Loneliness has been ravaging our culture for some time now -- especially during the recent pandemic. As of 2019, there are approximately 35.7 million Americans who live alone, and that figure has been steadily rising for the past 50 years. The mental, physical, and social effects of isolation have been well-documented, with depression and anxiety as some of the most pressing side effects.  Just a few years ago, the UK appointed a loneliness minister to deal with a rising loneliness epidemic in Britain, citing both emotional struggles and hefty expenses for employers dealing with distraught workers. Even in a world that is seemingly more connected than ever before (via social media, the internet, smartphones), meaningful relationships appear to be hard to come by.  People cope with loneliness in different ways, but one of the most frequent ways is through pornography. The popular site PornHub received 42 billion visits alone in 2019, according to Forbes, and like loneliness, that figure is increasing. Despite many losing their jobs during the pandemic and the economy taking a hit, the porn industry is booming. Globally, it generates $97 billion in revenue, with $12 billion coming from the United States alone, per NBC News. For reference, the popular fast-food chains Chick-Fil-A and Taco Bell rake in a little over 11 billion a year, respectively.  The appetite for pornography is ravenous and growing.  And you may be thinking: "what's the big deal?" We have a sex drive, and we have needs. Porn is just another outlet to satisfy those needs, and clearly it's in high demand. Isn't it just something you do to take the edge off, or something that can spice up your sex life? A recent Cosmopolitan article suggested doing the following as part of a 30 day journey to enhance your everyday sex: "Watch some porn together. Even the process of picking something you're both into can make you feel super bonded as a couple. See if it inspires any ideas or new positions." Whether it's being used for self-pleasure or sex-life stimulation, porn seems to be here for the long haul. "Every nine minutes an entire days' worth of content was uploaded to Pornhub. We're viewing it, we're making it. Porn is not going anywhere," said Forbes columnist Curtis Silver in his 2019 Review of Pornhub.  None of this data is surprising given that a large segment of the population doesn’t see porn as a problem. It's another fix that might have a little controversy, but what doesn't these days? In a culture that's canceling things left and right, porn doesn't seem to be on the naughty list. And to add, technology is making it easier than ever to dive right into the world of porn. With over 85% of American adults owning a smartphone (and that figure doesn't include teenagers), access to porn sites and apps is easier than ever. And per Forbes, phones seem to be the access point of choice. "Mobile devices accounted for 83.7% (up 7% year-over-year) of all of Pornhub's traffic in 2019 worldwide." Given that porn is so widely accessible, it seems to be a good time to stop and consider: what's actually happening to us when we use porn? Like the Wizard of Oz, humans often operate in daily life seemingly unaware of what lies beyond the curtain or facade that we see. As with our eating habits, workout routines, and social media usage, we often participate in things without knowing what lies beneath.  So before we continue on another night mindlessly engaging with porn, it would be worthwhile to ask: what is porn doing to our brains? How about our interactions with other people? Our relationships? Our self-esteem? And from a global perspective, we must ask, how is the porn industry impacting the broader world we’re living in? The deeper we dig, the more we discover that porn has become a social justice issue. There are blurred lines that exist between consent and forced participation, as well as the limited protections against sexual abuse, human trafficking, and endangering children.  As we peel back the curtain on this conversation, let's start by looking at how porn came to be in the first place. You might be surprised to learn that it's nearly as old as human civilization. 

