Teen line volunteer and listener Alli Firtel ’27 sits slumped at her desk, halfway into her six hour shift. When the sharp ring of the phone cuts through the silent room, she straightens instinctively and immediately picks it up. Listening intently in the dim and air-conditioned room, she discovers that the young man on the other end of the line is calling for help with his internet pornography addiction. He mentions that he is a victim of sexual abuse, and she saddens, knowing that is likely the cause of his current struggle. Firtel said she advises the numerous callers struggling with porn use to seek professional help.
“I’ve seen a lot of people calling in specifically about growing to have a porn addiction,” Firtel said. “A lot of these porn addictions actually stem from trauma earlier on in their lives. I try to see if they have any school counselors or even professional therapists that they can talk to. ”
University of California Los Angeles Principal Investigator Suzette Glasner-Edwards, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in addiction and co-occurring mental illness treatment. Glasner said behavioral addictions are less studied in part because they are harder to measure and often rely on self-reporting.
“When it comes to behavioral addictions, people tend to minimize how much they’re doing things that they feel ashamed of, so we can’t really objectively verify it,” Glasner said. “It probably becomes less prioritized in terms of research dollars, because of the fact that it may not take the same kind of measurable toll on somebody’s health and well-being as a substance addiction that’s going to adversely affect their liver. You’re just behaving in a way that’s out of control.”
Excessive use of porn is one of the main features of those diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior. For those with the condition, watching porn triggers brain activity similar to the effect of drugs on a drug addict’s brain, according to a study by the University of Cambridge. Addiction Counselor Douglas Rosen, who has experience in teaching sex education at middle schools, said porn is not generally part of the curriculum due to parent concerns and the immaturity of the kids.
“A lot of the parents don’t want it brought up,” Rosen said. “They don’t want it discussed in middle school. It’s taboo. They don’t want their kids educated on it. With middle schoolers, if you mention sex and porn, they kind of get giggly and uncomfortable.”
Caspian* said when he used to masturbate to porn more often, other boys were doing the same, normalizing the behavior to him.
“Freshman year, I would [masturbate] definitely every day, sometimes twice a day,” Caspian said. “I wouldn’t feel as bad about it because I would talk to other guys, and they would say the same thing, if not worse. I remember talking to a guy who once said he [masturbated] eight times in one day. When I was what I would today consider an addict, I would talk to other guys who were in the same exact position, if not worse.”
Director of Wellness Marci Reichert previously worked with Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, where she supported adolescent well-being and family education. Reichert said when boys go through puberty, they experience a heightened sense of arousal that can cause frequent masturbation.
“If you think about when people first go through puberty, their sexual response cycle is going overload, especially for people assigned male at birth,” Reichert said. “They are producing sperm at such a high rate that their body is constantly having erections because it’s the only way to get the sperm out of the body. It’s not uncommon for teenagers, especially boys, to masturbate multiple times a day.”
John* said he watches porn less now than when he was first introduced to it.
“When I first discovered it, in like seventh grade, I used to watch it a lot,” John said. “Definitely three times a day for a little bit. It feels addictive. It’s a fake dopamine rush and you want it to happen more. But then it obviously went down after. Now, I haven’t watched in two months.”
Glasner said that porn can be used as a tool to explore sexuality, so frequent use in youth does not necessarily indicate addiction.
“There are people for whom use of pornography is going to kind of represent a phase of their sexual curiosity,” Glasner said. “Even if they’re doing it a lot at a certain point, like in middle school, it’s not necessarily a marker of them forming an addiction to it. The ones who continue to do that through high school are people who are vulnerable to developing addiction for other reasons that are not tied specifically to the use of pornography itself.”
Caspian said he used porn to help identify his sexual orientation.
“Porn played a large role in my life back then because it was how I figured out that I liked women,” Caspian said. “For a long time, I struggled with sexuality because I didn’t go through puberty until late eighth grade, and I didn’t feel that attracted to women. I was like, ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m gay. Maybe that’s the only option.’ I turned on [porn] for the first time, and I realized I didn’t want to [masturbate] to men, I wanted to [masturbate] to women.”
John said although it was difficult, he was able to break the habit of frequent porn use and has seen positive effects because of it.
“It wasn’t easy, but I was able to break the habit and stop [watching porn],” John said. “Obviously, l feel the urge to, but it’s just about resisting that. It was a challenge, but being able to break an unhealthy habit is always good. Overall, I feel more energized and my skin is cleaner and everything.”
Axel* said in recent years he has found porn to be less appealing due to personal experience and realizing how produced porn is.
“I watched a lot more porn when I was younger, like in middle school,” Axel said. “But in the past couple of years, I personally have found the majority of porn to be a turn off rather than a turn on. Being in relationships with girls and hooking up with them changed my perspective. It made the super produced stuff just seem wrong and made me gravitate toward more natural stuff.”
Rosen said some men with frequent porn use have trouble orgasming in sex.
“A lot of times, the young men that I work with realize in their late teens and early 20s that sex with a person doesn’t compare to porn, and they’re having a hard time climaxing because they’re used to the porn climax,” Rosen said. “They have to actually completely detox themselves from porn.”
Reichert said conventionally attractive bodies tend to be the ones shown in porn, raising concerns about body image.
“I [also] worry about body image,” Reichert said. “When you think about pornography, the sole purpose is to make money. And so they’re going to pick people with the biggest breasts and the biggest penises. They’re going to go out there and pick body types that are going to be more likely to sell their product.”
Research shows that frequent porn consumers are more likely to objectify and dehumanize others sexually and more likely to support violence against women, according to research cited by Fight the New Drug. Chloe Min ’27 said the over-sexualization of women by men, which is often a result of frequent porn use, can lead to women beginning to sexualize themselves to appear attractive and desirable.
“The over-sexualization and unrealistic expectation of women has gone from a male ideology to a female attitude,” Min said. “Especially, younger girls have internalized this idea that as long as you’re perceived to be hot [nothing else] matters. People obviously favor being wanted, and the only way [some girls] know how to be desired, or liked, is to emulate this picture that is kind of porny.”
Caspian said while porn has the potential to contribute to the objectification of women, it does not inevitably do so.
“Some people could say that [porn] teaches young men to objectify women,” Caspian said. “Unless they are true porn addicts, this is not true. If you’re [masturbating] twice a day or more, that’s what I consider addicted, and that’s where you can’t function in normal society because you’ll just sexualize every girl you see. But I don’t think porn turns young men into sexual demons. It is a tool for that, and it can do that, but you have to allow it to.”
36% of daily porn users report feeling lonely “all or most of the time,” compared with 20% of those who consume porn rarely or never, according to a survey by The Institute for Family Studies. Caspian said he struggled with guilt and shame surrounding his pornography use and often felt isolated in dealing with it.
“Every time you do it, you feel so guilty,” Caspian said. “You’ll just end up feeling bad about yourself, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, f***, am I doing something wrong? Am I evil?’ I wish there were people that I could talk to about it because it’s not something you really talk about with your friends.”
Reichert said she is working to make porn part of the sex ed program at the school because it deals with the important skill of media literacy.
“[Porn] should be part of any good comprehensive sex education program,” Reichert said. “As we think about the curriculum, we really need to [emphasize] media literacy. It is one of the skills that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, especially because your generation is so impacted by influencers and messaging. We’ve all had media our whole lives, but it looks different for you all because it’s in your face all the time.”
*Names have been changed.
