiction or compulsory behavior with pornography, it is very related to men. And that we in our society tends to see men's experiences as universal experiences. And I think that we lack a perspective of where women get into this construction of addiction, of use of pornography.
Reince, do you see it as an addiction? So I think that it's not in terms of addiction in terms of medical vernacular. They call it problematic porn use because there hasn't been a clear definition in terms of addiction. Right.
But I would say that I think that there are certainly people who have this experience, but there's certainly many, many people who use pornography and don't develop this tolerance. And maybe it's more common in younger people because they're getting access to it sooner and more often. And that has yet to play out, at least I tend to see older patients. And so so that has yet to play out in older generations.
But I would say that there's many people who use it fine and don't have an issue. And so I think that while these issues exist, there's also a whole bunch of other things that are ongoing in society right now that may make it more difficult for people to connect and for people to feel intimacy with people because it's very difficult. Currently, more and more people are not getting married. More and more people are choosing to stay single for a variety of reasons.
I don't think porn is the only factor there. I do think it is something that people can control. And so they feel like, OK, if you feel like you have a problem with it and you can control pornography, that allows you to feel like you have control in one area of your life. And then that control can potentially improve other areas of your life.
So I think that there is correlations here, but I think it's very complex. And the way it affects our brains is very complex as well. And like dopamine is one way to describe it. But there's, you know, there's different sensitivities in how our brain responds to the same stimuli, right?
The way I watch pornography, the way you watch pornography, the way anyone of us watches pornography, our brains will respond in a different way because our receptors are either more sensitive or less sensitive. And there's no way to really test that on an individual level. One of the things I found most interesting when I had the first conversation on this podcast about pornography is my team went out and looked at a couple of tools which pull search data. So what are people searching on the subject?
And the number one most searched term was how do I quit pornography? And that's quite an interesting thing because there's a certain desperation to that question. You know, going to Google to ask Google how you quit a behavior, that makes me think of it in the context of addiction. And in fact, the second most popular search term was also how you quit this thing.
And it speaks to a certain powerlessness that a certain percentage of people feel they have with pornography thrown out to everybody here. No, but I think this connects also to the stigma, the huge stigma around sex and around porn and this idea that people have somehow that it is bad. I mean, people want to watch it. But at the same time, they have the moral idea that it's bad and that they shouldn't do it.
But I think we're also talking here. I mean, we end up talking about porn all the time, but somehow porn is now very related to technology and how technology kind of has hijacked our lives. It's not only porn we're struggling with in that sense. And when, you know, with young people, they are saying they're not having as much sex anymore.
You were talking about it before. Kids are not playing as much anymore outside as they used to. So I think we have a correlation there that we need to think about the role of technology and then how much of that space does really this pornography take up. And also to have in mind that when we're talking about porn, most people see it as a monolithic kind of thing.
When you go out on the street and you ask people, what is porn? They think about the two sides. That's what that's what they have in mind. But actually, there's many different kinds of porn existing.
Do you think there's such a thing as good porn and bad porn? It's a very difficult kind of distinction to say bad porn and good porn, because if you do that, then you classify some type as acceptable and other types as none. And you kind of roll the stigma around it. I think that we need to think about porn that is made with great working conditions, taking care of everybody who's involved in the process, especially the performers, made with support by intimacy coordinator, talent managers, where the performers have been able to be involved in the process to give feedback on what is going to be made, how it's working.
They have the normal conditions beforehand, et cetera. They can give feedback afterwards. I think there are ways of producing pornography that are safer than what we have seen in the past. We were talking a second about the impact pornography has on the brain.
And I know some of your work involves dealing with people who have erectile dysfunction. Some of the stats I read on erectile dysfunction show that there's been quite a significant increase over the last couple of decades in people reporting to have erectile dysfunction. Do you think porn has played a role in increasing erectile dysfunction as it relates to when I'm with my partner in the bedroom and I'm trying to have sex? So I think this goes back to the people who are watching pornography and are learning what sex is through pornography, and then they go to their sexual encounter with their partner, and they don't respond the way that they do on pornography, or their partner doesn't respond the way they do on pornography, and immediately they feel insecure, right?
Immediately. And that leads to the psychogenic erectile dysfunction where you are no longer able to perform because you're so stressed about the anxiety of being able to get an erection because maybe things didn't go the way they were supposed to, or maybe you're insecure about your body image or a whole host of things that come from watching maybe some of the big box pornography where we're not really showing real sex. We're showing a produced product that is meant to entertain and captivate people for a short period of time. And so I think that is one certainly issue that I do see where people start feeling this.
The other thing is where people are, you know, using pornography quite often, and then they, again, are unable to get that stimulation through a partner, right? They can't get the same, they're using death grip, or they're using, you know, the same very erotic stimuli, very intense visual erotic stimuli that they can't produce with a person. And so then they're like, why am I not getting aroused? And why am I not getting an erection?
And it's because they've now relied on this solely. So I do see that certainly as an issue in some people who are using pornography. But I don't think it's like pornography use leads to ED. I think it's these other factors on the way to having psychological concerns about your own performance that lead to issues with erections.
And before we move on, Dr. Kay's point about motivation as well, do you believe that there's a correlation between the amount that we watch pornography and masturbate and someone's motivation based on what you know about dopamine receptors? You know, hard to say. I think, again, it's very individual.
Certainly some people will take the ease, like, you know, there is a availability part when it comes to any sort of addiction type behavior. So when something is more available to you and you're using it more often, it can become more problematic. And so certainly I think that plays a role in terms of like if you're using it a lot and it's very available to you and it's an easy way to emotionally regulate, right? If you're having stress in life, you're unhappy with your relationship or you're unhappy with other things, people are often using pornography as a way to avoid those negative emotions and really just participate in something else, like take their mind off of that.
