Porn Viewers Develop New Maps In Their Brains

Every state of affairs has an effect. Some of these effects are social. The effects can either be good or bad.

Internet pornography, as a state of affairs that now obtains, has social effects. There are sociologists and psychologists who are scholars who are now studying the rise of pornography. From my limited point of view I am always meeting Christians who look at internet porn. For them, the effect is spiritually, emotionally, and relationally negative. 

To see a current report on pornography and its societal effects see The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations. To quote, e.g.:

"Pornography, by offering an endless harem of sexual objects, hyper-activates the appetitive system. Porn viewers develop new maps in their brains, based on the photos and videos they see. Because it is a use-it-or-lose-it brain, when we develop a map area, we long to keep it activated. Just as our muscles become impatient for exercise if we’ve been sitting all day, so too our senses hunger to be stimulated.

The men at their computers [addicted to] looking at porn [are] uncannily like the rats in the cages of the NIH, pressing the bar to get a shot of dopamine or its equivalent. Though they [don’t] know it, they [have] been seduced into pornographic training sessions that [meet] all the conditions required for plastic change of brain maps."

Quote from N. Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (New York: Viking, 2007), p. 108. In Layden, Mary Anne ; Eberstadt, Mary. The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations, Kindle Locations 272-278). The Witherspoon Institute.