The Porn Crisis

Porn serves as the major form of sex ed for millions of kids in the absence of comprehensive, competent sex education. And what are kids learning? That degradation, humiliation, and violence are central to relationships, intimacy, and sex.

Many kids’ first encounters with online porn are accidental. Widely available for free online — whether via Snapchat and Instagram — or by entering innocent searches, porn is “the public health crisis of the digital age.” Extensive research has shown that porn undermines the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical health of individuals, families, and communities. These studies also demonstrate that porn shapes how we think about gender, sexuality, relationships, intimacy, sexual violence, and gender equality.

But just as the tobacco industry argued for decades that there was no proven connection between smoking and lung cancer, so, too, has the porn industry denied the existence of more than 40 years of empirical research on the impact of its products.