And so that is sort of where it becomes this challenge for some people. Yeah, I just want to chime in. So this is fantastic because I agree with everything that y'all are saying. And I also kind of come to a slightly different conclusion.
So the number one search term that we have is how do I quit porn? So when I hear that, and I think Dr. Mollick has also done a great job of pointing out, you know, there's a difference between anecdotal clinical experience and what we have randomized clinical trials on. You know, we're not exposing seven-year-olds to pornography and then seeing how the brain develops by doing MRI scans over the course of 10 years.
So some of this research is absolutely not there. And we also have the number one search term is how do I quit porn? What that tells me is that there is literally the largest population of what people are looking at is to stop using pornography. And I think the reason for that is, is it a good porn or is it a bad porn?
Is it individuals, if you want to completely agree with all those points, it's not a problem for everyone. But I think what I'm seeing very clearly is that it's getting worse, right? So it's not an issue of good or bad. What is the trend that we're seeing?
The trend that we're seeing is that Erica is saying, hey, pornography can be more than the tube sites. So that then begs the question, why does everyone think that pornography is the tube sites? Because they hijacked the better system. Exactly.
So I think that word is beautiful, hijacked. So I think what we're seeing, what I'm seeing is that pornography is getting worse, for sure. It's becoming more of a problem. If we look at these tube sites, it's kind of like there's nutrition and then there's calories.
And a lot of what I'm hearing y'all talk about, you know, Dr. Malik is saying, if you watch it as part of a relationship, that's nutrition. It can be something healthy. We can learn about ourselves.
We can destigmatize various things. Fair enough. I think we're seeing the same trends that we see with like fast food, where now pornography is becoming mass produced. And there are actually studies that show there's a really fascinating, bizarre piece of research, right?
Which is where you have to go. This is where I've gone to find this stuff because we don't have studies. But there was a particular group of biologists who were noticing that a population of beetles was dined out. And they were trying to figure out, like, why is this population of beetles dying out?
And what they discovered is there's one thing that's responsible for these beetles not mating with each other, which is green beer bottles that were being littered. And the green beer bottle, and then what they noticed is that the beetles were trying to go up to the green beer bottle and mate with it. And they were like, what is going on? You see this litter that has a green beer bottle, and a bunch of male beetles are clustered around it.
And like, they're like, what is this? And it turns out that there's this concept of something called a supernormal stimulus. So when a beetle's eyes look at the environment, there are certain signals that indicate this is a fertile female. And a green glass beer bottle activates those parts of the brain.
And what we're seeing with these tube sites is things are jigglier. Things are louder. Things are slipperier, right? We have these 4K high def.
Why all these tube sites, why are they successful? They're in this Darwinian war that's kind of like a race to the bottom. How can I create the pornography that is going to leach the most traffic away from my competitors? And they're figuring out very rapidly that there are all kinds of weird ways to activate the brain, what our brain looks for and what it gets excited about.
And so it feels to me like there's a race to the bottom. We're making pornography for money. We're making it more. But the thing is that these companies behind these tube sites, they are not interested in human sexuality.
They're not interested in sex. They're not interested in porn. They're not interested in the conditions of the people who are working in front of the camera. I mean, they're selling advertisement.
And what do they need for that? They need content that is extreme, that has words that are click-baity, that are kind of small clips, that are quick to watch. They look at their algorithms to see what works, right? But this reminds me of the food industry.
Yeah, it's a bit of a big food. It's a famous big foreign, big fashion, et cetera. Big porn is the same. How does an industry succeed if it doesn't engage in a practice, though?
Because the thing about the food industry, the thing that has the most sugar in, that's the most available, the cheapest, is the thing that's going to succeed the most. So we think about these tube sites, some of the stats are crazy. Only fans released their earnings for last year, about 20%, they made 6.6 billion. And Pornhub, one of the big tube sites, is the eighth most trafficked website in the world at the moment, doing 5.5 billion monthly visits.
These are the brands that people recognize. And it's extreme. Like, if we think about nutrition, high in sugar, it's extreme. So I get the most extreme sort of dopamine stimulation.
It's so easy to access. I don't have to put my shoes on, put my aftershave on. I can just, I can get on there within 15 seconds. For me to get laid, I'm going to have to pay in some work.
I'm going to have to go to the gym. I'm going to have to take care. I'm going to have to go get a job. I'm going to have to get some money.
I'm going to have to have a speech to a woman. Or 15 seconds, and I can see the most extreme. Yeah, I think that's the problem. But I do worry, to some, I'm going to have a little devil's advocate.
A devil's advocate would say that because there's so much moral incongruence that leads to problematic porn addiction, whatever you want to call it, right, that we're creating more of it by disparaging pornography, right? Like, everywhere people are saying pornography is bad, pornography is bad. You can't go on any social media platform without somebody citing a study that says pornography is leeching people's life force, and their life is falling apart because of pornography. Right, and so then we're also adding to that moral incongruence by saying that all pornography is bad.
Probably because we're watching it, right? And so people, like, if you ask, like, probably the generation older than me, like, would you be watching porn where you're seeing the things that you're seeing now, which, I mean, shocking to me, right? Like, they would be like, no, I don't want to see that, right? Like, that doesn't interest me in the slightest.
But, like, why is this becoming so, you know, people are watching it? I mean, to me, so much of this is totally anti-erothic. I sometimes go there to investigate and to kind of see what's going on and what's happening, and I feel like, oh, no, don't joke with this. I don't want to see it.
