DEBATEitOUT.comDebate online with people!

In China men outnumber the woman almost 2 to 1 and they've outlawed internet porn. Oh the humanity!

1) The sex ratio is in China .93. It's a little higher for the under 15 population, but it's still not that extreme enough to make the hyperbole even funny.
2) They just unfiltered a bunch of porn sites in China from the firewall at the beginning of this month.

Alcohol in moderate use is also said to have health benefits (particularly wine, not beer) and some narcotics can be safely used for pain management, which I would say is a health benefit.

Pretty sure that masturbation would have health benefits, but the primary benefits from a strict health perspective are the genetic strength of sperm released are improved by removing older sperm from the system thus improving the probable health of any potential child. I don't think there's a "health benefit" other than the sexual release and possibly the improvement of sex life for women, which could vary based on the woman (and any use of porn in self-stimulation efforts would likewise vary).

Fine, I'll take this topic seriously then. There is a natural limit to how much one can masturbate (for both men and women) and internet porn is virtually free. If you're going to be addicted to something then you can do far worse. Internet porn, because boobies want to be free!

People are the "worst" addiction of all. They're the hardest to give up.

Addiction in the mental health perspective implies costs to the user that are far in excess of benefit, generally through obsessive use. I'm quite certain that using pornography is by itself (much like random drug use) to not an addiction. I'd hesitate to call it an addiction of its own except in rare cases, where there are likely other factors anyway. For example genetic or behavioral tendencies toward obsessive/compulsive behaviors or a history of addiction to substances. In general a person has a sex drive and they will seek to use it. So long as there are not excessive costs to doing so (risk of disease, arrest, loss of job/status, or considered damage to family/dating relationships), I don't see what the problem would be. This sort is certainly not as destructive physically, financially, and professionally/personally as many other varieties of addiction could be.

Also, who are these "top figures" that there are a lot of?

Yeah I'm a huge fan of internet pornography, I love it!

In my life experiences I have found that the addiction of "GREED" is the worst and most deadly addiction.

Note to Jared; What do you use to take the hair off the palms of your hands? xD

(Anyone else know about that old saying?)

All sex addiction is bad. Internet sex is more prolific of course. Our media hype on the subject doesn't help, either, as is pointed out by Judith Sagé in her book, "FREE SEX. EXPENSIVE THERAPY." This is a very enlightening read on porn/sex addiction for anyone who would like to understand more about why this happens and how to recover. You can read more about her book here: http://judithsage.com/

wine is said to have benifets for the body that is true but grape juice is just as good and your less likely to be addicted to that! haha

we wouldnt need masturbation as much if we stopped putting so many hormones in our food. kids hit puberty much earlier and wait much longer to get married

I can follow the first part, maybe.

But the second part, what do hormones have to do with delaying marriage (or more specifically, delaying sexual activity with a partner, since there is little evidence we're doing that)?

well people would hit puberty later on around sixteen or seventten around then and would get married a few years later. generally. there would not be as masturbation obviously and most people who,look at porn are kids looking for some kind of stimulation right? Course i might be wrong but with age comes wisdom and im not that old haha

Most people who look at porn are adults. There are teenagers too of course. But by and large masturbation and pornography have always been activities of adults (partly this is because of weakly enforced legal restrictions). So far as I can tell, teenagers looking for stimulation can, and I know this is shocking, just have sex. They're equipped to do so physically, if not always emotionally, and there aren't really laws against that most of the time. So a fairly large percentage of them do just that. Before marriages are even a question. So my point was that it doesn't delay sexual activity and has nothing to do with that as a problem.

Also. These things don't stop just because you can legally drink or have gotten married. In fact, there's some evidence that there are people who would masturbate more when they're getting sex in their life than when they are not. A human being's sex drive is not something you just execute, let it do its thing and then its done for the day or the week. When you eat something, you're typically not hungry anymore. When you have sex, you might want more of it. So that's not how it works for people.

I'm also not sure there's biological evidence that we've ever as a species hit puberty at 16 or 17. It's shifted slightly earlier from around 13-14 to 11-12.

What are the health benefits of masturbation?

It can be for most people.

I would not say the worst addiction, there are many addictions out there that are far worse for you. I am currently addicted to crack-cocaine and choking babies. Those two go hand in hand as i can never stop myself from choking a baby while on crack-cocaine. I wish I could be addicted to internet porn as it would already occupy my hands, stopping me from using crack and/or choking a baby.