“Yeah absolutely I would say it is a pretty good percentage – it’s not rare,” said Pastor Dan Dutch of Desert Reign Church in Downey when asked if he gets a lot of people confessing their porn addiction.
When we talk about addiction, what is the first thing you think of? Many would say drug addiction, alcohol or even social media. However, an overlooked addiction that doesn’t get talked about enough is porn addiction.
With the many different things people may be addicted to it seems like porn is the most uncomfortable addiction to talk about as a society. In today’s world, it looks like we’re too desensitized with lust and porn as a whole with porn being accessible compared to any addiction compared to drugs and alcohol.
According to a 2019 study from addiction help, 11% of men and 3% of women are addicted to porn. Furthermore, 2023 data found that about 69% of American men and 40% of women viewed online pornography annually, with Pornhub alone reporting over 2 billion visits in a single month.
The porn industry itself rakes in billions of dollars every year.
According to the Guardian, the porn industry makes an estimated revenue of $9 billion to $97 billion a year, but they have a conservative estimate of $15 billion. The conservative estimate of $15 billion a year makes it more profitable than Netflix ($11.7 billion), but also Hollywood as a whole ($11.1 billion) and Viacom ($13.3 billion).
According to a 2012 study from the University of Georgia, 15% of ads used sex to sell products in 1983. That percentage grew to 27 percent in 2003 and the trend continues with apps such as TikTok and Instagram becoming what some call a festing pool of sexual contact. However, sites such as Reddit, Discord, X (formerly Twitter) and more are now synonymous with explicit content.
“All good sites become porn sites,” said Austin Hamilton, founder of the social media account pxrncoach where he speaks on the dangers of porn and his battle against porn addiction. The account currently has around 40,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram.
According to Webroot, about 35% of all internet downloads are porn-related and on top of that 34% of people have experienced unwanted exposure to pornographic content through ads, pop-up ads, misdirected links, or emails.
Hamilton described just how easy it is to find porn now compared to his youth in the ‘90s.
“I had a computer in my room at 10 years old roughly with unrestricted access to the internet and I came across pornography and I got hooked.”
Austin is a recovering porn addict with him being addicted to porn for 20 years which led to something worse.
“I couldn’t stop, which also persisted into my marriage. I got married at 26 years old and in my case, my addiction led to physical cheating with other women while I was still married.”
A 2016 study from science.org found that people who started watching porn were more likely to split with their partners during the survey. For men, the chance of divorce went from 5% to 10%. For women, that number jumped from 6% to 18%.
However, Austin is still with the same woman and has been married to her for 14 years, but his infidelity opened Austin’s eyes.
“What I’ve realized when I unpack my life and my story – this had much more to do with just me struggling to look at pornography, this had more to do with my whole sexual life story,” he said. “[It] had to do with a lot of loneliness, abandonment, rejection, questioning my identity and all that.”
And at 36 years old, Austin did what he would call a complete 180 in his life, saying that porn was getting in the way of him becoming better as a husband and father.
Social media accounts dedicated to recovery from porn addiction are not uncommon. Another person who overcame his addiction to porn is TikToker Dr. Spice who has over 100,000 followers on TikTok.
Dr. Spice is a self-help TikToker who has battled addiction. Dr. Spice was first exposed to porn at 10 years old.
In a TikTok video back in 2023, Dr. Spice stated that he was addicted to watching porn and would masturbate one to four times a day affecting mental health and killing confidence.
The biggest turning point from this was the death of his grandma where he said he hated that his grandma saw him at his lowest and weakest point in life.
Now Dr. Spice is clean from porn and his advice is to keep yourself busy with other hobbies. In his case, he picked up martial arts to get away from his urges.
Lust is one of the seven deadliest sins with Matthew 5:28-29 saying “But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”
Pastor Dan Dutch elaborated on this verse, “That scripture is really pointing out the importance of what damage sin is going to cause in the long run.”
Dutch has been pastoring at Desert Reign Church in Downey since 2018 and during those seven years, he had many people confess their issues with lust and porn addiction.
“When it comes to lust it’s different and I’m going to talk specifically about males that we flee from.
Pastor Dan continued from that saying, “That’s one of the ones we don’t fight, one of the ones we don’t use our willpower.”
Dutch says being open about the struggle is the key to overcoming it.
“I think healing comes with the words that say confess your sins and pray with each other you will be healed because these are behaviors that aren’t healthy,” he said. “God wants healing for all of us and one of the ways that we can be healed is to open those places up for others to know about and pray about.”