I'd rather throw up than, you know, feel excitement than wanting to have sex. So it has an opposite effect on lots of their audiences, actually. But, again, what is it about? It's about earning money and concentrating power.
It's about selling advertisement. That's what you're doing. It's grow your dick pills. It stays the sexy Latina in your neighborhood.
It's, and as a society, we have been very slow to see what has happened because these lives, they were born, you know, 17 years ago. 2007, they came out. It happened very, very fast. So a couple of thoughts.
The first is, like, yeah, that's exactly what's going on. So if we think about it, we have all of these, every part of our brain, right? Oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, estrogen, testosterone, right? Those are hormones, not brains.
But, you know, every circuit of the brain, all of our neurotransmitters, they're all to help us procreate. And now what's happened is people have fundamentally hijacked all of these circuits. And we're seeing problems. And I'm with you about the moral incongruence because we see this in other addictions as well.
We try to, like, demonize, like, alcohol usage, right? And we know that once we separate out the moral incongruence, because once I feel guilty and ashamed, this is something I see a lot, I watch pornography, now I feel ashamed. How am I going to cope with those emotions? Watching more pornography.
And so you create this cycle of, like, this moral-focused cycle of shame, and that actually fuels the dependence. So that's absolutely an issue. At the same time, like, these companies, and they don't care about eroticness, they're falling in love or whatever, right? They're interested in making a buck, and they're exploiting our brain.
And while we should be a little bit careful about the moralistic nature of it, I mean, I've seen it gets so much, it's getting worse. Like, every time, every year, there's going to be a selection bias, right, because I'm an addiction psychiatrist. But I think it's, like, even with something like OnlyFans, because now what we're adding is a social component. The one refuge we used to have when it comes to pornography, whether it's ethically produced or non-ethically produced, is that there's no way that this person is ever going to pay attention to me.
I'm just consuming something. But now, now I can interact with someone. Someone can send me a DM, hey, thank you for watching my video and jerking off. That makes me so happy.
But you know it's an AI bot, right? So, I know it's an AI bot, but I'm so ashamed of myself that, you know, take whatever water is given to you in the desert. I'm so alone. I feel so bad about myself.
And there's a chance, right? There's a chance it's not an AI bot. The real problem is that we are not speaking about sex. We are not speaking about intimacy.
People don't have the sex education. And they are lost. And they are human beings. They have this drive and this need.
And we have it in all cultures, right? Do you think if people have the sex education, they would still be on OnlyFans talking to what's probably... Because there are big agencies now. I've seen on social media there are big agencies of men who pretend to be these porn stars on sites like OnlyFans.
And I see them bragging about their income. I've made $10,000 this month pretending to be this actress speaking to young men on OnlyFans. Yeah, and I think the reason that men do that, part of the reason is because they know what men want to hear, right? There's a part of us that they know exactly what to say because it won't be an AI bot.
It'll be this kind of person. And now what's happening is we're activating the social loneliness aspect and combining it with pornography. So now you actually have a relationship with maybe an AI bot, maybe a dude, right? But there is like some amount of genuine human interaction over the internet.
So this is getting worse. And I think sex education is an excellent point. At the same time, I don't know... if sex education is going to be sufficient.
Because I think we can teach people about their bodies, but we're also seeing a whole-scale social skills atrophy where dudes don't know how to talk to girls anymore. And also media. Porn is media. It's important to understand that.
It's telling us messages about the under roles, how we interact, about sexuality, how our body functions, et cetera. So we have all this misinformation going on on this online huge media of free porn, and we see women screaming in fake orgasms after four minutes of heart penetration. And as a woman, you look at her and you say, she didn't even use her fingers. What happened?
And you just know that something is wrong here, that this is fake. But there's lots of men out there thinking, this is what my girlfriend should be doing, this is how it should work, and that they don't connect in real life. What kind of porn do you make? What kind of porn do I make?
I make lovely porn. I make beautiful porn. I make cinematic porn. I make porn with intentions of showing different ideas of desire and fantasy where people, I try to work with people who are connecting, who show chemistry together.
I ask my performers who they want to work with. I try to team them up. I support them with a system of intimacy coordinators, talent managers, producers in the background that take care of them, that check who they are, what they like, what kind of sexuality do they have. But if I was a consumer of pornography, what would I notice?
What would you notice? Probably the great cinematography would be the first thing. You would notice kind of narratives that are erotic-driven somehow where people explore their desire and their sexuality. You would notice, you would feel very, I mean, many people tell me, they go like, Erica, but I watch your films.
Is it really porn? Because they identify porn as something that is kind of tacky, ugly, kind of objectifying, et cetera. So suddenly when they see people in my films having sex coming together and everything is kind of, you understand why they are desiring each other and you kind of, I invite them to join this kind of erotic journey of the characters. Then they go, this is more like indie cinema, in the erotic cinema.
Is it fair to assume that? Because from what I've heard, the pornography you produce has a slower story arc. Which is more reflective of what- Okay, so I'm trying to understand because the things that it sounds like you might have removed from the pornography you make versus the pornography I find on one of the big YouTube streaming sites, the most popular videos on the YouTube streaming sites, it sounds like you might put yourself at a bit of a competitive disadvantage in many respects because those streaming sites, if their incentive is purely money, the data is going to determine what people see. So it feels like they've really optimized for user consumption where you've optimized for something around ethics.
Because I care about it. For me, the money is not the most important aspect why I created this company, why I'm making this. I really want to kind of send a different kind of message out to the world. Does your content end up on those sites?
Sometimes. Sometimes. Years ago, it was taken on those sites, for example, changing the wording of it. Because remember that many of these sites also what they do is that they fetishize people, they use very racist language, chalvinistic language, etc.
