The short version: Porn use that people feel they can't control is common among adults, and mostly hidden. About 11% of American men say they're addicted. In a year of posts on r/pornfree, the median person who said how long had struggled for 10 years. Most of those who said when it started were under 16. Very few ever ask for help. That silence is the part we can change.
Nowhere else to go
A friend once told me something simple. It's very hard to walk away from something if you have nowhere else to go.
I learned what that means the hard way. Years ago I was in a relationship that was bad for me, and part of me knew it. But leaving meant being completely alone, and that scared me more than staying. So I told myself that whatever this was, it was better than having no one.
It wasn't. With time I saw that walking away was the only way my life was going to get better. I've thought about my friend's line a lot since then.
The posts that made me look at myself
A while ago I came across some posts on Reddit that I couldn't stop thinking about. Here are two of them.
They made me see how serious this is. They also made me look at myself, which I didn't expect. I'd always assumed it didn't really affect me.
But when I watched regularly, I talked to my family and friends a little less. And my will to push through something hard at work or in my studies dropped, by a lot. So I started keeping track.
These are my numbers from six weeks, counted as honestly as I could. The weeks I watched most were the weeks I saw people least and got the least done. The pattern was hard to argue with.
It's bigger than most people assume
Porn sites aren't a corner of the internet. In August 2026, Pornhub was the 25th most visited website in the world, ahead of Twitch and eBay. xHamster was 27th and XVideos was 34th.
Most people who watch say they're fine, and many are. But a real share aren't. One US survey was built to represent the whole country. About 11% of men and 3% of women in it agreed that they were addicted to pornography.
Another US study used a screening test for distress about sexual urges. About 8.6% of adults scored high enough to show real distress. Of course a survey isn't a diagnosis, and researchers still argue about the word "addiction". But the distress is real either way, and it's common.
It isn't a teenage phase, but it usually starts as one
We read every post on r/pornfree from October 2025 to October 2026. It's a community of about 417,000 people. After we removed deleted posts and anything that looked like it came from someone under 18, that left 12,445 posts.
Among people who mentioned their age, the median was 23 and a half. Almost half were 25 or older, and more than 1 in 5 were over 30. When people said how long they'd been struggling, the median answer was 10 years.
But it rarely started in adulthood. Among the 323 people who said when it began, the median age was 12. 86% started before they turned 16. A 2026 US survey of 13 to 17 year olds tells the same story. More than half had seen porn by 12.
Nobody decides at 12 to build a habit they'll still be fighting at 29. It starts as something casual and grows quietly. In 189 posts, people said they regretted the lost years, or wished they'd stopped sooner.
It isn't only men, either. About 1 in 5 people who mentioned their gender were women. Most apps in this space talk as if those women don't exist.
It mostly happens late at night, and early on
When people named a time, half of those times fell between 10pm and 4am. The most common single hour was 3am.
When people said how long they'd gone before a relapse, the median was 8 days. 44% didn't make it a full week. Only about 1 in 22 got past 90 days.
And when people named a feeling behind it, loneliness came up most often, ahead of stress and boredom. None of this reads like a moral failing to me. It reads like tired, lonely people at 3am with a phone in their hand.
Why nobody talks about it
Shame keeps it quiet. In a study of 82,243 people across 42 countries, 4.8% were at high risk of compulsive sexual behaviour. Only 14% of them had ever looked for treatment.
And shame doesn't help anyone stop. Researchers have found that feeling addicted tracks closely with moral conflict about watching, not only with how much people watch. Feeling disgusted with yourself makes the habit feel bigger and harder to talk about.
You can see it in small ways. On r/pornfree, people describe being scared of anyone picking up their phone. Several said the best part of quitting wasn't feeling sharper. It was handing a friend their phone without thinking twice.
Why I'm building Sherpa
Here's what I believe. Porn is a fast, cheap button. People press it when they're tired, lonely, bored or putting off something hard.
Of course, self-control matters. It does. But self-control at 3am after a bad week is a weak plan. Blockers can help too, and Sherpa has one. But in the posts we read, people mentioned hobbies and exercise about twice as often as blockers.