Where does the term "pornography" even come from? Porn as we think of it today isn't exactly how ancient societies would've viewed it. The word itself comes from the Greek word porne (πόρνη), meaning prostitute. And pornography itself translates to prostitute writing. Sounds odd at first glance, but for the ancient Greeks, it was common to have write-ups on prostitutes. Think of it as an ancient form of People Magazine. For the Ancient Greek (and Roman) cultures at large, this wouldn't have been scandalous or a big deal. Erotic statues were ever-present among the streets, and wild parties, also called orgia (think orgies) were common weekend activities. These practices were a part of the Cult of Dionysus, a ritual to honor the Ancient Greek god of wine. The Roman historian Livy once summed up these wild parties: “When wine, lascivious discourse, night, and the intercourse of the sexes had extinguished every sentiment of modesty, then debaucheries of every kind began to be practiced.” But the Greeks certainly weren't the first to pioneer the idea of erotic material. Even the earliest humans were making sculptures depicting naked women -- most likely to underscore the value of fertility.  One of the oldest surviving pieces like this is the Venus of Villendorf, discovered in the early 20th century in present-day Austria. The carved stone statue is one of many ancient "venus" sculptures that depict a woman with large breasts and child-bearing hips, as well as a noticeable vulva. Though erotic in nature, these figurines were not necessarily used for "getting off," or sexual relief, as we think of with porn today. Dr. Richard Johnson, a researcher at the University of Colorado, says the sculptures were more about propagation and survival: "Our studies suggest these figurines did not represent sexual totems, or a representation of male desire, but rather as a means for providing strength to motherhood even in the most adverse situations."  So, when did things start to switch from survival to desire? As far as early civilizations go, the Ancient Babylonians were some of the rowdiest and demonstrative when it came to sex. In fact, surviving Babylonian artifacts explicitly depict men and women having anal sex. But that was mild compared to regularly practiced acts, such as rooftop sex, public square sex, and even sensually urinating on others, says Ancient Greek historian Herodotus. Yes, you heard that right. Urinating. Canaan, a nearby civilization in the Ancient Near East, created asherah poles, phallic symbols that promoted sexuality and fertility.  The Ancient Greeks had their own forms of plastering sexual scenes on decorative pottery, and other cultures like the Romans followed suit. It's clear from these cultures that sex was something not just reserved for the home or a marriage, but a collective, public event. These pieces of art were showcased for anyone to see and "enjoy," and they weren't taboo to make or display. Perhaps not so surprisingly, this type of culture still exists in our modern context. Look no further than the exclusive sex parties of Hollywood. And those are just the ones that we’ve heard about. Even for those who wouldn’t be caught dead at one of these scantily-clad parties, our culture at-large still has a fascination with sex. Sex sells in the entertainment and advertising industries, and people even take to social media to flaunt their sexiness.  With the advent of film, you might even say it was only a matter of time that humans decided to put themselves on video for the outside world to see. For much of human history, pornographic material was limited to what could be drawn or captured on a page. The late 19th and early 20th century advent of "motion pictures" made it a whole new ballgame.  The earliest films were short, silent movies with a simplistic premise and limited scope. However, that didn't stop filmmakers from throwing sexual content into the mix. What was first considered "sexual" will sound incredibly tame to our modern ears. The 18 second film The May Irwin Kiss (1896) depicted a close up of a nuzzling couple followed by, wait for it, a peck on the lips.  The film was condemned by the Roman Catholic church and caused quite a stir. However, it wasn't long before the envelope was pushed even more. In 1900, model Audrey Munson was the first to be captured naked and in a sexually suggestive way. Am Abend, a 20th century German film released in 1910, just 14 years after the May Irwin Kiss, featured a woman masturbating and depictions of sex and fellatio.  Silent films, often made and shown in secret, continued this trend, until ultimately home video cameras such as the "super 8" paved the way for amateur pornographic film making. To better understand how these trends slowly ramp up in public influence, it's important to understand the subversive forces working behind the scenes to push an agenda. And as part of that understanding, we first can look to Edward Bernays.  To be clear, Edward Bernays was not a pornographer, nor was he a pioneer of the industry. (Though he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who had his own complicated theories around sex. But that's beside the point).  However, Bernays was considered the "father of public relations" and had a massive impact on public perception. He surmised that the public would fall for unconsciously fall for certain trends and be swayed into certain habits -- persuaded largely by people they'd never heard of: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."

Bernays highlighted the idea of forces and factors beyond our control. Per Bernays, there are those who work behind the scenes to sway public perception. The same goes for the porn industry, which often operates in the shadows with little regulation. 

Here's an example of Bernays behind-the-scenes string pulling; an event that occurred less than 100 years ago: In 1929, Bernays was approached by George W. Hill, then-president of the American Tobacco Company. Hill knew women smoked, but often didn't do so publicly. He also knew that getting them to smoke publicly would increase sales among the female demographic, and turned to Bernays for a solution. In turn, Bernays worked with the New York Times to get women on the front cover smoking cigarettes as a "gesture of freedom." He capitalized on the growing women's rights movement and combined liberty with puffing on some tobacco. And it worked. Per the NIH, women accounted for 12% of cigarette sales in 1929, and just six years later, in 1935, they accounted for 18%.  Of course, we still have the autonomy to choose what we partake in and what we don't, but that autonomy is often manipulated by outside pressures. Now, this isn't to say that watching porn is a totally unconscious, helpless choice, but rather that we are often surrounded by sexual images whether we want to be or not.  Perhaps the best example of this is New York City’s Time Square, and not just for sexual content. Massive screens blare in your face, advertising everything from the newest Broadway show to the latest Apple products. But many of those billboards and digital screens are inherently suggestive in nature, and hardly anyone bats an eye.  However, there's a difference between simply being around borderline sexual content (or soft porn) to a culture developing where curated content framed around people performing kinky sex acts (hardcore porn) is the norm.  Before porn was both accessible and popularized in our society, it's important to note that outwardly the 1940s and early 1950s were staunch on what kinds of media were available to the public. Elvis Presley was once "censored" by only showing the top half of his body during a TV performance, as the gyrating of his hips was considered too scandalous to watch.  You may be familiar with Hugh Hefner, a psychology grad from the University of Illinois with an ambition to make a splash in media. Hefner had worked in the magazine industry and wanted to create a specialized publication to entertain men. In 1953, the first issue of his new creation, Playboy, launched with sex symbol Marilyn Monroe on the cover. Though she wasn't nude, her revealing outfit and sexualized pose was scandalous for the time. (Of note, Monroe never consented to be on the cover, nor was she paid royalties for it.)  Still, that didn't stop people from buying it. Over 50,000 copies were sold, and Playboy became a quick hit. Granted, Hefner's publication was just the start of a movement of published pornography. Other publications like Penthouse or Hustler marked a shift from soft-core to hardcore porn, and dominated the industry in the 1970s and 80s.  It's important to note that despite the rise of "gentlemen's magazines," porn isn't only curated or sought after by men. In 2019, 32% of PornHub visitors were women, and other sites and publications cater specifically to women. Nevertheless, it is statistically true that much of porn is designed for the male demographic.  As the 20th century continued, under the radar "stag films" brought porn to the big screen, and people became enthralled with not just pictures of sex, but watching it play out as if they were actually in the room. Pay-per-view and adult channels allowed people to watch from the comfort of their own homes, and online, free-to-access sites amped the volume up even further.  When the internet broke onto the scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s, accessibility went through the roof, as porn was no longer restricted to magazines or films. Sites like PornHub and RedTube imitated the DIY style of YouTube, and anyone with a cell phone or smartphone could make their own pornos. Porn even branched into video games, as Adult Only and even M games like Grand Theft Auto feature explicitly sexual scenes.  Suffice to say, the rise of porn isn't too different from the popularization of women smoking engineered by Edward Bernays.  What started as a taboo, under-the-radar industry became normalized by publications like Playboy that influenced public perception. While porn is still often done in secret, a current survey of its landscape shows that, just like smoking, it's still frequently practiced.  That then begs the question: what makes it so enticing and addictive?