And my movies may have much softer kind of language than the way they are. So they obviously pirated them, they put them up, and they changed kind of the wording for the bits. It was a very hard process to take them down, etc. What do you think is better for someone's relationship, specifically men and women?
Do you think no porn is better for their relationship? Do you think your porn is better for their relationship? I think it's a very individual decision of what works best. Sorry.
I've never seen your films. I can tell you it's her porn. Better than no porn. I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb and say that if you're someone who's struggling with pornography, watching an erotic film with a glass of wine with your significant other is a great way to transition from bite-sized, fast-food, calorie-dense, jiggly, slippery, loud porn to how do we rewire the brain?
How do we move one step at a time from this to this? And it's like the word erotic seems so powerful to me. It's about anticipation. Even when we talk about differences between male and female sexuality, the lag time of parasympathetic activation and foreplay is so much more important biologically, correct me if I'm wrong here, for women than it is for men.
I mean, we're kind of ready to go and we want to make it short. And so I think it's almost like a part of that sexual education is an understanding, okay, how can we teach men to be erotic again instead of these very chicken nugget style, highly processed, like this is what I think it is, maybe watch some of Erica's film. When we talk about watching pornography with your porn, I wonder if that is the rule of the exception to the rule. Yeah, I mean, so you're saying where we do, I think we have an erotic film watch party, right?
We have anime watch parties, we have different kinds of watch parties, like this thought had never occurred to me before. I'm sure it's a terrible idea. On that point though, if you reduce the stigma by having these watch parties, does that then, because you cited earlier that it's a tool for emotional regulation, so when people stressed or depressed or anxious, they seek it out. If we remove the stigma, does that increase the addiction?
So it's a great question. So I think it kind of goes both ways and what I mean by that is see, we run into addictions when this substance becomes, or behavior becomes one-to-one correlated with something else. So right now, the problem with pornography isn't that it, yeah, so the problem is if I watch pornography and that's the only method I use to regulate my emotions, that will increase the addiction. Now, the flip side of it is also true.
If the only reason I watch pornography is to regulate my emotions, that will strengthen that addictive capability. So I'll give you all just a simple example from like alcohol, right? So if I use alcohol after a hard day's work to get through the day and calm down, and then I stop drinking for fun, whereas alcohol can be used as an emotional coping mechanism or it can be used to celebrate a wedding, right? So the substance can be used in different ways and the more that we use it in different ways and healthier ways, the more it actually chips away at the addiction in some cases.
This is also highly individualized. So depending on your genetic disposition and stuff like that, you may not be able to drink at weddings. But we also see the opposite, which is like a huge number of people are qualified for an alcohol addiction in college, and then most of those people are able to develop healthy relationships with it. And one of the biggest changes we're seeing in addiction is that there do seem to be healthy relationships that we can develop.
I think it's about changing our relationship to the thing. Now, seeing someone naked engaging in a sexual act is not solely about getting off. It's not solely about emotional regulation. It's not solely about dopamine.
It can now become a film experience that we can enjoy. So we're diversifying our relationship to the object. Awareness, mindfulness, understanding of how you use that. And I think this is also great.
Just the simple idea that if dudes are watching this, recognizing that watching an erotic film with your significant other assuming a heteronormative heterosexual relationship may be a great way for you to enhance your sexual experience. You don't need dick-enhancing pills or whatever else. I'm sure Dr. Mollick knows better than I do, but the majority of the...
No, I meant more as a urologist. I didn't think that would have been. No, no, so my understanding from med school, right? So back when I was doing urology, and I worked with some things like agonism and stuff like that, is the majority of the female nerve endings are at the front end of the vagina.
And if you get all the way back to the cervix, that's painful. So you don't actually need a gigantic penis. I was trying to think about whether I should use some other word. And so to help, if men are the ones who are primarily having this addictive problem, then let's call it what it is, which is help men realize that sexual pleasure, engaging in a relationship, that pornography can be a force for good.
It doesn't necessarily have to be evil. And maybe erotic film moves us in that direction. I just got to say, my degenerate male brain is kind of telling you, like, you know, watching an erotic film for an hour and a half could be the best and easiest foreplay that I could ever do. It would be a lot easier.
Yeah, pretty quick. But I would say, the other thing I'm thinking about while we've been talking about this is we don't talk about erotic audio literature or erotic books, which is more commonly used by women, but we don't stigmatize that. Like, women are like, oh, I love these books and I read them all the time and nobody is sitting here saying, like, it's bad. I don't know, stop telling them.
This is not naked bodies. I guess here, the main problem again is back to our bodies. We are somehow ashamed of our bodies, of our nakedness, of our sexuality. I mean, women can show nipples online.
We know that. I mean, I'm heavily censured. I can't show anything on my accounts. My social media accounts are cut off all the time.
It's impossible to grow. Do you think pornography should be banned on social media? Okay. Should pornography be banned on social media?
Yes, pornography should be banned. I can answer that. I'm making it. I definitely think it should be banned, but I don't.
The explicit images should be banned. But the right to discuss about it, to talk about it, to give sexual advice or to discuss different topics around sexuality, we should be allowed to do that. We should be allowed to do that. No, I get banned too.
Really, because this doesn't get banned too. Maybe you are allowed to do it. YouTube is different. Twitter's fine.
Instagram's fine. YouTube's fine. Instagram, Instagram. I have TED Talks that are censured so only people who are over 18 and have enough talent online have access to watch them.
