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Comment by flappyeagle | Hacker News Reader

What does it mean to be addicted to porn? Daily viewing? Hourly? Constant?

Typically viewing to the detriment of your emotional/mental/physical health. If you consistently choose porn over real intimacy or if you overly desensitize yourself (porn-induced ED is a real, and quite common thing). The biggest concern is choosing porn over physical intimacy/attempts at physical intimacy. It's super easy for someone who maybe already isn't a social superstar to just find themselves choosing the easy option of porn rather than forcing themselves to go out and put effort into meeting people.

You yourself recognize porn is an "easy option". Then no wonder people for whom it is hard to successfully form relationship that would lead to sex use it. It's like saying "cars are bad because it's too easy to just drive 100km instead of walking the same distance", ignoring the fact that for many people walking 100 km is either completely impossible or massively harder. That doesn't mean cars make you unable to walk (though in some very extreme cases it could happen). It means some people that previously had no options, now at least have this inferior one.

Very, very few people truly have no options other than porn. But I'm sure many people have convinced themselves they don't since they can content themselves with porn.

Regardless, it's a feedback loop. People who deal with depression/anxiety are more likely to develop drug addictions. A "normal" person can usually try a given drug once and be fine. Someone with a predisposition to addiction can't do the same.

Likewise a lot of people can casually use porn without much of an issue, but some people allow their consumption to develop into an addiction that negatively impact their life.

Just my opinion of course, but (like drugs and alcohol) putting a reasonable and generic metric on it is really hard, so I would instead ask generic questions that I would ask about other things like:

1. Do you find yourself craving it?

2. Do you continually feel the need to increase your intake? (i.e. developing a tolerance)

3. Would you be embarrassed if a like-minded friend knew about your habit?

4. If you were suddenly cut off from it for a few days, how would it make you feel?

3 is really a societal measure - many addictions, like tobacco addiction and to some measure alcohol addiction, or caffeine addiction, are well accepted by the society and usually carry little shame to the addict.

I feel like addiction is a complicated label; this is a natural[0] desire. If it is agreed to be destructive to the pursuit of forming healthy relationships: any amount is harmful, or at least the start of something that will be more and more harmful.

[0] - natural like how we crave sugar for our health, yet harmful like I eat candy all day

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