We've established that various forms of pornography have been used throughout the centuries, but we haven't yet answered the question of why? Sure, sexual desire is part of being human, and on a biological level we have a desire to mate or find a partner. However, that alone doesn't explain the full psychology of why humans find pleasure in watching other human beings perform sexual acts.  Interestingly enough, porn creates a false reality that we can be pleasured by people we've never met or even seen before. It tricks our brains into thinking that we're having real, sexual encounters, even if we aren't even leaving the comfort of our couch. What's fascinating is that porn is an exercise of imagination in a world that has rejected or quenched imagination as an exercise. We know monogamy isn't practiced by everyone in our society, and that dating apps like Tinder and Grindr have made it easy to play the field and have multiple sexual partners at once. However, human beings were not designed to have infinite sexual partners, and our “sex drives” can only handle a finite amount of sexual action before burnout.  Psychiatrist Kevin Majeres, of Harvard Medical School, has conducted studies on what happens to the brain when we view pornography over and over again.  He used rats as a simulation of what would happen if we were literally offered up one sexual partner after the other. In his study, he found that a male rat repeatedly exposed to new female partners would keep mating with them...to the point of near death.  While most of us likely wouldn't die from pleasuring ourselves to porn, we have to consider if we can learn something from our furry friends. How and why does the rat keep going, even when he's served his purpose? Dopamine. The neurotransmitter in us that essentially revolves around reward-motivated behavior. It can push us past our breaking points to win a grueling marathon, or rush out in traffic to save a helpless puppy.  But the same dopamine that causes heroic acts can also compromise our self-control. With pornography, Majeres finds, your brain is seeing a potential mate on a primal level. That may sound weird, as you're just watching a video or looking at an image. But in effect, your brain is hunting after a mate and charges up on its dopamine rush every-time a new potential sexual partner is added to the mix.  This isn't something the ancient Sumerians necessarily had to worry about. Sure, ancient societies had their forms of brothels and concubines, but they weren't surrounded by digital dopamine-inducing devices 24/7.  Given the brain's constant letdown from porn (because these encounters are virtual), it actually requires more stimulation to get a rush as you go farther down the rabbit hole. Here's Majeres:

"This is why pornography causes a vicious circle. When someone views pornography, he gets overstimulated by dopamine; so his brain destroys some dopamine receptors. This makes him feel depleted, so he goes back to pornography, but, having fewer dopamine receptors, this time it requires more to get the same dopamine thrill; but this causes his brain to destroy more receptors; so he feels an even greater need for pornography to stimulate him. So as guys keep gaming the dopamine system, they start to find that they have to use pornography for longer and longer periods to have the same effect, and they have to visit more and more sites."

