The House of Representatives passed the bipartisan TAKE IT DOWN Act on April 28, authored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), co-led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and backed by First Lady Melania Trump.
The act “criminalizes the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery … and requires social media and similar websites to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from a victim.”

With a 400% increase in revenge porn victims between 2016 and 2019, the federal response to revenge porn parallels the broader crackdown on pornography access, especially for adolescents. In June 2023, Louisiana became the first state to require age verification for access to pornographic websites, mandating that users upload government-issued ID before accessing them.

In response, Pornhub pulled its services from the state. Twenty other states have since passed similar legislation aimed at limiting minors’ access to pornography — a reaction to rising concerns over early and frequent teen exposure — though California has not followed suit.

Emily Rothman, a social epidemiologist at Boston University, said pornography use, on average, has increased over the past decade.

“Before 2005, most young people didn’t have access to the internet quite as easily and certainly didn’t have handheld devices,” Rothman said. “By 2014, youth access to the internet had really increased a lot, and at the same time, porn websites had also taken off … Around 2020, there was a total proliferation of sexually explicit media available — free, online, easy to access pornography, and parents were not yet aware of quite how easy the access was or quite how much porn was available. When COVID happened, a lot of adolescents were left alone for long chunks of time with access to the internet.”

According to a 2022 Common Sense Media report on teen pornography use, 73% of teenagers reported they had consumed pornography, either intentionally or accidentally, with the average first exposure at age 12.

A male senior, who spoke to The Campanile anonymously because he did not want others to know about his porn use, said he was exposed to pornography at 8 years old when a friend showed him.

“It’s definitely a problem to watch such things at a young age because you are exposed to a lot of mature ideas that can snowball into bigger problems during teen years,” the senior said. “Thankfully, I’ve been aware of this, and I don’t think I’ve had problems with porn, but I have normalized a lot of the content which a lot of others around me haven’t.”

In a survey conducted by The Campanile on April 23, among those who have watched or read pornography, more than 25% said they were first exposed at 12 years old. More than 92% of the students reported they were exposed to pornographic material under 15 years old.

Julia Fraumeni-McBride, a researcher of problematic pornography use, said these results are common.

“Adolescents are often first exposed to pornography out of curiosity, peer influence or accidentally through pop-ups or social media links,” Fraumeni-McBride said. “Algorithms may also push sexual content to youth without their intent pursuit of the content. In the more upsetting cases, teens can be exposed to pornography in uninvited, predatory approaches.”

Compulsive Behavior

Megan Maas, an assistant professor in Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University, said compulsive pornography use can result in either extreme sensitization or desensitization to sexual stimulation.

“People have what are called problematic pornography patterns — who view it so much that they either got caught at work and got in trouble,” Maas said. “Or, they feel like they can’t have a sexual arousal experience without it — in laboratory studies, they will be overly aroused by sexual content and under aroused.”

Laney Knowlton, a therapist specializing in infidelity and problematic sexual behaviors, said when the term “sex addiction” was first coined in the late 1970s, it primarily referred to people using porn as an escape from suffering in their lives and who internalized a connection between shame and sex. This definition changed as porn became more widely available online.

Maas said the primary reason teens are more susceptible to compulsive porn is neurological. The prefrontal cortex — responsible for decision-making — develops more slowly than the limbic system, which controls the emotional nervous system. This makes frequent porn use more compelling.

“You’re developing neural pathways in your brain (that) are also connected to the rest of your body, where your brain is deciding how it’s going to experience sensation,” Maas said. “If you are building pathways particularly intensely with porn as a teen, when you go to have human experiences, those sensory experiences are not going to be as rewarding in terms of dopamine.”

According to the Common Sense Media report, 45% of teens who viewed pornography thought it provided “helpful” information to learn about sex. But only 27% said it accurately depicted sex. Supreet Mann, the director of research at Common Sense Media and one of the researchers involved in the study, said this dual nature of pornography consumption makes it even more complicated to address.

“Many teens understand that pornography is not like a real or accurate depiction of what sex looks like in a relationship, but a lot of them are also using it for ways to build out their frameworks of what relationships might be and what sex might be,” Mann said. “They understand that it’s not real (but) that it might help navigate that space in a way that maybe other trusted adults are not trusted enough to be let in.”

The anonymous male senior said he felt similarly.

“Porn has shaped my expectations because I have more crazy ideas when it comes to sex now that I’ve seen a lot,” the senior said. “A lot of people expect sex to be an amazing thing, but it takes time and patience — especially for first timers. It’s never really going to get like porn. If it does, or you want to get like porn, then that could have other consequences.”

Misconceptions

Justine Fonte, a health and sexuality educator, said beyond affecting interpersonal relationships, pornography can also influence how viewers of pornography perceive themselves.

