Iony is in his 50s and recently made a rough estimate of how much of his life he has spent looking at pornography. “The result was horrible,” he says. It was eight years. “I can barely think about it. The feeling of failure is intense.”
Tony saw his first hardcore movie on VHS in the 1980s, when he was 12. At 20, he went online for the first time, which turned his addiction into a “full-blown addiction.” Over the past 30 years, he has managed to maintain a double life: working in a care profession, being friends with men and women, having relationships. But there is a part of him that he keeps completely hidden.
“So far, I’ve only told three people in my life: two therapists and now you,” he says. “It’s a top secret from everyone I’ve ever met. I’m meticulous about covering my tracks, even when I’m in a relationship. My lack of interest in sex with my partner might be the only thing that would make him hesitate.”
Tony has tried to stop watching pornography several times, but has never managed to go more than a month without it. He has tried to cut back, but has stopped cold turkey – he has banned himself from masturbating and blocked porn sites. But “the addict’s brain is exceptionally clever and clever,” he says. He has also tried therapy, but has found it difficult to continue paying for it in the long term.
Still, Tony is grateful for one thing: he was young before the Internet. “At least I had a normal youth: parties, concerts, adventures with friends. I had girlfriends and a sex life. Guys like me don’t have any chance now.”
All statistics relating to pornography consumption in the UK (and around the world) are increasing, driven by the ubiquity of mobile phones. Approximately 13.8 million people (one third of all adults using the internet) viewed pornography online in May 2023 alone. According to OfcomTwo-thirds of them were male. While pornography companies do not report (or acknowledge) statistics on underage viewers, British children, on average, see pornography for the first time at age 12. England’s Children’s Commissioner found in a recent study that Much of what young people see is violent and extreme.
Jack is 20 years old and first saw pornography when he was nine. “I was with a group of friends on a school trip. It was a woman giving a blowjob, something I had never been told about in sex education class.”
Like many children and teens today, Jack encountered pornography before he sought it out. “It came about through things friends shared, and then on flash game websites. I saw really weird stuff that evoked excitement and curiosity. Slowly, that became just excitement and then the compulsion grew along with it.”
Soon, the intense stimulation of the pornography he watched caused him to “lose interest in everyday life.” It wasn’t so much the amount of time he spent watching porn, but the “hyperintensity” of the content. “Sometimes, in a particularly addictive phase, I would spend hours watching it each day,” he says. “But usually it was just an occasional binge and then less use the rest of the time… But in terms of how it affected me? That was not a normal life. The stimulation of pornography is intense and leads to desensitization to the small, everyday pleasures that keep us sane and content.”
When Jack first started having real-life sexual experiences, “it was very difficult to maintain an erection. Real sex was less intense than the masturbation of a callous addict, which was what I was.” Unlike the Internet, “there was no option to click through many possible videos to find something new and more stimulating.”
Both Jack and Tony describe themselves as pornography addicts. Unlike other behavioural addictions, such as gambling and gambling, pornography addiction is not included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Instead, it is defined as compulsive sexual behaviour.
Paula Hall is a psychotherapist who specializes in working with people struggling with pornography use and has created a private center Dedicated clinic in London. He has been an addiction therapist for 30 years and began his career working with people with substance abuse problems. He believes it is clear that pornography is addictive. “Pornography use carries a risk of aggravation and that is what, to me, distinguishes it from an addictive behavior,” he says. “It is a condition that causes significant suffering and we desperately need to develop resources for prevention and treatment.”
Peter Waddington is a counsellor at Relate, a relationship support charity, who is seeing more and more people concerned about their pornography use. “Some people can masturbate ten times a day, for up to three or four hours at a time. They have physical pain and lack of sleep. I see people who seem unwell. The similarities with alcohol misuse are very strong… It is also perceived as more shameful than gambling or alcohol,” he says.
“It’s helpful that the WHO recognises it as a compulsion, but we would like to see it classed as an addiction. If the NHS supported it, people would be able to ask their GP for help.” As things stand, Waddington believes shame can be a barrier to accessing help.
