How Our Tech-Fueled World Makes It Too Easy To Get Obsessed with Porn

It’s no secret that pornography has the potential to be addictive. We get messages every day from people all over the world who struggle with compulsive habits with porn, and research is continually showing how it can become a compulsive habit for consumers of all ages. The problem is, on top of porn being able to hook any consumer of any age or background, our entire technologically dependent society doesn’t make it any easier to stay away or even realize what we’re being sucked into.

It’s the whole package: the digital environment where people consume porn. And while any kind of pornography can definitely be harmful, today’s digital world has certainly elevated pornography to a whole new level… and not in a good way. There are hidden technological forces that may make the struggle to be free from porn even harder. The reality is, forming habits online isn’t something that “just happens.” Too often, a real porn habit is manufactured in the digital world we click through every day.

Always Connected To Our Phones

Mobile devices provide 24/7 online access anywhere there’s signal. Our whole world and anything we could possibly want to know about are all available at the touch of a button. But, let’s face it—we’ve become less connected with the people and the world around us because of those very screens in front of us. We’ve inserted these amazing, handheld computers between ourselves and reality. And that’s not too far off from what porn does, too. It can start to blend reality and fantasy with the rewiring of the consumer’s brain.

Driving more of a wedge between ourselves and human connection is the fact that smartphones and the apps we download offer variable “rewards.” We get notifications, “likes” from our squad, and new updates. These notifications give us a steady drip of dopamine or induce desire for more. According to Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology at Stanford University, dopamine is not about pleasure, it’s the anticipation of pleasure. The more unpredictable, the more uncertain, the more our bodies produce dopamine. With smartphones, that medley of chimes and alerts and ringtones teach us to always be anticipating, always glued to our device, awaiting the next text.

Key Technological Factors Influencing Behavior

Mobile Devices: Provide 24/7 online access anywhere there’s signal.
Notifications and Alerts: Give a steady drip of dopamine or induce desire for more.
Dopamine Function: Focused on the anticipation of pleasure rather than pleasure itself.
Persuasion Technology: Specifically aimed at forging new habits and keeping users hooked.

Tech That Keeps Us Clicking

While personal computers, the internet, and mobile phones were achieving widespread use, people were already trying to figure out how to harness these technologies to influence the behavior of consumers. Today, companies measure user behavior to design products that “are not just persuasive, but specifically aimed at forging new habits.” In other words, companies want your life to be actively affected by their products in a way that keeps you coming back and keeps you hooked.

Advertisers use these persuasive techs to optimize for the most clicks, putting up sexualized, weird, or cute images just to get us to click through. Again, there’s this anticipation of what awaits on the other side of that click. Again, there’s a release of dopamine. And, that’s not too far off from a porn consumer getting a neurological dopamine rush for clicking through to the next image or video on a porn site. Persuasion technology is sold as a way to provide consumers with a more personalized, relevant online experience. Ultimately, though, persuasion technology’s main purpose is money and profits for the company using it.