“I think that there are standards of attractiveness that are depicted in porn that a lot of young people think are the gold standard, and if (those standards) are not easy to obtain, then there’s something wrong with you and your body,” Fonte said.

Fraumeni-McBride said pornography also creates false perceptions of gender, inhibiting youth development.

“Pornography has come to influence cultural expectations about gender and appearance,” Fraumeni-McBride said. “Most people experiencing gender distress or gender dysphoria feel disconnected from socialized gender norms that are exacerbated by pornography. Gender was never traditionally shaped by makeup, clothing — those were all socially constructed ideas that evolved over time. Much of the socialized gender norms, especially influenced by pornography, are rooted in vain, non-gender essential cosmetic traits or exaggerated versions of gender traits that have little to do with gender.”

Racial stereotypes are also affected by their depictions in pornography. Fonte highlighted two groups, Asian women and Black men, who are particularly affected by these stereotypes.

“The ways that these two identities are depicted in porn actually mirror how society outside of pornography depicts these two groups as hyper-sexualized,” Fonte said. “For Asian women, fetishized, which means that they are reduced to a sexual object, without any other identity beyond being a sexual object and being sought after. For Black men, the way that they’re depicted in porn, even by the titles that are being used in the films that they’re in, are suggesting that they are aggressive, that they are violent, and that they don’t experience pain as much. And as a result of that, it’s mirrored in society that we assume that a black man is violent, is aggressive and can tolerate pain in a way that others can’t.”

According to the Common Sense Media report, a majority of teens who have viewed pornography have seen content that depicts stereotypes of at least one racial group. In particular, 25% of Black teens felt “disgusted,” and 21% felt “self-conscious” after seeing a stereotypical portrayal of their identity in pornography. Mann said from a young age, humans become sensitive to stereotypes of people in the media who share their identity.

“When you see people of your same racial and ethnic background and they’re depicted in stereotypical ways, if they’re more likely to be in pornographic content that includes violence (and) rape, it can shift the way that you begin to understand what is safe, especially within your community,” Mann said. “The more you see somebody like you, the more likely you are to identify with that person and therefore potentially see that as normative behavior even when it’s not.”

Some studies even show a correlation between frequent porn use and aggressive sexual attitudes, according to Fraumeni-McBride.

“This isn’t true for all users, especially not at first,” Fraumeni-McBride said. “But when young people internalize harmful content, it can influence how they treat or expect to be treated in relationships, no different than social media has clearly demonstrated (with) girls and body image.”

But Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist at UCLA who specializes in sexual behavior, said earlier studies suggesting pornography promotes violence could not be replicated in more recent research.

“Someone who already has (violent) beliefs is probably seeking out the violent content, and that doesn’t help,” Prause said. “But if I take someone who has no intention of assaulting someone, I can show them violent porn all day, and they’re like, ‘That’s just not my value,’ so that’s not going to change (their attitudes).”

For adults, according to a 2024 study on pornography consumption in different demographics, 78% of men and 44% of women reported consuming pornography in the past month. However, Carl Thomas, a pastor and founder of Live Free Ministries, a nonprofit organization aimed at addressing problematic pornography use, said the gap between male and female pornography use is more likely due to differences in normalization than biological differences.

“Guys don’t want to self-identify either, but guys are much more open about their pornography use than women because women are not only dealing with the shame of the pornography, but they’re dealing with the cultural assumption that it’s a guy’s issue, which it’s not – it’s a human issue,” Thomas said.

Teen views around pornography are often complex – and for queer youth, even more so. In a 2022 study of over 1500 youth, LGBTQ+ teens were reported to be more than twice as likely to visit porn sites.

“We know that queer youth use media in a different way than their cisgender peers, and that can oftentimes be really developmentally helpful for them,” Fonte said. “It can be a space of community. Pornographic content viewed by queer teens, oftentimes, does serve a different function in terms of helping them understand what sexuality and relationships looks like, because they truly don’t have, oftentimes, people in their face-to-face community that they can turn to.”

Other developments, including advancements in AI, have led to the emergence of new forms of pornographic content, prompting legislative action. In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed several bills prohibiting AI-created sexual imagery depicting children and AI-created revenge porn — when sexually explicit images or videos are either shared or filmed without consent.

“For people who have those kinds of images or videos of them shared without their consent, they have some of the same experiences as somebody who experiences like a physical sexual assault, in terms of anxiety (and) depression,” Maas said. “Some people even have thoughts of suicide or PTSD symptomatology because there’s such a lack of control, and it feels like such a violation.”

Pornography Literacy

According to the Common Sense report, 47% of teens reported learning a lot about sex from a guardian or trusted adult, while 27% reported learning from pornography. Despite this substantial difference, only 43% of teens reported having conversations about pornography with a trusted adult.

