There has been a fundamental shift in the public debate on pornography over the past decade. In 2017, I took the affirmative side in a radio debate with a queer studies professor on the question “Is pornography inherently harmful to society?” Much of what I highlighted then—the normalization and mainstreaming of sexual violence, pervasive porn addiction beginning in preadolescence, the consequent inability to engage in or even understand healthy intimacy—is now the position of panicky government officials from the U.K. to France.
Hardly a week goes by without some news story highlighting the devastating effects of ubiquitous porn use across the West and beyond. Two reports from May alone highlight this fact with chilling clarity.
The first is a disturbing report in the Guardian by Harriet Grant on the growing phenomenon of men who do not have the profile of a typical pedophile—a sexual interest in children—nonetheless being arrested for viewing and possessing child abuse material. These men ended up viewing child pornography when their addictions escalated and spiraled out of control. As one told her: “I didn’t start out wanting to see kids. I was addicted to porn and I went down a road of being totally desensitised as I got further and further from what was normal.”
In England and Wales, 850 men are being arrested monthly for “online child abuse offences.” Similar trends are emerging elsewhere. Grant notes that we face “a spiralling global crisis” with law enforcement and child protection experts consistently pinpointing one culprit: “the explosion over the past 10 to 20 years of free-to-view and easily accessible online pornography. . . . A growing body of research is beginning to warn of how problematic porn habits can be a pathway into viewing images of children being abused.”
Grant observes that the explosion of extreme content, including child abuse imagery, is not merely feeding a demand but fueling one. Users crave porn for the dopamine; to achieve consistent arousal, they must escalate their usage; algorithms deliver a constant digital diet of depravity. Viewers have been pushed to edgy material for a long time (as evidenced by the “Barely Legal” phenomenon). As one man related: “You know it’s wrong, but the dopamine hit from what you are doing overrides everything else. I think the pathways in my brain had been changed by all the porn I had watched. . . . You feel sick and horrible.”
Significantly, most of the men who eventually encountered child pornography did not actually search for it. The Finnish group Protect Children profiled 4,549 anonymous child sexual abuse offenders and found that not only was pornography a key “facilitating factor,” but over 50 percent first saw child abuse material when they were not seeking it. Michael Sheath, who has worked with child abusers for more than thirty years, told Grant: “I see men who have gone down what I call an ‘escalating pathway.’ The link is unambiguous. . . . The threshold for abusive behaviour is through the floor. It used to be that child abuse material was hard to find and looking at it was extremely risky.” Not anymore.
“We are seeing people who are turning 18 and have had 10 years’ exposure to hardcore porn,” said Detective Chief Inspector Tony Garner, who heads a team of online child abuse officers in the U.K. “My officers are finding young people watching the most abhorrent material, including child abuse. . . . As a country, as a society, it feels completely out of control.” Meanwhile, Pornhub insists that it is not pushing viewers to increasingly extreme content, but that users merely “discover” new sexual themes.