“There has been concern that by talking about pornography and sex addiction we are pathologizing human sexuality,” Hall says. But, she insists, calling it an addiction does not add to that sense of shame. “We know that alcohol is linked to violent behavior, to coercive relationships, to heart disease, but people still enjoy alcohol. So we can acknowledge those potential risks without pathologizing recreational porn use.”
Hall is currently finishing work on a benchmark study into British pornography habits with Leeds Trinity University. The aim is to help develop an online platform self-help programOf the 193 people interviewed who felt they could not control their pornography consumption, more than 93% said they suffered from depression. “It is very worrying that more than 40% said they sometimes feel like taking their own life,” says Hall. “In the same way that the gaming industry has been ordered to provide warnings and help to problematic users, the porn industry must do the same.”
Tony says, “I engage in compulsive behavior that I feel I cannot stop, despite the severe negative consequences. I feel like an addict, I isolate myself emotionally like an addict, and I suffer the consequences like an addict. These websites are specifically designed for addicts to keep clicking on.”
The algorithms that serve up new content to users “are incredibly powerful,” he says. “They uncover interests and quirks you didn’t know you had… You wouldn’t believe how many mouse clicks you make in one session sometimes. It’s not enough to just watch the same videos over and over again. It’s always more, more, more, new, new, new.”
Tony believes this has made it impossible for him to commit to a relationship. “Porn tricked my brain into thinking I could have an endless supply of sexual partners. How can a partner compete with that? The version of me that isn’t addicted to porn might have been a good husband and devoted father, but I became sexually bored and always hid my addiction; I was never authentic.”
Pornography is often a factor in the breakdown of a relationship, says Waddington. “For many of the guys I see, their partners have brought them in because they found out they were watching porn on the sly. Or they’ve become so addicted that they’ve started watching it at work. So they need to change urgently – their world is falling apart.” None of the porn websites I turned to For this piece I wanted to comment.
Gunter De Win is a urologist specialising in paediatric and adolescent urology who travels monthly from his base in Belgium to London where he is a consultant at University College Hospital.
“Three years ago, I started seeing more and more young men coming to my office with porn-related erectile dysfunction problems,” he says. “They need porn to climax with a partner or to maintain an erection during masturbation. And they may have to watch a lot of videos before they find one that excites them. As a scientist, I wanted to unravel this.”
Now it is part of a research group that attempts to study The impact of pornography on the sexual lives of young people. But, as its most recent The report statesIt is difficult to assess the impact that pornography consumption has had on young men with erectile dysfunction since “it is more or less impossible to find a control group that does not use pornography from an early age and at the same time is not morally against its consumption.”
“It’s absolutely normal for teenagers to feel performance anxiety,” she says. However, De Win has seen young men worried about losing an erection during foreplay, which, again, “is normal.” But by watching porn at such a young age, “they don’t understand the basics.”
De Win believes more research is needed into the impact of widely available pornography in the digital age. “A lot of the research on pornography is biased either for or against,” she says.
Abstinence approaches such as No fapa US-based peer support network that encourages abstinence from pornography and masturbation as a method of recovery, can have mixed results for young people, he says. “For some, quitting cold turkey can be beneficial, but I see kids who end up with no sexual interest at all, which is also bad for their well-being.”
Her solution is to vastly improve sexual literacy (in sex education in schools and in the medical community) and not condemn all pornography and masturbation as bad. “Introducing shame and guilt has consequences,” she says. For example, “if someone has a religious background and considers pornography to be taboo, then maybe that brings shame to them.” Shame, in turn, means that honest conversations about pornography don’t happen.
“I think what kept me from compulsive pornography behavior was frank conversations with my parents,” Tony says. “My mother was very kind and loving, but she didn’t know how to communicate her emotions. So maybe my tendency toward emotional isolation is simply because I’m my mother’s child? I find it hard to know for sure what is the real me and what is me corrupted by pornography consumption.”
For now, nature is stepping in to help. “I’m over 50 and my testosterone levels are dropping significantly, so that’s been a blessing and I’m watching less porn. I’m now thinking about seeking help again,” he says. “But it feels like standing at the foot of Everest looking up at the summit.”
Some The names have been changed