Your Brain on Porn

Researchers Scanned Porn Users’ Brains. They Looked like Drug Addicts

In recent editions of the classic women’s Bible study book, Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow, the author shares a brief anecdote about a Christian woman’s discovery that her husband watches porn. The story is only mentioned in passing, but it’s a nod to the unsettling fact that, as health writer Makai Allbert says in this 11-minute educational video, porn is not a “fringe behavior” but one of the most common—and harmful—habits on the planet.

Allbert says that roughly 60% of Americans are regular consumers of porn, with an average age of initiation—thanks to ubiquitous smartphones and tablets—being a shocking 11 years old. A U.S. study published in January 2020 involving an Internet sample of 18- to 73-year-olds suggests that the situation might be even worse: 92% of men and 60% of women reported consuming pornography (in written, picture, or especially video form) in the past month.

Allbert uses an April 2025 study by Chinese researchers as a jumping-off point to consider porn’s addictive properties. After dividing a small number of college students into two groups—occasional porn watchers and those with “severe internet pornography addiction”—the researchers had them watch a porn video and measured changes in their brains. The severely addicted group displayed a combination of intense highs, emotional blunting, and cognitive effects that temporarily left their brains “less capable afterward of doing what brains are supposed to do.”

Allbert fairly notes that there is still a debate about whether to call the porn habit an “addiction,” but the 2014 book Your Brain on Porn pretty much laid that argument to rest. Allbert shows that porn’s brain effects are comparable to those seen in opioid addicts. As with other types of addiction, porn has ripple effects on families and society at large.

Catherine has frequently noted that porn can be combined with neurowarfare for brainwashing purposes. It can also be used to migrate viewers to underage actors to create control files on an economic basis, making porn an addiction that can lead to control through blackmail or criminal prosecution of you or your children and grandchildren.

Fortunately, as Allbert emphasizes, “the brain can rewire” with some help. He mentions “acceptance and commitment therapy” (ACT) as one option but also gently reminds viewers that it is “A man who lacks purpose [who] distracts himself with pleasure.”

You can watch “Your Brain on Porn” HERE.