I was SO addicted to porn I watched it on a bus… inside the rise of men under 30 ruining sex life with hardcore videos
THERE is a strange irony that watching online sex could put you off doing it for real, but that is what is happening to men under 30.
A survey yesterday revealed that years of using porn online has caused a third of Gen Z blokes to say it has dulled their senses so much that they have no sex life, with some even suffering erectile dysfunction.
It has affected men’s ability in the bedroom so much that there is a growing number who have turned their back on porn, realising the damage it is doing to their mental and physical health.
Doctor Matt*, 29, from Derby, is one.
He started watching porn aged 14 when he had access to the internet on a BlackBerry.
But within a few years, he noticed he could not maintain relationships, saying: “I would write girls off for being imperfect.
“I’d invented a way they should look by watching so much porn.
“I couldn’t define what real-life women looked like and how they behaved, because the lines were blurred for me.
“I thought they should all behave like porn stars.
“It was incredibly destructive.
“All the relationships in my twenties were about just me.
“I was selfish and inconsiderate.”
Sam* is a 20-year-old who has now sworn off using porn again.
He said: “I became so addicted to it I was watching it on the packed bus, and I was so humiliated when a woman who looked like my gran started shouting at me, calling me ‘disgusting’.
“That was the very last time I ever looked at porn.”
Sam was introduced to XXX images aged 11, at his local football club.
“I was shown pretty hardcore stuff, often on a weekly basis,” he said.
“I look back now and feel it was far too much for my young mind, but at the time I thought I understood it. Obviously I didn’t.”
‘Do I have to choke her?’
Michael Conroy, 57, is the director of Men At Work, an organisation which delivers professional training in supporting the healthy personal development of boys and young men.
If they disclose that they have been watching pornography, they are given the chance to talk about it openly without stigma or shame.
Some disclose their ambivalence.
One boy, having watched an asphyxiation-themed porn film with friends during a school break, asked Michael: “Do I have to choke her?”
Michael has learned how to provide boys with the tools they need to acknowledge the reality of porn and the damage it can cause, without suggesting to them that sexual feelings are shameful or wrong.
The difference between “soft” and “hardcore” porn has all but disappeared and, in any case, it is no more difficult to access the most extreme stuff.
Michael says: “To be honest, I think it’s easier to access hardcore porn as it’s monetised. And if you have searches, the machine is looking for you. It wants your attention”.
Schools find it nearly impossible to protect children from this.
Teachers are ill-equipped to talk to children about these things, so schools often sub-contract outside agencies to provide Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), but there is little scrutiny to what actually gets delivered.
Michael feels often these companies are so keen to come across as “sex- positive” and non- judgmental, they end up being quite blasé about the use of porn, or even choking as a sex act.
Porn use undoubtedly shapes attitudes towards girls.
When a group of boys aged 13 to 17 was asked if they had ever abused their girlfriends, at least ten per cent admitted they had coerced girlfriends into watching porn with them.
Experts, including neurologists, have found that porn can be more addictive than cocaine, and “wears out the brake pads”.
In other words, the more it is watched, the more extreme acts the brains demand.
In heavy users, porn use causes impotence.
Yet the big porn companies continue to deny that under-18s use their products, even though it is known that at least 20 to 30 per cent of users are under 18.
Matt’s use of porn escalated to the point it had become habitual and it was destroying anything that could be a healthy relationship.
On a search on how to quit the habit in 2018, he watched psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson on YouTube explaining how it is destroying the brains of men.
Matt says: “It was the first time he’d ever seen a man condemning pornography.
“And also revealing what it does to our brains and bodies.
“Around the same time, I started listening to a podcast about how the porn industry optimises its profits by directing boys who watched the free stuff on to more and more hardcore.
“Once I understood the business model I was appalled.”
Matt told friends he wasn’t watching porn any more.
He recalled: “They acted like it was something really weird, and treated me like I was the odd one out.
“But I told them how porn is dangerous to boys, chiefly because it educates them to assume that extreme sex acts are not only normal, but to be expected.
Degrading content
“That’s why, as a knock-on from that, we will see young boys start to become sexually dysfunctional.”
Michael feels strongly that parents have an important role to play too: “Children are first learning about sex from algorithms that are designed to encourage them to access ever more degrading content.
“These websites use tactics that encourage addiction, such as autoplay of certain sex acts as soon as they click on a porn site.
“Girls are being taught that sex is painful and violent, and that men expect to be allowed to hurt and treat them like inanimate objects.
“If there were sharks in the water you’re swimming in on holiday, you would mention it.
“Porn is a real threat and it’s a risk to kids’ health and happiness. So we have to acknowledge it.”
* Names have been changed.