I ran a 500 person survey in the USA, using a professional polling service (Pollfish). Here are 10 charts showing some key findings.
In the chart above, you can see that young (18–34) females have almost the same porn usage as older (34+) males. Out of the young females, 33% say they use it least a few times a week, compared with 38% for older males.
For young (18–34) males, 64% watch porn at least a few times a week.
In the chart above, you can see that young males have the highest desire to reduce their porn usage (41%), and another 17% want to quit. So out of the 78% of young males who say they currently use porn in any amount, the majority (58%) want to quit or reduce their usage.
In the above chart, you see that men picked religion or morality more often as a reason for quitting, and women picked “trouble getting work done” much higher (yes, I triple checked this). But the #1 reason for quitting, for both males and females, was “mental or emotional problem”.
Young males are much more likely (49%) than females (32%) to say porn is harmful, when thinking about their children.
Interestingly, video games are rated slightly more addictive than drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol. 35% of all respondents say pornography is somewhat or very addictive, for some member of their household.
Out of those who want to quit or reduce, almost half (44%) of men have been trying for at least a year.
The above chart shows that young males have the most difficulty in reducing their usage, with 33% saying it’s moderately to extremely difficult.
The above is one of the saddest charts about this addiction. Only 19% of men have told someone they want to quit or reduce their usage. “Once exposed, a secret loses all its power.” — Ann Aguirre
34% of young females said their partner’s pornography usage made the relationship worse, compared to “only” 25% of young males.
Methods of Quitting
I made sure to ask all 70 people who quit, what their method(s) were, both with multiple choice and a mandatory free text input. Note that a few people wrote in 2 methods.
Q3.What specific method or resource worked best for you, to quit using pornography? (total responses, not %)
- Just quit (15)
- No interest (9)
- Prayer / God / Preaching (9)
- Willpower (6)
- Doing other activities (6)
- Therapist (4)
- Removing devices or internet access (4)
- More sex (3)
- New relationship (3)
- Blocker software (2)
- Talking to people (2)
- Partner ultimatum or breakup (2)
The above list is my summary of the top free-text responses. 15 people wrote in something like “I just stopped” or “just quit”, making it the number one category.
The chart below, in contrast, is multiple choice of premade choices, and I will admit my list of choices wasn’t very good. I’m so glad I had the write-in question.
I hope you found this post interesting. See the full dataset here if you’re a data nerd.
— C. Smith (author of flying-eagle-method.org)
