In the same way tobacco reshapes people’s neural pathways, internet pornography is changing human sexuality. In his talk, “Porn: The New Tobacco,” student speaker Jack Fischer warned of porn’s harmful effects on the human psyche.
“Porn appeared in an evolutionary blink of an eye, and thus overloads this mechanism in a way that our ancestors never even close to experienced,” Fischer said. “The overload of porn becomes ‘normal’ to the brain.”
Fischer, a sophomore majoring in computer science, spoke to an auditorium filled largely with fellow college students, a group targeted by the $97 billion per year industry he sharply criticized.
“It’s been shown to increase acceptance of violence against women, and while clearly everyone who views porn is definitely not a rapist, porn consumption has also been shown as a predictor of rape on college campuses,” he said.
According to Fischer, regular porn consumption disrupts long-term relationships and marriages. He explained that repeated exposure to the extreme sexual stimuli makes it impossible to maintain an attraction to a single partner. On a larger scale, this phenomenon leads to higher rates of infidelity and divorce.
Keeping with TEDxBinghamton’s theme, “Walk the Talk,” Fischer argued that despite pornography’s addictive nature, it is possible to kick the habit once and for all. He told the story of his own involvement in “NoFap,” a growing internet community founded with the goal of helping users refrain from self-pleasure.
“NoFap is secular, although all beliefs are welcome, and serves to provide peer support for those trying to ‘reboot’ their sexuality by going long periods of time, often months, abstaining from porn and masturbation,” Fischer said.
Fischer said he was raised in a Christian household and that he never struggled with porn addiction. But when he discovered the “NoFap,” community, he created a “panic button” to help others resist temptation. Users can click the panic button whenever they’re tempted to visit a porn website and it will link them to a series of inspiring messages and images encouraging them not to give in.
“When NoFap put the button up, around 3,000 people used it on the first day,” Fischer said. “Today, the panic button is used millions of times a year by people around the world trying to kick their porn habits.”
Not only do “NoFap” users experience healthier relationships, Fischer said, but many users also reported increased personal success after joining the community.
“Abstaining from ejaculation for about seven days has been shown to increase testosterone in men by about 45 percent,” he said. “Young men everywhere are actually avoiding the numbing effects of porn not simply for sexual and ethical reasons, but to gain an edge in their careers and everyday lives.”
Fischer ended his speech on a hopeful note. He expressed his strong belief that porn addiction and its harms are reversible with support from others.
“Despite the doom and gloom,” Fischer said, “I actually see this as a really positive story showing how the human spirit is alive and well.”
Pipe Dream had the chance to sit down with Fisher before his talk.
Pipe Dream: What inspired you to apply to be the TEDx student speaker?
Jack Fischer: That’s a good question. A moment of insanity? I don’t know. I think I knew I had something compelling to say, something different, something that they might want to hear and that there might be something students would want to hear about. I definitely didn’t think I was gonna get it, I thought it was a one in a million chance.
PD: How did you prepare for the talk?
JF: I had to write a draft of the talk. I gave the interview. They said you can give a talk, it has to be less than 10 minutes. I expanded that, rewrote it and added some stuff that I wanted to say. Now it’s about 8 minutes long, which is a little shorter than the average TED talk, but I still think it gets the point across.
PD: Can you briefly describe what you’re speaking about?
JF: Porn today has a lot of parallels to tobacco a generation ago, and there’s a huge and growing community response to it.
PD: What is the panic button?
JF: The idea is that people make different memes and quotes to keep themselves motivated. But it can be hard to get to if you’re really tempted to start looking at porn. That’s not in your head. You want to be able to see something like that right away. So that was the point of the panic button.
PD: How did you you first get involved in this movement?
JF: I’m religious so I always avoided porn. I was super happy to realize that there was this giant community of people out there who weren’t necessarily religious but dedicated to this. I wanted to help in any way that I could.
PD: Do you support NoFap for the sake of the watcher or the well-being of employees in the porn industry?
JF: Even though I think porn is morally wrong, I’m not making a moral argument. This is really about the danger of the porn industry and how it negatively affects the consumer. That’s my focus. You don’t have to be religious to subscribe to this. Eighty percent of the NoFap community is non-religious. It’s really about sexual health, ethics and reaching your human potential.
PD: How does porn prevent people from reaching their human potential?
JF: We are not biologically equipped to deal with this fundamentally new thing, artificial sex. It overloads the same neural reward pathways that traditional drugs do. When you take cocaine it messes with your brain. Your brain adjusts to the cocaine to the point where it’s normal. You eventually need the cocaine to feel normal. You don’t even get high anymore. You start to spiral down and use more and more cocaine. It’s the same way with porn.
PD: Is NoFap against masturbation entirely?
JF: I had a couple of options coming into this talk. I could’ve tried to make an argument about masturbation but I don’t think that would’ve gone over well. I see masturbation as a negative. That’s a view that a lot of people don’t share. The term NoFap refers to not masturbating. For the sake of this talk, I’ll be focusing on porn specifically.
PD: Why is masturbation a negative? What is the religious argument against porn?
JF: I could make a religious argument all day, but to many people, unfortunately, that won’t be taken seriously. It’s all tied together. Lust, porn consumption and self-pleasure go against living the highest expression of your sexuality. In the Abrahamic religions, famously at least in Jewish and Christian traditions, there is not much said in texts about masturbation. But the most common argument against is that how closely tied it is to lust. Your sexuality should be reserved for marriage. Your lifelong commitment to another person is monogamy. Masturbation and porn go against this in a number of ways.
PD: What advice would you give to someone looking to kick the habit?
JF: One of the interesting things about the panic button is that you can tell where people use it around the world and what devices they use it on. Even though we have a mobile app, the vast majority of panic button users are on their computers. That speaks to the situations that lead you to thinking about it in the first place as you get back home. If this is a habit, this might be at the top of your mind. It’s all about context and habits. Get out and spend time with people. Don’t stay in your room, stay busy. It helps in many ways. It’s very doable. Thousands of people have done it.
PD: Have you ever struggled with this temptation yourself?
JF: I’ve been so fortunate to grow up in an average religious family so I never got into it. The temptation has always been there, obviously. But that’s not me patting myself on the back. That didn’t take any of my own skill. I know if I didn’t grow up religious, I might be in trouble. It’s almost like survivor’s guilt.
PD: Have you received any negative feedback for your views?
JF: NoFap is controversial. But almost daily you see people post on NoFap that say “Wow, I used think this was ridiculous. I read all these negative things about it and then I tried it and I started talking to people and it’s life changing.” It’s a common refrain. The talk itself is pretty conservative. There’s not much that’s going to piss people off.
PD: How do you think your talk can apply to students at Binghamton University?
JF: It applies to everyone, but to college students it’s particularly relevant. The majority of college-age men regularly watch porn so this is something they definitely want to be aware of. Especially as people begin to build relationships, this really gets in the way. So it couldn’t be more timely.
PD: Have you witnessed the negative effects of porn on relationships among Binghamton students?
JF: Absolutely. When you watch porn, you’re twisting not only your sexuality, but your view of the interface between men and women. Relationships are no longer about love. It’s just about very graphic sex.
PD: What do you think about the concept of a student speaker? Should TEDx continue this?
JF: I wish I knew what the other students who applied were planning on talking about. There are so many people out there with different ideas. This is only the tip of the iceberg. In future years, I’d like to see what others have to say.