And it's me talking. Yeah, no, there's definitely limitations. The thing that we've noticed is your video just doesn't appear in search in the same way, but they still recommend the video. So when we had, for example, Andrew Huberman on a couple weeks ago who talked about pornography because porn was in the touch in the thumbnail, the video got huge recommendations by the algorithm, but if you typed in Andrew Huberman, it would not come up.
And so we took the word porn out and you typed in Andrew Huberman and it comes up. That's the thing we've noticed, but we've been quite surprised actually by... Yeah, I think it's so cool that you asked me that question and she jumped in with an answer. No, I think it's good.
I think that's the value of this, right? Because I don't feel nearly as passionate when you asked her the question, which of these is the best? And I jumped in with an answer. I was like, this is clear to me.
And I think just a couple of things that I just want to touch on. First is that what Dr. Bollock was saying about audio literature or erotic fiction or romance novels, right? So I think it's harder to commoditize that, which goes back to Eric's point of, you know, like some things are more likely to be turned into fast food.
So I think that erotic literature is like harder to do that. I also do think that going back to this earlier point of like, you know, men are epidemiologically more vulnerable to addiction. I think it's more complicated than that. And just psychological hurt or problems manifest in men's addiction and look different in women when it emerges.
So I think it's kind of like, you know, so we're sort of seeing a difference in addictive quality. It's easier to commoditize more sensory organs. So I think that's an important point. And I think in terms of, you know, should it be banned or not?
Like, I don't know. So I work kind of like more at the individual level and arguably some at scale. But like one of the key things is, you know, I have some ideas about what should be done, but I'm not too sure about that. I'm curious, you know, I don't know.
Like, I'm saying it basically because it's open for kids again. This is why I'm saying it. If we're having social media and it's for people aging about, then we're talking about another thing. But go to Twitter.
Sorry, it's not called Twitter anymore. Go there. It's full of porn. It is.
It is. It is full of porn. You can accidentally stumble across porn. I was saying this to my partner a couple of weeks ago.
I said, look how this changed. I said, watch this. Scroll down my timeline. I've actually not seen it, but I've had many people who tell me that it comes up on their feed all the time.
Recent change to the algorithm, which is prioritized again, viewership time. So if you want people to dwell longer, show them video. Extreme video, people being shot, someone being hit by car fights, pornography, you increase your dwell time, you increase your advertising. And this is just how incentives play out.
So much of the discussion we've had today, much of my like, why I refer to it sometimes as being idealistic, because sometimes it can sound like just give them broccoli. When actually, if you use them to their own devices, no one's going to want broccoli, they're going to take their cookies if their cookies are available. And if you equate this to food, we did put labels on food to say, look, this has got this much calories in it. We put sugar tax on sugar in the UK.
On cigarettes, we say, if you smoke these cigarettes, this is what's going to happen to your lungs. And we put explicit images of how your lungs will get cancers and things like this. Should we be doing something similar with pornography? Because part of me goes, just saying we should just give them broccoli this kind of like erotic, different point, they're not going to eat it.
But also, again, adults, I think they have the right to watch pornography, whatever kind of pornography it is, as long as it's legal and well done. I wish all pornography would be ethically produced. I know that the industry is working towards more standards, et cetera. Because, you know, we have been as a society talking about it.
They don't have much of a choice because if they don't go that way... Should we tell them about the harms of pornography at the point of consumption like we do with cigarettes? It's a bit difficult, maybe. I think we should talk about what could happen.
Like gambling. What effects, like gambling, like... But this also happens when you've been talking about gaming a lot, you know? There's a way of gaming and healthy gaming, right?
There's a way of video games that is too much and not too much, I think. What do you think? Okay. Yeah, so I think it's a great question.
So I've got like a couple of different things so I'm going to about to contradict myself. So the first is that we know that putting warning labels on things does move things in the right direction. But I'd love to just share a story. So when I was a medical student, didn't really understand much about medicine or psychiatry or humans.
You know, I had a patient who came in and was smoking. And so I came in and I was like, you know, he came in and I was like a first year medical student. So I was like, I'm going to be a doctor one day. And so this person comes in and I'm like, sir, do you know that smoking is dangerous?
It can cause lung cancer. It can do this, it can do this, it can do this. So the person's like, yeah, you know, that sounds bad. I don't want to get cancer.
I was like, great. We're going to give you like a prescription to help you quit and you can get a nicotine patch. And I was like, I'm going to be a doctor one day. So a month later, a guy comes in and I asked him, how's the smoking going?
He's like, well, like I'm still smoking. And then I was like, I don't think you understand, man. It increases the risk of heart disease and stroke and all these kinds of things. Like it's going to like do all this kind of stuff.
And he's like, yeah, oh, that's bad. I don't want to get that stuff. And I was like, cool. So like you're going to quit, right?
And he's like, yeah. And so then he comes in and he comes in the next month, he still hasn't quit. And I started to try to figure out what's going on, right? So one of the key things that we learned is that if you want someone to eat broccoli instead of cookies, telling them that cookies are unhealthy for you isn't good enough.
So we need, generally speaking, when you look at recovery from addiction and behavioral change, you have to have a good enough reason to do it. So I was still blunt and I figured this out and talked to my preceptor and stuff. And then I asked this person, so what's important to you? And he's like, oh, you know, I love my daughters.
And then I asked them a bad question. And I was like, when you, and he was like, what, you know, tell me about your daughters. And he's like, you know, I can't wait. Like, oh no, I can die a happy person once I've walked them down the aisle and they're married and stuff like that.
And then I asked him a question. I was like, when you walk down the aisle, do you want to be carrying an oxygen tank behind you? And he was like, what? I was like, if you keep smoking, that's what's going to happen.