So Sherpa starts somewhere else. It asks what you'd want your days to look like. Then it helps you build them, one small step at a time. A run before class. Dinner with people who make you laugh. Then you're tired in the good way, from a day that actually happened.
It's easier to walk away from something when you've got somewhere else to go. That's the whole idea.
Why we should talk about it
Talking about it plainly does two things. It makes the problem smaller, because it stops being a secret. And it makes help easier to find, because people know what to look for.
If this is you, you don't have to tell everyone. Telling one person you trust is a lot. Sherpa can be that "person" for you.
In the next post, I go through what Sherpa does about each of these findings: What 12,445 posts about quitting porn taught us, and what we built because of it.
Key findings
- Porn sites are among the most visited sites in the world. Pornhub ranked 25th, xHamster 27th and XVideos 34th worldwide (Similarweb, August 2026).
- About 11% of US men and 3% of US women say they're addicted to pornography (Grubbs, Kraus & Perry, 2019, n = 2,075).
- Only 14% of people at high risk of compulsive sexual behaviour have ever sought treatment (International Sex Survey, 2023, n = 82,243, 42 countries).
- It's mostly adults with a long history. In r/pornfree posts, the median stated age was 23.5, 44% were 25 or older, and the median time struggling was 10 years (Sherpa analysis of 12,445 posts, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026).
- It usually starts young. Among posts that said when it began, the median starting age was 12, and 86% started before 16 (same analysis, 323 posts).
- About 1 in 5 posters who stated a gender were women (same analysis).
- Most relapses come early. The median streak reported before a relapse was 8 days. 44% were under a week and 4.5% passed 90 days (same analysis, 289 reports).
- It happens late. Half of the clock times people named fell between 10pm and 4am, peaking at 3am (same analysis, 170 times named).
- Loneliness was the feeling named most often, in 7.9% of posts (same analysis).
How we did this
- What we read: every r/pornfree post from October 15, 2025 to October 15, 2026, from the Arctic Shift research archive of Reddit.
- What we dropped: removed and deleted posts, and any post that looked like it was written by someone under 18.
- How we counted: with plain keyword patterns. For example, "relapsed after 4 days", a clock time like "3am", or "since I was 12". We report counts only, never post text, and we kept no usernames.
- The limit: this is a self-selected group of people trying to quit. The numbers describe them, not everyone who watches porn.
The two posts shown above are shared without usernames.
The aggregate numbers are in a downloadable file: sherpa-findings-2026-10.csv.
Questions people ask
Is porn addiction real?
The World Health Organization lists compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in ICD-11, the international list of health conditions. Researchers still debate whether "addiction" is the right word. But surveys consistently find a real share of adults who feel unable to control their use and are distressed by it.
When does a porn habit usually start?
In our analysis of r/pornfree, the median starting age people gave was 12, and 86% started before 16. A 2026 Common Sense Media survey of young people aged 13 to 17 found more than half had seen porn by age 12.
Why do so many people relapse in the first week?
In our analysis, the median streak before a relapse was 8 days. The first week is when old routines are strongest and new ones haven't formed yet. Setting up your evenings tends to matter more than willpower.
Do women struggle with this too?
Yes. About 3% of US women say they're addicted, and about 1 in 5 r/pornfree posters who stated a gender were women. Most quit porn apps still talk only to men.
Sources
- Similarweb rankings via Wikipedia, List of most-visited websites, August 2026
- Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019), Self-reported addiction to pornography in a nationally representative sample, Journal of Behavioral Addictions (PMC)
- Dickenson et al. (2018), JAMA Network Open (PMC)
- Bőthe et al. (2023), Compulsive sexual behavior disorder in 42 countries, Journal of Behavioral Addictions (summary)
- Common Sense Media (2026), Teens in the AI Era: Pornography and Sexual Content, n = 1,314 aged 13 to 17 (report)
- WHO ICD-11, compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (6C72)
- r/pornfree membership: GummySearch, mid-2026
- Sherpa analysis of r/pornfree, October 2026
