By Dan Penza
PornHub is becoming a household name. That’s how significant the problem is.
Whether you’ve watched porn or not, chances are you’ve at least heard the name. For those of you who haven’t, PornHub is the world’s largest pornography website. To put things in perspective, PornHub draws more daily visits than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined, and consumes more internet bandwidth than any other website, with the exception of Google and Netflix. Despite the legality issues, a major portion of that audience is teenagers. In fact, studies–though varying in results–have shown that around ⅓ of adolescents 11-14 have viewed pornography on a mobile device, around half of teenagers 15-17 have as well, and around 10% of teens admit to daily use. Given that the 10% comes solely from admissions, the true number is even higher, though it isn’t known precisely how much higher. The number of teenagers who admit to viewing porn to any extent is also definitely lower than the true number of teens who have viewed porn. Some studies estimate that around 90% of teenagers have viewed pornography at least once.
Now, why is this important? Moral issues aside, it’s because pornography can be, and often is harmful to view.
Most people, especially those who view pornography daily, often fixate on the pleasure derived from viewing such material, yet remain oblivious to all the damage viewing these unrealistic fantasies can do to people’s brains. Porn can cause the viewer to develop social anxiety, depression, a lack of motivation, and concentration problems. In addition, the psychological and physical changes to your brain can cause things such as erectile dysfunction and a negative perception of self regarding physical appearance and sexual functioning/ability. In terms of depression and social anxiety, these issues may not have been caused by porn in all situations, but porn absolutely makes them worse. These are far from all the issues porn can create in your life and others, but they are among the most notable for the individual.
As a teenager, some of these things may not seem like an issue, especially right now, but what you need to do now is prevent issues from happening. Frequent porn users are especially prone to these symptoms, as they’re more likely to have built up a dependency on porn without even realizing it. If you are someone who watches porn frequently, try to quit watching it entirely for a week and don’t allow yourself to have any sexual stimulation of any kind, self-induced or not. Is it challenging? Did you fail to make it the whole week? If you succeeded, how fast were you to revert to what you were doing before you stopped? If you struggled to succeed, you’ve built up at least some sort of dependency on pornography, and that dependency will only grow the more you watch it. The more you watch porn, the more likely you are to develop these issues.
Here’s what you need to do: stop watching porn immediately. Don’t try to taper off–more than likely you’ll just be pulled back in. Delete everything; delete bookmarks, files, any accounts you’ve made on websites, throw away any non-digital porn. If you don’t trust yourself to stay away from new sources of porn, download a safe web-blocker to prevent you from accessing pornographic websites, images, or videos.
You don’t have to do this alone either. If you feel comfortable opening up about it, ask a trusted friend or family member, or even a therapist, for help quitting. There is one thing you must do yourself, though: make a habit of saying no to pornographic or borderline pornographic content of any kind. Developing that habit will help to build a consistent practice of avoiding this harmful content, and eventually you can and will succeed.
Stop letting porn control your life. You’ll thank yourself later.