Watching porn has a 'higher than expected' impact on men's sex drive and performance, say the authors of a new study

• A new study found that the more a man watches porn, the more likely he is to experience erectile dysfunction.
• Erectile dysfunction mostly affects older men, but the study authors found that 23% of men under 35 had experienced the condition.
• They said the correlation between porn consumption and erectile dysfunction was "higher than expected."

The more porn a man watches, the more likely he is to experience erectile dysfunction during sex — even if he's young and healthy, according to a recent study.

The findings, presented June 16 at the European Association of Urology's virtual congress, are based on 3,267 men in Belgium, Denmark, and the UK, who completed an online questionnaire about masturbation habits, how often they watch porn, and their partnered sex experiences.

They found men who reported watched 70 minutes or more of porn per week had less satisfying partnered sex, and were more likely to experience erectile dysfunction.

The researchers said they expected to see a link, but they were surprised by how many young men had erectile dysfunction, and to find that most of them were avid porn watchers.

Erectile dysfunction is usually age-related

Erectile dysfunction, or the inability to get or keep an erection during sex, affects 30 million men.

Stress can cause ED, or another underlying illness, but age is the most common risk factor.

According to University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine, mild to moderate erectile dysfunction affects around 60% of men in their 60s, a number that increases with age as older men develop health issues that affect circulation.

Researchers were surprised to find young men who watched porn experienced erectile dysfunction at least once

It is possible for younger men to experience erectile dysfunction, as this new study suggests, and perhaps more than previously thought.

The researchers found that 23% of men in the study who were under the age of 35 had at least one experience with erectile dysfunction during partnered sex.

"This figure was higher than we expected," Gunter de Win, the lead study author from University of Antwerp, said in a press release. "We found that there was a highly significant relationship between time spent watching porn and increasing difficulty with erectile function with a partner, as indicated by the erectile function and sexual health scores."

He said respondents who watched more porn were also more likely to be addicted to it.

There were limitations to the study, de Win said. Since it was questionnaire based, he said it may not be "completely representative of the whole male population."

"However, the work was designed to unpick any relationship between porn and erectile dysfunction, and given the large sample size we can be pretty confident about the findings," de Win said.

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