In late July and early August, I launched a non-scientific survey to help me better target the TEDx Talk I’ll be giving in early December about pornography addiction. It was designed to capture the beliefs of a wide group of people and best understand to give my presentation. I thought I’d get about 50 responses. I got over 800. For me, these addiction statistics are fascinating
Response was far bigger than I could have imagined. There was fascinating information to come out of this survey that I wanted to share, especially to those who participated. Now I don’t know the difference between scientific and non-scientific when it comes to surveys, but I do understand that there has never been information taken from another person and then disseminated without some form of bias. If you want my take on the bias in this survey, I added it to the end of this article.
All right, now that you’ve read the disclaimers and caveats, let’s look at some of the results:
The Who…
I know that there are likely many people who fit into two or more categories. I wanted people to self-label themselves with only one tag. Parents ranked 7.7%, Mental Health Professionals at 7.1% and Teacher/Educator at 6.5%.
The few people who have seen these results to this point have told me they were surprised by over a quarter of the people taking this labeling themselves as an addict, but since “student” was the second highest group, it makes sense. A study from 2017 by The Barna Group interviewed more than double the people that I did and they found 32%-33% of respondents in the male 18- to 30-year-old group were self-diagnosed as having a problem with pornography. I didn’t ask for gender, but knowing those numbers, the 25.6% saying they are addicts doesn’t surprise me at all. Of all the addiction statistics I share, this is still the scariest.
The Beliefs…
These two questions were just to understand what people were thinking in terms of pornography addiction having the potential of being a real problem or addiction. In both of these questions, I was really curious about the blue parts of the pie. These results confirmed that this is an important topic and it’s perfect for a TEDx Talk.
The Fear for the Young…
It’s telling that a combined 77.6% of people said that those under 18 are most at risk. For me, this shows an understanding of where the seeds of addiction are sown. These are among the most important addiction statistics we can share. Few become addicted after 25, and I’m still surprised that 6.1% of people think they are at the greatest risk.
Like the last question, these are another two that made me feel good as the responses came in. Only 6% of people don’t think that porn addiction should be addressed in either high school, college or both. If 94% of people think it should be addressed in school — why aren’t we doing it? This should be some ammunition toward getting it normalized in health curriculum. If you need any more proof, 96% think we’re not doing a good enough job. These are important numbers for educators to consider. If we can’t count on parents, we need to count on the schools and there’s clearly a need for it.
The Willingness to Admit…
These porn addiction statistics startle even me.
That last number is the headline for me. Only slightly more than 1 out of 4 people don’t have some connection to pornography addiction. Think about that for a second. That’s 27.5% who believe there is no connection to people and porn addiction in their life — but it’s 72.5% who do have a connection! If well more than half of us have a connection to porn addiction, why isn’t anybody talking about it?
The next newsmaker here is that 42% of people who took this thought they may have a porn addiction. Of the 812 people who answered the question, 342 may be porn addicts???!!!! Almost 1 out of 4 think they’re partner is an addict??!!!
The child questions are somewhat moot. I made the mistake of not qualifying it by finding out how many people answering had kids. Once again, not a scientific survey, but these other answers did come in higher than I expected. They don’t surprise me, but I wasn’t sure if people were seeing what was happening and report it here.
The Fear for the Genders…
This one bothered me the most because I think it plays into stereotypes about who pornography addicts are or aren’t. Nearly 9-in-10 people are worried about male teens become porn addicts, but only 1-in-4 is worried about a teen female. Half of respondents say that they’re concerned about adult males become addicts, but only 1-in-10 is worried about adult females. These addiction statistics show a blindness to reality.
Just when I thought we were waking up as a society, we’re met by these numbers. I’m not going to go into a litany of statistical quoting showing that the number of female addicts is growing by leaps and bounds, nor am I going to go into my diatribe about how porn is now available cheaply, targeted at all demographics and easier (and more anonymous) to access than ever before. I can show you were we actually are, but I wanted to know where people thought we are, or needed to be. I felt good about the responses until this question. There’s unfortunately still a huge gender gap when it comes to understanding who are pornography addicts. Yes, historically men have always outnumbered women when it came to consuming pornography and reporting as addicts, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be the case.
If any female porn addict says she feels invisible to society, all you have to do is look at the answers to this question and you can understand why.
There were several other questions that asked about presentation style, but I won’t bore you with the answers here. They’ll help me figure out how to communicate the information and you can see if it all comes together when the event takes place.
My TEDx Talk will be part of TEDxHartford on Dec. 6, 2020. While there will be no live audience in attendance because of social distancing, people can come from all over the world to attend virtually at no charge — although donations are accepted. If you’d like to get a virtual ticket to the event, check out TEDxHartford online.
Caveats on Methodology…
Everybody asked to this was online, which almost certainly skewed the average respondent younger. Along with sending it to a few heterogenous mailing lists, it was also posted on my website and LinkedIn page, so those who have some interest in following what I’m already doing had the opportunity to take it skewed in their favor. Finally, I posted it on many online forums, bulletin boards and subreddits. I tired to get a mix of people – I wanted young adults, and therapists, and parents and former addicts and partners of addicts, and religious people and a few other groups to specifically respond – so I looked for places online where some of these groups congregated. Considering over 800 people answered every question, I feel confident enough in the results since even another 25 responses would not change any answer by much.
What encourages me most is that the vast majority consider porn addiction a serious problem. At least society isn’t in denial about the dangers of it.
Baby steps. If you’re moving forward, you’re not moving back.
The question “who are you most concerned about developing a porn addiction” doesn’t tell you that only 1 in 4 respondents are worried about a teen female. It tells you 1 in 4 is more worried about a teen female than any of the other response options.
Then I totally set up this question wrong and some people misunderstood because clearly people voted in multiple categories. There may be a way to eliminate the double voters and seeing what’s left.