I reckon porn is a root cause of depression, social withdrawal and social anxiety.
Can porn be associated with depression and those other things, possibly, but is porn the cause of these things? It is far more likely that one’s self loathing, feeling of being a failure and all of that which has to do with one’s imagined weakness in face of porn.
The problem is not the pornography; rather, it is more likely that one imagines that he not living up to a constructed ideal of what is
holy, of what is pure, and in a fit of weakness the person has succumb to his lust and defiled himself by giving himself an dreaded, impure, lowly, worldly orgasm.
There is a lot of self-abuse going on in this thread, but it is not the self-pleasuring sort; it is the beating up of one’s self for not living up to an ideal that one put out in front of oneself. While one might flagellate oneself by calling their problem an addiction, I have seen no evidence in what is written here that what is being described is anything remotely near clinical sex-addiction, but what I have seen is a lot a young guys with crappy self-esteem because they cannot live up to self-imposed religious ideal and because they are not comfortable with their sexuality.
That is unquestionably painfully uncomfortable stuff to live with, but it is not the pornography itself that is the problem.
What is going on here a volatile mixture of being young and highly sexed, not comfortable with one’s sexuality, and a monastic ideal that takes a very dim view of sex.
Outside of ariya status the reality is one is not going overcome one’s sexual urges. It does not help to take a negative attitude towards such urges and it does not help to assume that if one does not masturbates that one being holy.
Simply, one needs to do the practice and needs to be kind to one’s self. Self-loathing, a sense of failure and feeling degraded is not what the practice is about.
I would recommend simply this: keep in mind that kamma is the basis of our practice, it about choices we make constantly all the time. Small choices, mostly, but these small choices can snowball into bigger, far harder choices. It is an ongoing practice to see this. It is a matter of learning by doing and by doing over and over again.
Now, keep in mind that masturbation is not just about sexual pleasure, but it is also about loneliness, boredom, and such, and if one starts feeling an urge, pay attention to the feelings, pay attention to the habits around the feelings, pay attention to the small choices that are being made. Don’t get overly analytical, just pay attention. That may be enough to stop it there, but it may not and if you whack-off, pay attention, especially to the negative, judgmental feelings about one’s self afterwards, which are far, far worse in than the whacking-off itself in that those judgmental negative feelings simply reinforces all the negativities on either side of the act of masturbation, making it harder to respond to this in a wholesome way.
As sexual beings, barring ariya status, we are going to have sexual feelings and responses. Ideally, what one learns -- and one cannot force this to happen -- is to be comfortable with one’s uncomfortable feelings. In other words, “Ah, that is a mind with lust.” One need not act on it, either to cultivate it or to try to squash it. And, yes I know there any number of very specific meditative tools that are designed to squash it, but those are expedient tools. More long term, with deeper results, is seeing that such mind states are conditioned, that they rise and fall, and that you can choose how you are going to act in response. It takes times, and in the process one needs to learn how to be gentle, to kind and forgiving to one’s self.
If one slips up, acknowledge it (no need to beat yourself up over it) and start over. Each moment you are in is new; each movement is a point of choice as to what direction you are going to go.
Just be a bit kinder to yourselves.