The director of addiction medicine at Stanford, Dr. Anna Lembke, has also been evaluating the dopamine-fueled addiction cycles readily available to us. It’s worth noting that addiction is a loaded word in our culture. Few of us want to admit that we might have a problem, thinking that any association of addiction is best left to those shooting up in the back of an alleyway.  But perhaps dependence is a safer, less taboo synonym. The reality is that many of our modern conveniences have made us dependent on them, and therefore, addicted.  "Living in this modern age is very challenging," she said in a recent NPR article. "We're now having to cope with: How do I live in a world in which everything is provided?" Lembke says. "And if I consume too much of it — which my reflexes compel me to do — I'm going to be even more unhappy." Also the author of the popular book Dopamine Nation (which unpacks our "instant gratification" culture) Lembke has done extensive research of what happens when our brains are constantly being served up more stimuli.  Entertainment is a good case study.  We constantly want better graphics in our video games, clearer shots in our movies, and more epic features from our devices. Nowadays it takes a lot for our brains to be impressed, as we're surrounded by more digital stimuli than any point in history. And yet this doesn't necessarily stop the cycle. Majeres' study goes on to say that we "game" the system and trick our bodies by adding another bodily hormone to the mix: adrenaline.  Dopamine informs your responses to sensations (think: recoiling after touching something sharp). Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, is a key survival hormone. It endows our body to have heightened strength and clarity while being less receptive to pain. Imagine dangling from a cliff and getting a crazy boost of energy to pull yourself back up, despite the fact that you have no strength left. That's adrenaline at work. However, adrenaline has been added into non-intensive or non-survival related situations such as watching porn, simply to "spice things up." That's why some of the crazier forms of porn exist. As mentioned before, the brain increasingly needs more.  Generally speaking, it needs a wilder, crazier, scandalous time to feel that rush. This might not be the story of everyone’s own personal experience, but on a psychological level it still rings true nonetheless. Some of these same cognitive effects are observed in drug use, leading many to label things like social media and porn as drugs because of their addictive qualities.  Calling porn a drug or "addictive" may sound intense, but consider the aforementioned definition of dependence. The seductive urge to flip open our computers at night is all too familiar to many of us. With a menu of options at our disposal, we find ourselves depending on the satisfying of these urges as we go above our weeks.  Now, it's important to recognize that the body has built-in brakes, but there's a scientific explanation to why those brakes get overridden when we watch porn.  The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that regulates control. Per the National Institutes of Health, the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until around age 25, which potentially may explain why you got in trouble so much as a teenager. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean you're immune from addictive behavior as you get older, as evidenced by a recent Statista study, which showed that the 65 to 74 year old demographic watches close to 4.5 hours of television per day. We need our prefrontal cortex to kick in and remind us that we have other priorities than just distraction.  However, according to Fight the New Drug, a nonprofit organization raising awareness of porn's effects, not everyone has this sudden realization of needing to stop when consuming too much porn or media. These addictive outlets can lead to something known as hypofrontality, or less control coming from the prefrontal cortex and frontal lobe when caught in these addictive cycles:  "Hypofrontality involves decreased frontal control over the brain’s impulses. In some cases, brain scans have actually shown decreased frontal brain matter. Hypofrontality is such a key part of the addictive experience, it’s considered one of the four main markers for addiction (the others being sensitization, desensitization, and dysfunctional stress)."  Decreased control is a byproduct of watching porn.  In a study for the Journal of Sex Research, frequent porn users were shown to have impaired ability to value long term rewards over short term ones. For example, they may have a hard time staving off a food craving or seeing the long-term benefits of only having one "cheat meal" during the week.  The second step in the study had participants divided up into two groups: one that had to abstain from porn for two weeks, and one that had to abstain from eating their favorite food for the same amount of time. Here's what happened:  "Even though both groups were exercising self-control for two weeks, only those who abstained from porn improved their scores in their ability to appreciate long-term rewards, showing that porn uniquely affects consumers’ patterns of self-control. In other words, self-control was not the key factor—porn was the key factor. The implication is that porn consumption did not simply correlate to hypofrontality. Porn consumption caused hypofrontality. So not only can porn create a feedback loop of cravings and desire, it can simultaneously decrease the brain’s ability to keep those cravings in check. This research is fascinating, as it reminds us that we are not helpless or unable to curb our addictions. Just like a more potent drug will lead to more harmful side effects, the uniquely addictive nature of porn and the false reality it creates can be hard to escape.  But again, just because it's addictive, is it really all that bad? Does the science behind porn actually translate to a real-world impact in my life?

Though Cosmopolitan advocates for watching porn with your partner, a case could be made that porn is antithetical to attachment theory. If you're not familiar with attachment theory, it essentially explains how humans innately need desire and attachment. We are hardwired for love and connection, with a big factor being how our caretakers treat us from an early age.  We ultimately all fall into the buckets of secure, anxious or avoid attachment styles. And as you can tell by its namesake, we were ultimately designed to seek “secure attachments”, in which we feel valued, loved, and accepted within a relationship. We see how porn could get in the way of secure attachments in the 2013 rom-com Don Jon, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson.  In the film, Jon Martello (Gordon-Levitt) struggles with his ability to form an intimate connection with Barbara Sugarman (Johansson), in part due to his porn habits. As Martello conceals his habitual porn usage from Sugarman, he also becomes chronically dissatisfied with the sex life, preferring the sensation that comes from porn. Dr. John Gottman, a "love expert" who has over 40 years of research on relationships and even created a model for divorce prediction, adds light to this:

"Use of pornography by one partner leads the couple to have far less sex and ultimately reduces relationship satisfaction…We are led to unconditionally conclude that for many reasons, pornography poses a serious threat to couple intimacy and relationship harmony." 

