Here’s the thing: porn addiction is yet to be diagnosed as an actual disorder – but therapists and rehab centres continue to humour those who feel they have a problem. Why? Money, obviously.

There may seem to be no harm in this, other using people’s problems to rake in hoards of cash dollars, but it turns out there are indeed a few psychological effects to the whole saga.

Feeling addicted to Internet pornography irrespective of actual pornography use is associated with forms of psychological distress including depression, anxiety, anger, and stress. Pornography use itself, the authors found, was “relatively unrelated to psychological distress.”

Basically, although porn addiction is not a real thing – yet – believing in porn addiction is the real problem.

Two studies were conducted to analyse the effects of watching porn. The first asked 713 adult watchers about their porn use and addiction, measuring levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and anger. The second study analysed the responses of 106 undergraduate students who completed this same set of tests twice, a year apart.

All four forms of psychological distress they measured—depression, anxiety, anger, stress -were linked to perceived porn addiction. These small associations were also “largely independent” of actual levels of pornography use.

Basically, porn addiction is a mere product of self-diagnosis and is more harmful than actually being really into porn. ‘Cause some people are really just into it.

[source: thedailybeast]