During these conversations, Knowlton said it is crucial for adults to address sex and pornography without promoting feelings of shame.

“Whether you’re a teenager or an adult, betrayal can absolutely mess with your ability to feel safe,” Knowlton said. “If you don’t have a space to process it, if you’re taught shame-based concepts like, ‘That’s right. That’s wrong,’ it can cause some pretty significant wounds that can impact your ability to connect to people in a healthy way as you get older.”

At Paly, Early Childhood Development teacher Hilary McDaniel said pornography is briefly covered in her curriculum because it is an important part of childhood development.

“I do have an (Advanced Authentic Research) student from a couple years ago who did her whole project on it,” McDaniel said. “I thought her project was really compelling … , which led to me educating myself. But even our district did not want her to interview people who were asking certain questions because they didn’t feel like that was an appropriate subject for her to be asking about.”

Although many schools view pornography as a difficult topic to teach, Prause said porn literacy courses are vital in addressing the issue because teens are more likely to view porn as an accurate portrayal of sex, while the majority of adults consume it only as entertainment.

“There are these porn literacy programs,” Prause said. “There’s a kind of well known one from Boston University. Part of the point of these is to talk to youth about things like this is what pornography is actually for. This is how the performers are compensated. This is why they do this, that way, this is how they prepare that you don’t see films typically, this is how they handle consent.”

As the creator of the porn literacy course at Boston University, Rothman said she started the course after noticing students’ heightened engagement when she brought up pornography during a dating violence lecture. 

“So it was like, what if we start a program where we are talking about porn, but actually, we are talking about healthy relationships as part of that as well?” Rothman said. “That way the kids want to go to the program, because they’re like, ‘Ooh, we get to talk about porn.’ And the teachers are like, ‘Yes, we are talking about porn,’ but we’re also talking about consent and how you treat each other.”

Developing Solutions

Like the parent and school conversations, the best way to combat problematic pornography use, Mann said, is to openly communicate with others.

“Children certainly can and should have the agency to feel that they can have these conversations with folks,” Mann said. “I think it’s about finding the right adult that you feel you can have these conversations with. Now that’s much easier said than done, because the reality is, a lot of teens live in communities where they can’t have those kinds of open conversations.”

However, Maas said an abstinence-based approach to pornography consumption can be counterproductive.

“Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks who then develop a lot of shame and go underground with their porn use,” Maas said. “I wouldn’t recommend (porn), particularly to adolescents, but it’s worse to hide it and to form secrecy and shame around it.”

And Thomas said treating compulsive pornography use like a harmful habit will not eliminate the issue long-term.

“Porn is a symptom of a deeper problem — the emotional regulation, anxiety we’re walking around with, trauma from our childhood,” Thomas said. “So if we deal with the little issue, but we don’t want to deal with the big issue, what will happen is most likely, you’ll either relapse down the road, or you’ll just swap it out with some other coping mechanisms. We won the war with porn, but now you’re gambling, or now you’re overeating, and it’s a shallow victory.”

To solve the root issue, Thomas said addressing pornography use from a mental health perspective is crucial.

“Our (method) is, let’s help you become a more holistic, healthy and mentally healthier person,” Thomas said. “If we take care of that stuff, and then we also address the substance issue, like the chemical, the biochemical stuff at the same time, hopefully we’re going to come out on the other end with a healthier individual all around.”

Thomas also said religion can be used as a resource to combat problematic pornography use.

“Faith is good (from) a mental health perspective, and it all works together in our opinion,” Thomas said. “So God created us a certain way; he gives us recommendations. It just so happens that from a biological, psychological perspective, those recommendations actually work.”

For teens struggling with porn use, Maas recommends filling time with non-screen activities or changing phone-screens to grayscale to reduce engagement.

“One of the things we recommend is that you don’t have devices in your room overnight,” Maas said. “If you think, ‘Oh, I don’t want to look at porn anymore,’ sometimes that can almost feed it — make that even more attractive. Do what you can to focus on screen-free activities with your family, your friends, getting into stuff so that your brain can start getting pleasure from those other experiences that (are) going to help you reorient or balance.”

But ultimately, Mann said talking about pornography is the first step to addressing its usage and impact in society.

“Pornography is not intended for kids under 18,” Mann said. “We know that broadly, but we also know that kids under 18 are accessing pornography at really high rates and starting at really young ages. These kinds of conversations around what are healthy sexual experiences should be happening at pretty young ages in developmentally appropriate ways and continuing as children continue to get older so that they know they have a trusted person to turn to. To chalk them all up as like taboo concepts misses an opportunity for connection and for growth.”