Does masturbation and porn decrease intelligence?

My friend masturbates to porn once a week, I feel like this is decreasing his intelligence, is this true?

I have seen no evidence that masturbation decreases intelligence, but I have seen evidence that gaming decreases intelligence.

Alex_Gamer wrote

My friend masturbates to porn once a week, I feel like this is decreasing his intelligence, is this true?

There is a portion of men that is more receptive to the effects of orgasm who experience what's called Post-orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS). They are convinced some underlying pathology triggered by orgasm brings on a broad, lasting scope of symptoms ranging from flu-like malaise to severe neuropsychiatric disability that includes cognitive and mood impairments, suicidal ideation, inability to perform simple tasks requiring hand-eye coordination and so on.

I've been dealing with these orgasm-related problems ever since I started masturbating, which means it's not linked to the allergy to semen as some people suggest. There are many hypotheses about why this occurs but not a single one of them explains the phenomena in a satisfying manner. Premature orgasm is highly correlated with the severity of symptoms but delayed stimulation only serves as a necessary condition that may or may not precede a "good orgasm". I believe the prevalence of the condition is much higher than officially stated but remains underreported because it's a spectrum-like syndrome with some groups of men experiencing only minor, sub-clinical manifestations or having no awareness about connection of their problems with the "last night's orgasm" whatsoever. I also believe orgasm plays a key role in both the triggering of the condition and curing the condition at the same time, meaning there's some way (a technique involving muscle contractions, a type of arousal or anything else?) to mitigate the effects or even make you go from being highly depressive, fatigued and disorganized to feeling completely normal, functional and happy in a matter of seconds!

I found the connection many years ago after realizing it's the delayed orgasm - one of the side effects of antidepressants - that makes me feel normal frequently, not the antidepressants themselves that are otherwise extremely harmful to the brain and body.

It interferes with the dopamine rewards circuit and makes you lazy. I wouldn't say masturbation is as big of a problem as pornography. Because the high from masturbation is limited but for pornography it is unlimited. With pornography you essentially have a lever where you can control how much pleasure you experience. If you get bored with one girl, you find one more exciting, and your brain will get hit with dopamine again. When you experience so much pleasure from pornography, the other things in life (e.g. work) become less pleasurable. You become lazy because no action you can take provides you with as much pleasure as porn.

On the other hand, I'm not sure laziness in today's world is such a bad thing. I think someone who is motivated to do shitty work is worse than someone who is lazy.

Why does gaming decrease intelligence?

"Why?" is speculative.  Here is evidence that it does:

https://bigthink.com/health/screen-time-nih-study-60-minutes/

My speculation as to why is that gaming and online activities reduce quiet time of introspection and reduce attention span so that people lose the ability to think deeply about anything.

I assume you think social media also decreases intelligence for the same reasons?

Clarkton wrote

I assume you think social media also decreases intelligence for the same reasons?

Yes