The claim usually arrives bundled with the erection question, and the evidence has the same shape: suggestive at the level of clinics and case reports, inconsistent at the level of population studies.
What has been observed is that post-2006 studies report higher rates of low desire and erectile difficulty in younger men than pre-internet-video studies did. What has not been shown is that porn caused the change. The instruments differ, willingness to report has changed, and a shift in the numbers between two eras is not the same thing as a mechanism.
What is well established is narrower and more useful: arousal is conditioned. It responds to what it has repeatedly been paired with, and that runs in both directions. If a specific kind of stimulus has become the only thing that reliably works, that is a habit, not damage, and habits recalibrate. How long that takes has never been measured.
Two practical points. A drop in desire during a change of habits is commonly reported and is not evidence something is wrong with you. A drop that persists, or that comes with two weeks of not caring about anything, is its own problem and wants a GP rather than a forum.
Where this comes from
Read the full lesson: Recalibrating arousal →
Sources and how strong they are (3)
- Mixed evidencePark et al. 2016 argue that rates of erectile difficulty and low desire in men under 40 appear higher in studies published after 2006, when the first internet video tube sites appeared, than in earlier ones. That comparison rests on that paper alone. Causation is not established and measurement differs across studies. Separately, a 2025 narrative review reports that recent studies find rising erectile-dysfunction prevalence among younger men, without the 2006 cut-point and without any low-desire trend.
- Park BY, Wilson G, Berger J, Christman M, Reina B, Bishop F, Klam WP, Doan AP 2016, Behav Sci 6(3):17, doi:10.3390/bs6030017, PMID 27527226, PMC5039517 — carries a 2018 correction, Behav Sci 8(6):55, doi:10.3390/bs8060055, PMID 29857562, disclosing that co-author Gary Wilson is the author of Your Brain on Porn and removing the academic editor's name; see C58
- Supports only the general trend in younger men, not the 2006 cut-point and not low desire — Safa A & Waked C 2025, Cureus 17(8):e89918, doi:10.7759/cureus.89918, PMID 40809937, PMC12349891
- Mixed evidencePorn-induced erectile dysfunction is a clinical hypothesis supported by case reports and clinician reports. Frequency-based population studies have not produced consistent associations, and the one longitudinal study to measure erectile function with a validated instrument over a year found that self-reported problematic use correlated with erectile difficulty at any single moment, that mere use did not, and that no pornography variable predicted the trajectory of erectile function. It remains contested.
- Park BY, Wilson G, Berger J, Christman M, Reina B, Bishop F, Klam WP, Doan AP 2016, Behav Sci 6(3):17, doi:10.3390/bs6030017, PMID 27527226, PMC5039517 — carries a 2018 correction, Behav Sci 8(6):55, doi:10.3390/bs8060055, PMID 29857562, disclosing that co-author Gary Wilson is the author of Your Brain on Porn and removing the academic editor's name; see C58
- Cuts toward an association — Jacobs T, Geysemans B, Van Hal G, Glazemakers I, Fog-Poulsen K, Vermandel A, De Wachter S, De Win G 2021, JMIR Public Health Surveill 7(10):e32542, doi:10.2196/32542, PMID 34534092, PMC8569536
- A practitioner magazine commentary, not a peer-reviewed study — Kirby M 2021, Trends in Urology & Men's Health 12(2):6-10, doi:10.1002/tre.791
- Grubbs JB & Gola M 2019, J Sex Med 16(1):111-125, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.11.004, PMID 30621919
- Dwulit & Rzymski 2019, J Clin Med 8(7):914, PMID 31247949
- Landripet & Štulhofer 2015, J Sex Med 12(5):1136-1139, PMID 25816904
- Prause & Pfaus 2015, Sex Med 3(2):90-98, PMID 26185674
- Not a retraction — a published Comment on Prause & Pfaus 2015: Isenberg RA 2015, Sex Med 3(3):219-221, doi:10.1002/sm2.71
- AnecdotalThe "flatline" — a period of dropped libido, mood or arousal during abstinence — is consistently reported in abstinence journals and is named in the review literature, but it has never been measured prospectively or in a general population.
- Fernandez DP, Kuss DJ & Griffiths MD 2021, Arch Sex Behav 50(2):711-728, doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01858-w, PMID 33403533, PMC7889567
- Mead D & Sharpe M 2020, Int J Environ Res Public Health 17(10):3462, doi:10.3390/ijerph17103462
- Ince C, Antons S, Ashton S, Borgogna NC, Brand M, Briken P, Castro-Calvo J, Chen L, Coleman E, Efrati Y, Fernández DP, Fuss J et al. 2026, J Behav Addict 15(1):32-98, doi:10.1556/2006.2025.00337, PMID 41879870, PMC13132360
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