Or maybe you'll be in a wheelchair. Right? So I was a first year medical student, kind of brutal, but that actually sunk in. You have to connect with people with what they care about.
That is a little warning. That is a little different, right? So it's individualized. But even now when we, you know, I stream on Twitch and I try to get people to stop playing video games.
It's like holding an AA meeting in a bar. And what I discovered is I'm with you. We've lost a lot of faith in humanity. If you give them a broccoli and a cookie, they're going to take a cookie.
But I'm still hopeful. I think that we do see the number one surge is how do I quit porn? There's a lot of energy and desire to do it. They just don't have a path.
And I think one of these very simple things is like emphasizing an erotic film and telling people, hey, if you're lonely, hey, if you're having trouble finding a relationship, you know, hey, if you're, if you have a problem with premature ejaculation or you're having difficulty engaging in a sexual act and can't achieve orgasm, what you need to do is slow it down. Don't make sex a three minute jiggly slippery experience. Slow it down. Watch an erotic film.
Reprogram your brain. Like I bet you money that if we somehow figured out if we told people you can reprogram your brain by watching a lot of film and we can say that scientifically, that would be incredibly successful because I think people are hungry for this, right? They're hungry for what we were biologically designed to do, which is connect and have fulfilling sexual relationships. What's your take on that?
Yeah, I think that that's, that would be helpful. Absolutely. I think it's telling someone to go cold turkey from having something that they do derive pleasure from, right? Even if they have addictive potential, addictive personalities towards that behavior, then giving them something else that they can still derive pleasure from and have the benefits of orgasm, have the benefits of feeling that desire and enjoyment is a really great way when you tell someone you take something away that they've used as a crutch potentially and they have nothing to replace it with.
And we've talked about this before, giving people a purpose. A lot of times people don't have purpose. And so they're like, they have nothing else to do. And they're like, oh, I'll just do this thing because I'm bored.
And that's one of the reasons people watch porn is because they're bored. And so you give them a purpose, something else to do, whether it's an erotic film or actually purpose in their life. Maybe it's meeting people outside in the real world, which would be even better. That would help our issues with not getting married, having high divorce rates, and not having kids, right?
But I think those would be great solutions if we could come up with ways to get people to either find a substitute or find purpose. Interesting. There's clearly a two-way relationship with purpose, porn, motivation, et cetera. So giving them a purpose, one might say, well, then we stop porn because they're not having motivation to put their shoes on.
Yeah. So I think if you look at, there's one study that showed the two strongest variables with pornography addiction or a sense of meaninglessness in life. And I forgot the other variables. Maybe early age exposure.
But so I think it's kind of spot on, right? So when I don't have a life that's worth living, what happens? My body and my brain become squeezed bottles of dopamine because what is the joy of life? So I try to just extract as much dopamine as I can from my brain so that I have some joy in the day, some kind of pleasure.
And then I watch more of this mass-produced, supernormal stimulus pornography because that squeezes more dopamine out of my neurotransmitters. And the more that my life becomes that, now there's a moral component. Now I feel ashamed. Now I remember looking at some statistics on online dating profiles and saying that you're a dude who watches porn is like an instant no.
But if I'm watching pornography, it's going to slap me of the motivation to pursue my purpose. Absolutely. So if I'm extracting all my dopamine through watching pornography, I'm going to have none left for behavioral reinforcement from other activities. So reading books becomes not as much fun.
Going to a park becomes not as much fun. So it's absolutely this vicious cycle where meaninglessness, I have no reason to do anything all day, so I might as well watch some porn. Not right. So we can't support that.
No. No, please. Let us have it. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, the majority of my income in my brain would collapse if you started being so short. I mean, I think we have to, I mean, there's a lot of things we've talked about. I think sexual education, I think understanding that, you know, explains to younger kids what they're watching, right? I think adults have a little bit more, their brains are fully developed, they understand what they're watching, they know what's a produced product.
They presumably have already gone through the process of finding a job and doing other things that give them purpose, maybe they have a family, right? But I think it's really in that young generation, they're finding themselves, maybe they're going out and they're not finding a partner because we know that there's less people coupling, there's higher, you know, mismatch of expectations. We've talked about that too, in terms of dating. And so, you know, it's very easy for those people when they're still trying to figure out what to do with their lives to fall into something like that.
I think if we really focus on that generation, I think, and that's a generation that probably shouldn't be watching porn anyways, right? And I think that would make a huge, huge difference. And help parents because parents are really, really worried. How's it going?
I mean, there's many ways of kind of starting it, but what they need to know really is that you are there for them, you are open. If they have any kind of doubt, situations, you are going to be there for them. This is not a subject that you are going to bail out because you feel too ashamed or you can't handle difficult questions. I would tell parents, educate yourself.
If you're having kids, you're going to have to talk to them about sex. So if you didn't get education, what age? You need to start when they're really, really young. You need to start when they're learning language.
I mean, young kids today, many of them, they don't know the difference between a vagina and a vulva. Even Billie Eilish in an interview came out saying that she wanted to put her face in people's vaginas. And you go, what? What happened?
You're talking about vulva, girl, you know? Yeah. No, you have to start from, I completely agree with everything you're saying. I have kids that talk to them about sex.
I think you have to start early with at least knowing the anatomy, right? Knowing what their body parts are and what the body parts are of the opposite gender so that they know that they're different and all that stuff. And then honestly being open, they're going to ask you questions. Like if kids are curious, and so they'll come home and be like, what's this?
What's that? And not be like, oh, no, no, no, I'm not going to talk about that. It's like, okay, yeah, let's have a conversation about it. And let's talk about it.