What’s more is that porn could also set unrealistic expectations for sex. Remember that modern porn originated in a curated form, using models like Marilyn Monroe. In adult films, each person is typically an attractive, polished person with a manicured face and figure.  And while the appearances of the performers vary with the advent of Pornhub, the choreographed nature of porn seeks to maximize sex appeal. Sex is oftened portrayed as passionate, wild, rough and kinky, not rooted in the everyday reality of relationships. It’s worth noting that despite what the data suggests, we still might not feel like porn is impacting our relationships at all. All of this could be true for someone else, but I've got the porn thing under control. I'm good. Those who have suffered with “late-stage” cancers can sympathize. Survivors of lung, colon and ovarian cancer would tell us they too did not feel anything going on in their body. It was not until much later on, when the cancer is in an advanced stage, did they discover what is going on in their bodies.  As it is with porn. Science doesn’t lie.  Some of us can immediately make a personal connection to the research behind porn’s impact on relationships. We’ve lived it. But for others, it may not be until much later on where we feel the effects of porn on our relationships.  It could be that moment when you can’t exactly pinpoint what’s off about your relationship or maybe it’s when you start realizing you’ve been becoming more anxiously or avoidantly attached to your boo. But perhaps the most obvious sign is when we start to go numb.

In the midst of his research Marjares, the Harvard psychiatrist, found that frequent porn use also leads to the destruction of dopamine receptors. As your dopamine diminishes at a rapid rate, so too does motivation for routine tasks and goals. In essence, it makes you numb. "As one goes numb, one becomes unable to feel the more subtle joys of life: sports and study, and friendships and prayer. People tend to become loners, losing interest in other people; and it gets hard to study, because it gets hard to focus; people develop attention deficit, or have their attention deficit get worse, because you need dopamine to focus." Majeres said. Unfortunately, the lack of willpower and motivation creates a vicious cycle.

Not only does it impair you from doing the above practices, it also reduces the willpower to quit watching porn -- the very thing that's robbing your dopamine in the first place. Porn is serving as judge, jury, and executioner. But it's often a silent, unseen executioner. This overabundance of pleasure leads to more numbing and a state of total unawareness. 

As Dr. Lembke explained in a recent interview: "When we're in our addiction to chasing dopamine, we do not see the damage it's doing, unless it's super extreme." In her own life, it wasn't until much later on that she could step back and see the damaging results of her own addiction to romance novels.  She outlined how off-kilter her pain-pleasure balance was, and how only her addiction could satisfy her from a pleasure standpoint.  "My focus got so narrowed on that one type of pleasure. All these other things in my life that had been a source of pleasure for me were no longer enjoyable. Why? Because my pain-pleasure balance had been usurped by this "drug," and I was chronically tilted to the side of pain in a dopamine-deficit state when I wasn't using. So of course my husband, my kids, my profession, no longer seemed interesting to me. But when I was able to restore baseline dopamine levels, I was like "wow, weird." Lembke, one of the nation’s top addiction experts, is putting language to what many of us have experienced with any addictions or distractions in our lives. Think back to a time, maybe even today, where you spent longer than you wanted to on Instagram, yet while you were in the moment it felt like no time had passed at all. And perhaps after spending that time being routinely hit with dopamine, the typically joyful moments felt mundane or routine.  Scientifically, what she's talking about is this idea of a pain-pleasure balance. In her research, Lembke explains that the area of the brain that deals with pleasure also is responsible for dealing with pain. They work hand-in-hand when in a balanced state. She uses the visual example of a teeter-totter on a playground. When no one is sitting on it, it lies flat at equilibrium. However, if a heavier person sits on one side, it skews the whole thing out of whack.  The brain doesn't want this for too long, and the body wants to return to a state of homeostasis, a.k.a. a steady equilibrium. With small, measured changes, it doesn't take much to return to that balanced state. If you eat a cookie, your balance isn't going to be that out of whack. Same with if you stub your toe. However, when an addictive drug is added to the mix, it takes considerably more just to satiate that pleasure side: "if I continue to consume a dopamine-releasing, high-reward drug or behavior, that after a while, in order to try to reassert homeostasis, I develop so many gremlins on the pain side of my balance that they fill the entire room, which means that when I'm not using my drug, I'm essentially miserable, right? I'm in a dopamine deficit state. I have a pleasure-pain balance that's tilted to the side of pain. And now I need to use my drug not to feel good but just to restore a level balance, just to feel normal," Lembke said. In the context of this blog, porn has become that drug that ropes us in with "high rewards" but sets up a world that becomes very disenchanting when we stop using it. The end result becomes the overall numbing in other parts of our lives, as both Majeres and Lembke noted.

Though some women watch porn, as stated earlier, the scenes depicted often objectify women and other marginalized groups. That's not to say men aren't objectified either, but data shows that women, in particular minorities, tend to be "fetishized" more in pornographic content. Look no further than some of the top search terms in Pornhub’s 2019 Annual Report.  Race was a significant factor in the top 10, including “japanese”, “korean”, “asian” and “ebony”. With the racial unrest taking part in the West over the last few years, it’s not hard to see porn influences the boxes that asian, black and latina women are put in.  Fetishization is interchangeable with objectification, all with an experience that feels tailored to a man's enjoyment:

• • A University of Quebec study analyzing PornHub's 50 most popular videos found that the women depicted are only having orgasms 18% of the time, whereas men were having real orgasms 82% of the time. 
  • A study from Fritz, et al., found that out of 7,000 sample pornographic videos, 97% of physically aggressive and abusive acts were towards women. Within that study, they also found: "45% of Pornhub scenes included at least one act of physical aggression, while 35% of scenes from Xvideos contained aggression. Spanking, gagging, slapping, hair pulling, and choking were the five most common forms of physical aggression."
  • A 2017 Vice article interviewing lesbian women on lesbian pornography found that most lesbian women were repulsed at how lesbian porn is depicted. Here's a quote from one of the women interviewed: "The biggest difference is probably intimacy. Sex for me is quite gentle and not aggressive...it promotes a certain stereotype, and especially for heterosexual men. They should be looking at us and respecting us and our relationships but instead of seeing two people in love, they're seeing two lesbians scissoring." Tellingly, much of the consumers of lesbian porn are straight men.

