NoFap - healthy lifestyle or fanatical cult?

Many people will know of the somewhat popular Subreddit "NoFap". The users on this Subreddit argue that some people take their habit of porn viewing and masturbation to such a point that it should be considered an addiction. And in turn, they claim that completely quitting these habits will have positive effects on your life and health.




Some people claim that when comparing men who masturbate to those who don’t, the group that doesn’t masturbate has a higher level of testosterone compared to those who don’t, and some claim the exact opposite. Unfortunately, there aren’t many studies made regarding the issue of masturbation and its possible health impact. The studies that are done, either show no significant difference, or use such a small sample group that no reliable conclusions can be made.  

• An issue that many people fail to bring up, that isn’t directly related to masturbation, is the impact that smartphones have on sleep.    Let me explain: your brains production of sleep hormone is lowered when exposed to blue light     , which is emitted by the screens of digital devices such as smartphone and laptops. So using your smartphone just before sleeping, which people do, especially those who masturbate, has a negative impact on your quality and length of sleep, and thus on your mental and physical ability the following day.    It’s also worth noting that short, low quality sleep also inhibits the production of growth hormone and so on. Usually doctors recommend that you don’t use any electronic device at least one hour before your sleep schedule starts, to get the optimal quality of sleep.  
  

It can then be concluded, that the direct health impacts of masturbation are unknown, although there are negative health consequences from using your smartphone before sleeping.    

• The second important point regarding the issue of masturbation is that of the time that you use.  Let’s say you use 20 minutes every day on this activity. That would amount to 140 minutes a week, 10 hours a month and, in total: five days a year. Five days a year is a lot of time to dedicate solely to this one activity, looking in retrospect, wouldn’t you rather have used this time on lifting, eating, sleeping, learning a language, an instrument, or a skill? But of course, this issue isn’t only related to masturbation, this is the case of all time-sinks.  
  

Thus, the question that I pose to you, if you’re considering these points, is the following: do the positive benefits of your everyday time-sinks outweigh the negative consequences that these activities result in?  

Thanks for reading!    

I think that the usage of computers are a much bigger problem, for example reddit.

That's my point! But the thing is, that the two things are connected. I think we should consider making porn illegal.

YES YES YES WE MUST ILLEGALIZE ALL PORN MACHINES