And realize it's not going to be one conversation. It's going to be like throughout their development, as they become older, you're going to maybe introduce more topics or they may have a question for you and just never shaming them. And that can come even early, right? Kids are masturbating.
Babies are masturbating. Like as a youngster, that's a soothing behavior, right? And so sometimes you'll see your child doing it. You don't want to shame them, right?
Because that's already setting up that stage of shame. So sort of being like, okay, that's fine. You're doing that, but maybe do that in private. And that's something that you do in private.
But, you know, I think it's really important to have these conversations. And it's uncomfortable. It's going to be uncomfortable. I know that it's going to be uncomfortable.
But like we have a duty because they're not going to learn it at school in the right way or enough in school. Yeah. So I completely agree with what they said. So it's really interesting because the number one question.
So when we started working with gamers, what happened very quickly is parents started reaching out and they're like, hey, I have a son who's got this problem. Usually a son, sometimes it's hard. 70, 30. And how do I talk to them?
So we actually started doing a study in 2020 or 2021 where we started developing different kinds of techniques and measuring what worked best. So now we have four years of data. Along those findings went into the book about how to raise a healthy gamer, which is actually all about conversational techniques for parents about how to talk to their kids. So for four years here, the biggest takeaways.
So that book is like it's conversational techniques about video game addition, but we find this works really well for pornography too. So the first is, like Dr. Malik said, multiple conversations. So the first mistake that parents make is that they think that they have to get it all in in one conversation.
The sex talk. The sex talk. No, it's lots of talk. Second thing, start earlier than you think you need to.
So one of the biggest principles that we learn in medicine is that you don't have end of life conversations when someone is dying. You have to have the conversation before it's an issue. So I think we were talking about, you said, what, 64% of people get exposed to pornography at the age of 11, right? So that's still.
But so that parents think, oh, I can push this off and wait until they're 14 or 15. And of course, my beta is not going to watch it. Oh, he's good. He's so good.
So I think it's going to be multiple conversations. Start earlier than you need to. And there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use. The first is asking open-ended questions and not about, do you watch porn?
It can start with, hey, are you familiar with what pornography is? Do you know what it is? What do you understand about pornography? Another really good evidence-based technique, which has been shown to be effective for talking about drugs, is do you have friends who watch porn?
Do you have friends? Do you know people or kids in your school watching this? Yes or no? What do you think about that?
So oftentimes, you don't want to ask the kid directly. You want to ask about what's happening around you. And then you can ask them, what do you think about that? Do you have questions?
So make yourself a resource and signal to them that, hey, we can have this conversation. And it's preparing them for the world, really. It's giving them the tools to be able to manage situations that will come up. Because sex is not easy, and they're going to be in difficult moments.
And if they have been prepared, they're going to know better how to respond to those moments. If they're watching that pornography, though, the type that's available on those YouTube streaming sites, do you believe that it will cause or lead to a rise in violence between men and women? Because when I look at some of the statistics around this, nearly one in three porn videos contains physical violence. Almost 90% of the most famous porn scenes are violent scenes.
Out of 18 to 21-year-olds, 79% have seen pornography involving sexual violence when they were children. And almost 50% of young people say girls expect sex from both. Physical aggression, such as airway restriction. And according to a study in 2024, of 18 to 35-year-olds, they found that 57% of young people aged from 18 to 35 had been strangled themselves during sex.
And 51% had been strangled at least once during sex. And my last thought on this is, the BBC revealed that 38% of women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking, and gagging during consensual sex. And 42% of these women said they felt pressured or coerced into doing it. So we can allow people to watch pornography, but it's not a risk that at a very young age, at the age of 11, we're going to learn that sex is a violent act, and that's going to make us more violent.
I'm going to start with you. Yeah, this is a really important discussion. And I think, you know, I actually spoke to Debbie Herbin, who leads a lot of studies on strangulation. And so basically what they found is that very commonly young people, college age students are having strangulation or during intercourse or during foreplay, it becomes so common that it's almost like kissing, right?
Like, this is something that is so common, often consent of not being dispensed or the cake, can I do this? Yeah, it's all right. But it's not like a real discussion. And as you guys all know, and especially astriciation, it can lead to loss of oxygen to the brain and sort of a whole host of things.
And so I think ultimately that is a concern for sure in terms of, you know, we have ratings in movies for a reason, right? Like we don't show our kids like the boys, for example, on Netflix, right? Because it's very violent. And so similarly, we would like to have ratings on pornography and they shouldn't have access to it, but sometimes they see it.
Now, yeah, that is a concern. I don't know exactly how to rectify that. Maybe that's in fact. Is that because we want it, though?
You said porn is there because we want it. Something isn't strangulation in porn because that's the type of porn that people want. So there is, you know, some people derive pleasure from, you know, from a temporary occlusion of breath, right? And so there is some people who enjoy that erotically, but that doesn't mean that that's universal.
And again, it's fantasy. So just because you watch something on pornography doesn't mean that you should be doing it. It's a fantasy. It's not real life.
And that's hopefully a controlled safe situation where they're producing that pornography. But I think it's very important when we're starting to talk about sexual violence towards women that we understand that that doesn't come from porn that existed long before porn. Sexual violence towards women is a systemic problem we have in our society. And we all know that the most dangerous place for a woman is her own home.
It's her own husband or her boyfriend or her relatives around her, etc. So the way I see it, porn reflects the values we have in our society. I see porn as a mirror of many of the values in our society amongst them, sexual violence towards women. But then it's also true, obviously, that nowadays, as porn has become more popular, we're getting into a bigger problem, right, where their attitudes are also provoked by what they are seeing.