 In today's day and age, perception and reality are often conflated and blurred.  The more something is casually done and approved of without repercussions, the more people think it's "okay" to do it. In a similar way, the repeated "normalization" of women being subjected to these acts is putting them in serious danger.  Which then begs the question: just how much danger are these vulnerable women in?

Over the past two years, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof has exposed some of the porn industry's dark underbelly with his pieces "Why Do We Let Corporations Profit From Rape Videos?" and 'The Children of Pornhub."  He revealed that child pornography, rape pornography, and other abusive practices have been found on PornHub and XVideos, two of the world's most popular porn sites. Despite PornHub's pledges to change, Kristof found that many were abused or violated by having their content non-consensually shared on the platform.  As for XVideos, the site has a reporting system for CSAM, (an acronym for "child and sexual abuse material") but the form only gets checked if it has a detailed report attached to it. Otherwise, it's discarded and ignored.  Fight the New Drug asks some urgent questions when it comes to this faulty reporting system: "Why would they ignore even a single report of CSAM, details included or not? Are there so many CSAM reports they have to go through that they have to discard some for lack of detail? Does this seem to be a reporting system from a site that takes claims of CSAM as seriously as it should?" Moreover, the line has become so blurry that it's impossible to fully tell if a person's participation in pornographic material is consensual or sexual abuse/rape. As Dr. Jill Manning, a therapist and trauma specialist put it: "You cannot guarantee that when you're looking at an image on the internet that someone is not being exploited in that. You cannot guarantee the age of someone. You cannot guarantee what that image will be used for down the road. Maybe that image, if it is someone of age that has chosen to do that, maybe that image will be used to groom a child down the road." As Kristof found, people are often recorded or filmed without their consent. They're lured in by online predators who feign intimacy, but the ultimate goal is to record illicit material. And the porn sites aren't helping. Here's Kristof describing a Canadian teen's nightmare meeting and its ensuing upload to XVideos: "Just after she turned 14, a man enticed her to engage in sexual play over Skype. He secretly recorded her. A clip, along with her full name, ended up on XVideos, the world’s most-visited pornography site. Google searches helped direct people to this illegal footage of child sexual abuse...she recounts how she begged XVideos to remove the clip. Instead, she says, the website hosted two more copies, so hundreds of thousands of people could leer at this most mortifying moment of her life, preserved forever as if in amber." In her interview with Kristof, the woman recounted feeling immense shame, which often leads to deeper consequences and outcomes. He outlined an Australian teen whose boyfriend secretly uploaded intimate content of her. Her deep shame and embarrassment led her to commit suicide.  For many, this will be the first time you've heard of these types of stories. The reality is that an overwhelming majority of users have no clue this is going on. The goal of this blog is to shed light on an intentionally dark industry that's shrouded in mystery and, as Edward Bernays said, ruled by people "you've never heard of." And oftentimes these porn sites are aided and abetted by something as simple as Google or other search engines. Kristof found that Google had few limits on what could be searched for or "ranked" in the top searches when it came to pornographic content (even something like "schoolgirl sex"). But on the flip side, if "suicide" was Googled, suicide prevention tips would pop up.  As we've done earlier in this piece, it's important to clarify terms. What even falls under the umbrella of sex trafficking?  Sex trafficking is an offshoot of human trafficking, which is the buying and selling of other humans. In other words, slavery. According to A21, a global nonprofit combatting and raising awareness about human trafficking, this predominantly affects women in children, as 71% of the approximately 40 million slaves in the world today are women, and 25% are children. Of that 40 million figure, around 5 million are explicitly used for sex trafficking, which itself is a nuanced term. When you think of sex trafficking, you may imagine someone being kidnapped to be a sex slave or a prostitute. And while this does happen, more often than not there's no contact whatsoever. Vulnerable people are frequently lured in online by faces they will never see. Per a recent report, 59% of encounters were non-physical forms of coercion.  Porn has been defined as sex trafficking when it:

• • Involves minors under the age of 18
  • Forces people into doing sexual acts and records, uploads, and shares them without consent
  • Tricks people into performing sexual acts or sharing pornographic material
  • Coerces, threatens, manipulates 

 You may be shocked and confused by this information. As said before, the average porn user is deliberately left in the dark that this is happening.  However, investigations (like Kristof's) and other research shows that there's a direct connection between porn usage and the funding of these industries. The more these unregulated sites are fueled, even casually, so too is sex trafficking and sexual abuse.  The harsh reality is, when we use porn we may or may not be funding these traffickers and predators. Since there's no way to objectively verify how the content is produced and what it will be used for, the only safe assumption is that porn usage leads to deep societal consequences.  Even if you raise your hand and say, "I see these damaging effects, and I'm out," it's not always easy to completely pivot away from an ingrained habit.

