Is Watching Cams Addictive? - Dr. David Ley

Dr. David Ley Dec 18, 2019

Many people in our 2019 wondered if it was possible to get addicted to watching cams. Organizations like the CDC, World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association do not believe sex, porn or camming is addictive. However, as with food or shopping or exercise, some people may still act compulsively, or in ways that interfere with their lives. Some people may well be hypersexual — meaning they have an unusually high sex drive. Others may be using sex or cams to cope with stress or depression.What research has found, Dr. Ley explains in response to this question, is that the idea of “too much” porn or cams or masturbation is subjective. — Stripchat Sexuality Resource Center

One of the questions that came up a lot was is watching cams addictive? Is pornography addictive. Do I have a problem controlling this?

Remember, I might feel like I have difficulty controlling it — but do I actually have difficulty controlling my behavior? Here the research, again, suggests that these are two different things.

People who report that they struggle to control their use of pornography, people that report that they have difficulties controlling their sexual behaviors … don’t actually show difficulties controlling these behaviors. On neuropsychological testing, they don’t actually show difficulties controlling impulsive behaviors or responding. They actually don’t have more sex or watch more porn than other people.

This is surprising to a lot of people that most of the people who worry most about their use of pornography or webcamming are actually not using it more than anybody else, but they feel worse about it. Why would people feel worse about a behavior that they are doing about as much as other people do?

All of the research at this point around these issues indicates that our struggle, our feeling of conflict, our not liking what we do, our worry about these kinds of behaviors is driven not actually by the behavior itself, but by a conflict between the behavior and our moral attitudes, our values, what we were taught is okay. If you were taught that people who masturbate a lot or if you were taught that people who watch pornography or if you were taught that people who have casual sex outside relationships are bad, unhealthy people, if you were taught when you were a kid that that kind of sexual behavior is unhealthy, slutty, shameful or immoral and now you do that behavior, you’re more likely to, 1) feel bad about it and worry about it a lot and 2) you’re likely to struggle more to control those behaviors.

The interesting thing is that the more we struggle to control these behaviors, the more we fight, the more we try to keep ourselves from thinking about these things or doing these things, the more you tell yourself, “I’m not going to go on webcamming. I’m going to stop. I’m going to go cold turkey.” The folks who tell you you need to reboot, you need to take 90 days and not have an orgasm — the more you do that, the more you fight yourself, in fact, the stronger those desires, thoughts and feelings become.