The question usually arrives as a moral one and gets answered as a moral one, loudly, in both directions. This page will not do that. The app does not hold a position on masturbation, and the evidence base does not contain one either.
What the research measures is much narrower than the argument. Frequency alone is a poor indicator of problematic use; distress, impaired control and functional impairment are what distinguish it. Problematic use also tracks distress better than overall frequency does — in the largest profile study, people who used frequently without distress and people who used frequently with it came out as separable groups, and it was the second group that differed on depressive symptoms and self-esteem. None of that turns on whether a screen was involved.
So "does it count" is not an empirical question. It is a rule you are writing, in advance, and the honest thing the evidence can do is tell you what each version of the rule tends to cost.
If you rule it in — no porn, no masturbation — you have chosen the wider rule. Know that the abstinence literature behind it is thinner than the internet implies: a systematic review of 47 prospective short-term abstinence studies across six behaviours found abstinence shows promise for pornography use, while noting that counterproductive effects, meaning rebound and compensatory behaviour, were poorly measured. Promising, and barely tested for backfire. The practical cost is surface area. A wider rule has more ways to be broken, and every breach is an occasion to conclude something about yourself.
If you rule it out — porn is the target, masturbation is not — you have chosen the narrower rule. It breaks less often and needs no adjudication most nights, which is a real advantage and not a cheat. Its cost is different: if what you are replaying is a scene you used to watch, the cue has not gone anywhere, and a rule that says everything is fine will keep saying so. Better to know that about yourself than to be caught by it in a month.
Write whichever you choose down before you need it, edge cases included. The reason is not discipline. It is that an unwritten rule is retroactive — whatever happened tonight turns out to have been inside it, every time — and you lose the only feedback this exercise produces.
The part that actually predicts what happens next is not which rule you picked. It is what you conclude when you break it. Marlatt's relapse-prevention model identifies the Abstinence Violation Effect: after a lapse, attributing it to a permanent personal flaw predicts a full return to the behaviour. A rule you can breach without passing a verdict on your character is worth more than a rule that is technically stricter.
Both versions are legitimate, and people do well on each. Choosing one deliberately is the exercise. Drifting between them, so that whatever happened was always allowed, is the failure mode this page is really about.
Where this comes from
Read the full lesson: Abstinence or reduction? →
Sources and how strong they are (4)
- Well establishedFrequency of use alone is a poor indicator of problematic use. Distress, impaired control and functional impairment are what distinguish it.Bőthe et al. 2018, 2020; ICD-11 CSBD criteria
- Well establishedProblematic pornography use tracks distress better than overall frequency of use does. People who use frequently without distress and people who use frequently with it are distinguishable, and it is the problematic group that differs on mental-health measures - most clearly on depressive symptoms and self-esteem.Bothe et al. 2020, J Sex Med 17(4):793-811, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.01.007
- Mixed evidenceA systematic review of 47 prospective short-term abstinence studies across six behaviours found abstinence shows promise for pornography use, while noting that counterproductive effects — rebound, compensatory behaviour — were poorly measured.Fernandez, Kuss & Griffiths 2020, Clinical Psychology Review
- Well establishedMarlatt's relapse-prevention model identifies the Abstinence Violation Effect: after a lapse, attributing it to a permanent personal flaw predicts a full return to the behaviour.Marlatt & Gordon 1985; Curry et al. 1987
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