We have plenty of information at our disposal when it comes to nearly every aspect of our life. The food we consume. The products we buy. The clothes we wear. The gas we put in our car. Yet simply knowing something and making a change are two different things. We may be informed that our favorite sneakers were made in a sweatshop in India, but what's going to fully stop us from buying a few more pairs? Most people aren't heartless, nor do they want these broken systems to continue. However, many feel boxed in.  "I can only afford this pair of shoes." "I'm just one person -- am I really making that much of a difference?" We want to acknowledge that struggle, and that there are other factors at play when you're tired, stressed out, and lonely. You may have the strongest willpower or the greatest intentions, yet you still find yourself watching porn. You may feel shame or confusion and think: "how did that just happen?" In his recent work Live No Lies, author John Mark Comer argues that these decisions are hardly calculated or premeditated, but rather byproducts of other choices:  "I've never known anyone who just woke up one morning in a happy, healthy marriage and had an affair that night. In every case, the affair started not with the act of infidelity but with a thousand earlier acts...the affair itself was the result of not one but a thousand choices, made over a long period of time."  As Comer alludes, most people don't wake up thinking: "I'm just gonna watch porn all day and not tell my spouse." It's not a simple, random decision that happens out of a vacuum, but rather one that steadily builds over time: Imagine this hypothetical scenario: Let's say you have your own personal convictions about not watching porn, whether it's for social justice, religious, mental health, or relationship reasons. You go to work cheery after a cup of coffee and subsequently get chewed out by your boss. You pick up dinner on the way home, only to get a flat tire on your way. You finally end up in bed, tired, stressed out, and looking for an outlet. You start out with a casual Netflix reality show, which has some seemingly harmless sexual content. But the dopamine hit isn't enough. Your finger slowly careens towards a new tab and you begin to type the words: "porn."  This is the kind of everyday scenario and slippery slope that can happen to any of us. And from a psychological standpoint, as we talked about earlier, it's hard to stop once you're "in the zone." Your brain is experiencing a dopamine rush and needs more. Once the hypofrontality kicks in, it's hard to just do a 180 and escape the cycle.  When we're in the moment and surrounded by content that makes us feel good, it's hard to step back and remember the information or convictions that we have. The urge is real, and it's available to us at the drop of a hat.  But if you're sitting here thinking: "I do want to curb my porn habit, but it seems impossible," know that there is a path forward. Of course, there will be days when you feel a regression coming on. If porn really is a "drug," it won't be easy to quit. But, with the right intentionality and support, there are practical ways to begin changing those habits.  As we discussed above, it's the micro decisions that ingrain our habits. If everyday decisions led us to porn in the first place, theoretically we can reverse-engineer and make the same types of (seemingly small) decisions to get out of it.

Before we dive into some practicals, bear in mind that most change isn't a result of willpower or perfection, but rather a gradual shift in mindset and behavior. Be kind to yourself and give yourself grace if you decide that porn is something you want to put behind you.  And most importantly, avoid living in shame, which often gets confused with guilt. Shame says you're bad or there's something wrong with you, whereas guilt says "My action was bad, but I myself am not." Guilt actually is a good dashboard indicator of something needing to change.  We empathize with you if your path to change involves difficult conversations with either friends, loved ones, and applaud you for even being willing to peel back the layers of this habit and evaluate the potential damage it's doing in your life.  With that, here are a few practicals to consider if porn is something you wish to get rid of:

Your fundamental beliefs will dictate how you view and perceive certain issues. We're not telling you what to believe, but offering a reminder that how you think often determines how you behave. Beliefs about life, yourself, your identity, or God all impact your interaction or participation in porn. That's not to say that those with certain beliefs somehow have a leg up, but rather that we should consider them as a starting place. We start with this because ultimately changing a habit isn't about behavior modification. If you are addicted to cookies and simply just throw away the cookie jar, that isn't going to stop you from going to the store when you really need some cookies. However, if you understand why it is you binge eat (e.g., to numb, to cope) and can deal with that root issue, it'll inform your behavior from there. The same goes for a belief in God. You may be appalled at how porn funds the sex trade, but when you add a belief around everyone mattering in God's eyes, it adds a whole new level of urgency to the issue. It goes from simply being an unfortunate occurrence to a pressing need for change.  So take a step back and evaluate how any of these factors might precipitate porn usage. If it's helpful to journal or process with a trusted confidante, do that. You may find that you've been unaware of insecurities within yourself, or had a belief that you hadn't really evaluated or considered.

