Your Brain on Porn – Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction

The social and sexual impact of Internet pornography, particularly among young men, has recently been prominently featured in the press following the publication of Pornocracy by Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel – see https://unherd.com/2025/11/porn-guys-repel-women/. Before the advent of the Internet, pornography was only available on the top shelf of licensed shops, and on video cassettes. It is now ubiquitous, and available in super-stimulating high-speed formats - with a single or multiple clicks on smart phones. Allied with what we know about the adolescent brain, dopamine reward circuits, neuroplasticity, and the science of addiction, the scene is set for widespread adverse impacts. This pioneering and highly accessible study enables the general reader to understand the extent of the pornography addiction. In turn, the immensely powerful and wealthy industry has done its utmost to combat this key information by largely unscrupulous and intimidating means, also documented here.

Statistics indicate that 100% of young men and over 80% of young women have viewed porn, with the age of first exposure dropping by the year. Even in 2017, 39% of young men and 4% of young women viewed porn daily, often on smart phones – and the figures are certainly substantially higher in 2025. More seriously, there is good evidence presented here for severe sexual dysfunctions, low energy, poor self-esteem and motivation, depression and social isolation as a result of excessive porn use and lack of attraction to real partners (pp. 52 ff.), as well as copycat sexual practices including anal sex and even strangulation. The book presents a balanced picture of reports from users and those who have recovered, along with a growing number of neuroscientific studies. A key feature is the primal attraction of sexual novelty (including multiple screens open simultaneously, see pp. 69 ff.), which tends to lead to long-term desensitisation and therefore more extreme hard-core viewing. As the book forcefully and demonstrably argues, the industry propaganda that pornography is harmless needs to be reconsidered as a matter of urgency.

The second part of the book documents in detail how to regain control, again on the basis of studies and multiple telling user reports. The phenomenon of screen novelty provides a wider context, also analysed by Richard Cytowic in his book, Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age reviewed in April. In a pertinent reflection, the author remarks that quitting Internet porn is the equivalent of eliminating refined sugar from your diet – both are harmful and potentially addictive junk. On the media front, it is important to understand that there is an information war going on, and that educational curricula have been infiltrated by special interest activists; teachers are obliged to teach the curriculum, while many parents are aghast, but widely ignored by schools (pp. 173 ff.). Surveys show that young people themselves are aware of the damaging impact of pornography in spite of official pronouncements to the contrary (p. 182). The book provides an essential briefing on porn addiction as a systemic and growing phenomenon with disastrous personal, social and sexual repercussions. It is high time we all took notice and demanded remedial action to protect our future – see the websites above for more information and resources.