Xander, 16, had his first exposure to internet pornography when he was in early middle school. For him, it meant a lesson that gave him problematic ideas about sexual and romantic relationships.

“Some of those videos can give kids the wrong idea, in thinking, ‘Hey, if I make this move, if I grab maybe this girl’s thigh, or touch her where no one else should, she’ll be into me or I’ll get laid.’ That is not at all true,” said Xander, a Louisville student who spoke openly about his situation on the condition that he was not identified by his real name.

Xander’s situation isn’t unique. Porn addiction is all too familiar to many of America’s youth, and carries with it serious consequences.

For Xander, it was warped ideas of what sexual encounters should look like. For other kids, the consequences are sometimes worse. But the common factor in far too many of these young people is the porn addiction itself.

Notably, this early exposure to porn is much more common for adolescent boys than it is for girls. A 2006 survey by researchers at the University of New Hampshire found that 93.2% of boys were exposed to porn before the age of 18, while only 62.1% of girls were.

The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic only allowed more opportunity for porn addictions to manifest. Xander said his use of porn increased like never before.

“There was probably a point in the pandemic and peak of online school where it was three to two times a day,” he said.

While porn addictions can be attributed to COVID-19’s isolation, the widespread availability of internet porn is also a key factor. Not only are porn websites readily available to adolescents with hours upon hours of videos, even social media sites such as Twitter and Reddit are now known for harboring porn that can be viewed even without the use of a search engine like Google.

John Stamper, a porn addiction recovery coach in Lexington, said there are “Three A’s” when talking about modern pornography.

“It’s now affordable, in that it’s basically free,” Stamper said. “It’s anonymous, in that you don’t have to go to some store and risk someone seeing you, and that you do it in the privacy of wherever you want. And it’s accessible. In times past, it was just simply harder to get.”

The addiction works in the same way that many other non-chemical addictions work. Engaging with pornography becomes a coping mechanism that either creates joy or quells sadness and loneliness.

Paul Schmidt, who has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, is a wellness coach in Louisville who focuses on, among other things, porn addiction.

Schmidt said electronic mapping of the brain has found that porn-induced pleasure lights up the brain similarly to cocaine use.

“It is all of these endorphins and brain chemicals exploding up there,” he said. “When it’s that intense, you do destroy brain circuitry and brain tissue as anything goes, so it gets harder and harder to make a connection.

“That’s why you have to scream to be heard with the pornography in order to make connections, and you’re trying to get to the serotonin of, ‘Ahh that’s enough. I just feel so completely satisfied.’”

Schmidt said constant porn exposure causes viewers to develop a tolerance and seek out a variety of content.

“It takes more and more beer, for example, to make you feel you’ve had enough, or to loosen you up and make you feel confident or whatever you’re drinking for,” he said. “And so you learn to tolerate it more, and it doesn’t give you the same effect. With porn, it’s a seeking of novelty and the seeking of a rush – of an adrenaline rush.”

This novelty is certainly out there. The University of New Hampshire survey found 38.6% of men and 22.6% of women had seen pornography involving bondage at least once as minors. Researchers found that, prior to turning 18, participants had also seen the following:

• 31.8% of men and 17.7% of women had watched bestiality.
• 17.9% of men and 10.2% of women had seen at least one depiction of rape and sexual violence.
• 15.1% of men and 8.9% of women had viewed child pornography.

That desire for variety leads viewers to cross lines they’d previously set for themselves, Schmidt said.

“Things you say: ‘Oh, I’m never going to watch bondage sex,’ or ‘I’m never going to watch people have sex with a child or an animal. These are things I’m just not going to do,’” he said. “It’s astounding how quickly you blow through those.”

This advance into more hardcore content not only pertains to adolescents acting on their urges, but how they develop ideas about sex in the formative years of their life. A 2020 study by the British Board of Film Classification found that 63% of children surveyed admitted the reason for watching porn to be related to learning about sex, getting ideas for new things to do during sex and learning about sexual expectations.

Many adolescents like Xander are looking to porn to answer questions about sexual situations and sexual preferences. The more they watch, the more they dive into the novelties that Schmidt described, and the more they internalize what they see as normal and acceptable.

Adolescents turning to porn to answer questions about sex may indicate something in their sex education has been lacking. According to 2018 survey study by Healthline, only 33% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 had reported having any sex education in their years of schooling, much less comprehensive sex education.

This is not the case for the state of California, as the California Healthy Youth Act passed in 2016 mandates comprehensive sex education in seventh through twelfth graders. Two of the act’s primary purposes listed on the California Department of Education website are to normalize sexuality in human development and promote healthy relationship skills.

“It certainly can have an impact on an adolescent’s brain and how they form and shape their view of sexuality, because, in many ways, pornography has become the new sex education,” Stamper, the addiction counselor, said.

Xander said that, in hindsight, sex education would have been helpful to his younger self so that he wouldn’t have had to turn to internet porn for answers to his many questions.

It’s not too late for teens who have become dependent on porn. Experts like Schmidt and Stamper recommend getting outside help for the purpose of accountability. Having people in one’s life to hold them accountable is something that every form of recovery has in common. For Xander, that accountability comes in the form of his long-term girlfriend who helped him understand healthy relationships.

At the end of the day, the porn is there, whether it’s watched or not. Xander may no longer be watching it, but many adolescents are still stuck in the grasp of internet porn.