It may seem simple, but one of the first steps to changing a habit is reclassifying the way it's talked about in our daily lives. We started out this blog by talking about how casually porn is treated in classrooms, locker rooms, coffee shops, and hangouts with friends.  Yale University researchers have proposed a new solution: looking at porn as a disorder. That may sound harsh, but it actually checks the boxes of a disorder. It's addictive, distracting, impairs functions, and often has an adverse effect on mental health. Words are powerful, and often they have the ability to alter our perception. If we can see porn not as a socially accepted junk food, but rather as a threat to mental health, social justice, and gender issues, it'll change how we approach it. People who have a named disorder seek treatment and help, and classifying it as such puts a new urgency behind combating it.  What if collectively as a society we started naming areas that are harmful and stopped normalizing them? We've seen what's happened with advances in the Civil Rights movement, as derogatory terms towards certain races that were once "acceptable" by society's standards have been eliminated from vocabularies as people have come to realize their damaging effects.

In the late 1970s, the Swedish company AB Leo unveiled Nicorette, a series of products (such as gum and patches) to help curb smoking cigarettes. Following the theory of Nicotine Replacement Theory (NRT), the company surmised that people could quit their smoking habit if they could slowly taper off of nicotine without going cold turkey.  The same idea applies when trying to reduce porn use. If you just stop completely, the urge may roar back with a vengeance and worsen. However, what if you could find another outlet that serves as a "release" or "stress relief" of sorts? Many have found that channeling their energy into something like walking, running, or another form of exercise can help get their mind off of porn while still getting that dopamine and adrenaline rush they seek after from porn.

"For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable."  This is from Hippocrates, the ancient Greek pioneer of science. Hippocrates is onto something here. For areas of our life that have started to take over, we must crank up the intensity to combat it. It isn't enough to just skip a day or two or "do twenty minutes less."  Scripture says to "flee from sexual immorality." When you weed your garden, you don't just pull off the tops – you yank out the entire root system. Now, this isn't to say that you have to go overboard or completely gut yourself to make this happen. However, if you want big change, some fairly big action steps are required.  If porn is something you can access with the push of a button, don't make it that easy. One of the most simple things you can do is be on your phone or computer less, but if you don't trust yourself to be on your phone, implement guardrails.  Most smartphones have some kind of screen time restrictions, with customizable hours and limits for different apps. If you know you're more susceptible to porn use at night, set your phone somewhere else before you go to bed, or put restrictions on that don't allow you to access apps or browsers until the morning. 

When most of us feel deep guilt, the farthest thing from our mind is telling someone. It's embarrassing. It's anxiety-inducing. But having someone in our corner that knows what we're going through and can keep us in check is a huge boost.  As a first step, you can reach out to a trusted friend, family member, or confidante and explain where you're at. If they're willing to go on a journey of supporting you, they can be someone you call either when you feel the urge to watch porn or when you've partaken in it and are overwhelmed with guilt. If this person lives close to you and is available, you could ask them to join you for a walk, run, or other kind of distraction to get your mind off the desire or urge to watch porn.  But on a baseline, practical level, there are a host of accountability apps and browsers that help promote accountability from afar: Covenant Eyes: With a homepage tagline of "Quit Porn, Live Your Best Life," Covenant Eyes is a browser and app that sends a detailed report of what you do online to a trusted accountability partner. While that might seem like TMI, for some it's the only way to ensure that porn is out of the question. If you know that your accountability partner will see everything you do, it may curb the urge to search up porn. Beyond that, the browser has an AI that detects potentially pornographic material and restricts you from accessing it. You can filter out certain websites, which helps if you're helping limit your children or family members' exposure to porn. It's $16.99 per month, but entirely worth it if you're looking for a platform that does most of the work for you.  Ever Accountable: This is a really similar platform to Covenant Eyes. It entails the same gist of having your browsing history sent to an accountability partner -- even actions like trying to delete history or uninstall programs/apps. However, Ever Accountable puts the ball in your court by not auto-filtering out suggestive content. It flags it and allows you to make the call between right and wrong --  a model of empowerment as opposed to intense restrictions. Fortify: Developed by the founder of Fight the New Drug, this app falls more under the umbrella of support as opposed to filtering. It features a daily tracker of activity, along with the ability to join and participate in support groups, and answer motivational questions. With a science-based approach, Fortify helps you with resources on how porn is affecting your brain and behavior, and also gives daily tips and motivations for change. It takes a more holistic approach, incorporating mindfulness, wellness, and personalized insights. Knowing that consuming porn is a byproduct of a myriad of smaller decisions, this app helps support your practical, everyday choices.  -- These are just a few of many tools and outlets that can help your journey to ditching porn for good. But even if you're not quite at that stage, we appreciate you taking the time to consider the research and findings.  Like anything, you ultimately own your choices, and no one can make them for you.  Choosing to change an addiction to porn requires lots of support, but will be even more powerful and fruitful if you inwardly want to make that change and aren't just doing it out of pressure or coercion. As we've been saying this whole time, the only way to understand something better is to be educated on it and see it in the light. The same goes for porn as well.  You may read all of this and feel overwhelmed, but please hear us: we are trying to illuminate the issue and offer small ways to create guardrails and scaffolding in your life that paves the way to change. However, growing and moving forward is ultimately not about willpower or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.  Overcoming a porn addiction or abstaining from it in general is a byproduct of a deeper heart change. If you're curious to find out what we mean, we invite you to keep reading as we unpack the deeper spiritual factors that position our hearts to learn, grow, and change. It's rooted in an inward transformation that bears outward fruit, rather than the other way around.