this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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And obviously "making use" of it. Daily? Weekly? Twice X month?

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[โ€“] TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 87 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Therapists often use this term ADLs, Activities of Daily Living, when accessing the impact of a person's behaviors. Things like bathing, dressing yourself, feeding yourself, cleaning your living space, getting to work and maintaining relationships are all ADLs. Basically, activities and behaviors that help you meet Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Your question is a bit vague. "Too much" is nebulous. Are you worried that you look at more porn than average? I'm not sure what's average. I also don't think it really matters. I think if your porn use is impacting your ability to complete your ADLs, that's a problem regardless of frequency.

If you're meeting your ADLs but looking at porn 15 times a day, I'm not sure if it's truly harmful. There's something to be said about how porn can create unrealistic expectations of sex and how people interact, but I think if you're otherwise thriving, your porn usage is largely irrelevant.

If you're concerned you're looking at too much porn, that's worth examining. It might be helpful to do some introspection into why you think that, come up with a metric that helps you evaluate that, and use that to make a judgement.

Edit: Sorry, I'm not a therapist, ADLs don't include social behaviors. These would fall under IADLs, or Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, which would also include stuff like managing money or preparing meals for yourself. Though, I think if your behaviors impact those, that should still be concerning.

[โ€“] Yprum@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I'm not a therapist nor an expert, just a dude with an opinion, so I may be entirely wrong. I largely agree with you and I think that's a great way to see it but wanted to expand on it.

If someone's use of porn (or anything to that effect, videogames, tv, social networks...) affect those ADLs or IADLs I would say that it would fall under the category of addiction, which is worse than the loose and nebulous (that was a great way to describe it) "too much" from the question.

I would rather say that "too much" porn can be way before the addiction point. I would consider that teenagers might easily watch too much porn due to the ease of access and the amount of content available while they are not really addicted. It's just a reaction to the whole hormones changes and the increase need of sexual gratification. If someone cannot go even a day without watching porn, I would think that that's too much. If their sexual relations are measured or thought of as porn scenes, that is an indication of too much porn too.

I dont mean that watching porn daily means you watch too much porn, but if you can't go a day without it, if you stop doing things you would rather do because you didn't yet watch it, then it is too much. If someone's idea of sex is lead by porn, then they probably watch too much (but in that topic there's also the idea of how much real experience they have). In other words, "too much" depends on many personal factors that aren't so easy to define, but could happen before we get to the point of addiction.