So now it's not that easy anymore to say that porn is just a reflection, because obviously they also learn from what they see, and then they go into their own lives, and they try to reproduce what they have learned online. So in that case, if I watch violent pornography, when I meet my partner at 15, 16, 18, 21, I'm going to have this expectation that pornography looks like, I'm going to think sex has to be performed this way, where I choke them, I hit them, I spill, whatever, whatever, because that's the only sexual experience I've had, and I've got it from Twitter, for example. So in that case, it will lead to sexual violence. Not necessarily.
It will lead to that, it might lead to a curiosity of trying it out. Because 42% of women said that they have been, felt they were pressured or coerced into slapping, choking, or being gagged. And I think many women also feel coerced just to have regular sex, many times in their own marriages. What do you think, Dr.
K? So, so many thoughts, and I agree that this is a very important discussion. So, like, I was kind of curious about this, because I've noticed there's this rise in, like, asphyxiation. So the first question I asked is, like, why are people doing this?
So what I found is, there's, once again, not randomized controlled trials, that we're going to say, 100 people split into two groups, and you're going to, you know. And so the first thing is, the physiology is actually fascinating. So I know this is going to sound random. We don't really know exactly what's going on.
But so it's really interesting, because if you look at states of meditation, right? So these are states of, like, bliss. So something changes in our brain when we're in a meditative state. And what the hell does that have to do with asphyxiation?
So one of the most common trends of esoteric and deeply spiritual meditation practices are a very low respiratory rate, right? So one practice that I did had a respiratory rate of one breath every eight minutes. So that's like, you know, the regular respiratory rate is 13 or 14 times a minute. So what we know is that when the brain runs out of oxygen, as long as we don't damage it, and that's the big problem with asphyxiation, is that there's no consent, there's no preparation, people feel coerced into it.
We're altering the state of consciousness. We're cutting off airflow to the brain. It can be lethal. It can be damaging, permanently damaging.
And something can change in the brain that will enhance the experience of sexuality that people have. So somewhere along the way, people got into this idea. I think the other thing, the other basic trend that we're seeing is that we're getting sexually desensitized. So if you look at, this is not just sexual, but like if you look at, you know, pornography, what tends to happen is what I find arousing will drift over time.
So I need to watch more and more hardcore porn to get the same level of arousal. So there's also something that shows, there's, you know, studies that show that if you're vulnerable to an addiction, you're also vulnerable to risk-taking behavior. So when you take, when you engage in risk, what happens is like, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but you know, I had a patient once who was working in jail and he was telling me about when he commits a crime. And what he loved, he has a really bad ADHD.
And what he loves about committing a crime is he is completely violent. Because of the risk, he has a survival reason to pay attention to every single detail. He's so focused on the task. And we know that things like flow states involve an intense amount of focus.
And so when we're taking a risk, it's activating our dopamine way more. We feel, when I talk to patients who engage in this kind of behavior, they feel the most alive because of the danger. So there's a lot of stuff that is being activated if it's done in a healthy way. Now there's all kinds of unhealthy stuff going on.
I think the statistics kind of speak for themselves. Like my gut check is that while everyone, it doesn't necessarily increase the risk for everyone, I think we're seeing the intersectionality of a couple of things. So the first thing is that men are angry. So we have incels, we have school shooters, you know, men are resentful towards women.
So I think part of the reason we're seeing this violence against women in the pornography is because there's an angry incel who's at home alone, who doesn't believe they're ever going to have sex, believes that women are gatekeeping this. And so the masculine predatory systemic, I'm going to teach this woman a lesson. She doesn't get to say no to me. So these kinds of feelings are being, someone has figured out on a tube site that if I give men this fantasy, they are going to watch it more and more.
This is what we see, punish fucking of women. We see punish fucking of women all the time. I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to have, you know, banging and smashing and...
But you're saying that's a social problem, not a porn industry problem. Well, so I think what the porn industry is doing, yeah, the porn industry is figuring out, this is what all technology is doing. Machine learning is figuring it out. Machine learning is figuring it out.
So as you cited some statistic about, you know, sexual activity, like more virgins than ever before, more sexual frustration than ever before, more frustration with life than ever before. And so let's give you this extreme thing that's checking a couple of different boxes. Interesting, I heard something which is, you basically have described soft core pornography as a gateway drug to hardcore pornography because the brain gets desensitized. It looks for a bigger kick, like if it was heroin or something else.
You need a bigger, more extreme experience to get the same high. So if we start people on erotic porn, the broccoli, they're eventually going to get to the cookie. That's a great assumption. I think it's different because I think the desensitization happens.
It's different because of the brain. There's a patience to it. There's an emotional component to it. So I don't think, I think you're right that if we talk about squeezing out dopamine, could it be a gateway drug?
Absolutely. But part of the reason that in this moment, I think it could be part of the solution is erotic is moving away from dopamine. Erotic is not about the orgasm. The dopamine is the orgasm.
Erotic is about everything else except for the orgasm. So even when I'm working with patients who have unhealthy relationships with sexuality, the point is let's move away from orgasm. Let's recognize that the sexual act, and speaking of the orgasm gap, if you're a dude, you can have sex and not have an orgasm, and it can still be a positive experience. And this kind of goes back to the sexual violence.
What really scares me is that as people watch this stuff, for whatever reason, what's going to happen is they're going to start to think, And I've seen this a lot recently. It's amazing how much this has spiked, how normalized this has become. Oh, I thought women liked it. This is what I'm supposed to do, right?
And then you feel coercion from the side of women. I think it's interesting, right? I wouldn't be surprised if, I wouldn't be surprised if this is biased in literature. We ask, do you feel women, as a woman, do you feel coerced in doing this?