Most content about quitting porn falls into one of two camps. One says porn is a brain-melting drug and everyone should stop immediately. The other says there's no such thing as a problem here and anyone who thinks otherwise has been got at by religion. Both camps are selling certainty they don't have.
Here's what the research actually supports, and what this course is built on.
A minority of people experience porn use as genuinely out of control, distressing, and damaging to their life. How large a minority depends entirely on how you define it — most studies land somewhere between well under 1% and around 10%. That's real. The World Health Organization recognises a related diagnosis, Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder, in ICD-11. The American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 does not include porn addiction, and that disagreement between two of the biggest diagnostic bodies in the world tells you how unsettled this is.
For most people, use isn't problematic. And here's the finding that reorganises everything: how often you use porn is a bad predictor of whether it's a problem for you. Someone who uses three times a week and feels fine is not in trouble. Someone who uses once a week, hates themselves for it, and can't stop despite trying, is.
Almost everything written about quitting porn is written by men, for men. This course isn't. Habit loops, urges, if-then plans, what to do after a slip — none of that is gendered, and it applies to you unchanged. The few lessons specific to one body or one kind of relationship are marked optional.
So this course won't tell you what your relationship with porn should be. It'll help you work out whether it's costing you something you care about — and if it is, hand you tools that have been tested rather than tools that were popular on a forum.
One more thing, because this course is going to spend a lot of time telling you to ask who benefits from what you're being told. Including us. Nightshore is a paid product. We make more money the longer you stay. We've still written a course that tells some of you to stop here and get on with your life — and if that's you, Settings has a Manage subscription link, put there on purpose. Apply the same filter to us that we're about to teach you to apply to everyone else.
You can also decide, partway through, that this isn't a problem for you. That's a legitimate outcome of this course, not a failure of it.
Quick check
Which is the better sign of a problem?
- How often you use
- How much control you feel you have
Reveal
Control, distress and cost are what separate a problem from a habit. Frequency is context.
Takeaways
- Frequency is a poor guide. Control, distress and cost are the signal.
- The two loudest camps are both more certain than the evidence allows.
- Deciding this isn't your problem is a legitimate way to finish this course.
In the app, this lesson ends with a practice
What made you open this course?
Sources and how strong they are (8)
- Well established"Pornography addiction" is not a diagnosis in DSM-5 or DSM-5-TR.
- APA, DSM-5-TR (2022), American Psychiatric Association Publishing, doi:10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787
- Well establishedICD-11 includes Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder (6C72), classified as an impulse control disorder rather than an addictive disorder. Pornography use can fall under it.
- WHO ICD-11, 6C72 — https://icd.who.int/browse/2025-01/mms/en#1630268048
- Well establishedWhether compulsive pornography use is best modelled as an addiction is genuinely unresolved among researchers.
- Kraus SW, Krueger RB, Briken P, First MB, Stein DJ, Kaplan MS, Voon V, Abdo CHN, Grant JE, Atalla E, Reed GM 2018, World Psychiatry 17(1):109-110, doi:10.1002/wps.20499, PMID 29352554, PMC5775124
- Grubbs JB, Hoagland KC, Lee BN, Grant JT, Davison P, Reid RC, Kraus SW 2020, Clin Psychol Rev 82:101925, doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101925, PMID 33038740
- Prause N, Janssen E, Georgiadis J, Finn P, Pfaus J 2017, Lancet Psychiatry 4(12):899, doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(17)30441-8, PMID 29179928
- Prause N 2017, Arch Sex Behav 46(8):2269-2274, doi:10.1007/s10508-017-1078-2, PMID 28940038
- Well establishedMost people who use pornography do not have a problem with it. Profile studies place most users in a non-problematic group, but how many depends on how the profiling is done: cluster analysis of 830 adults in Vaillancourt-Morel et al. 2017 put 75.5% in a "recreational" profile, while latent profile analysis across three samples in Bőthe et al. 2020 put 68-73% in non-problematic low-frequency use and 19-29% in non-problematic high-frequency use, leaving 3-8% in problematic high-frequency use.
- Vaillancourt-Morel MP, Blais-Lecours S, Labadie C, Bergeron S, Sabourin S, Godbout N 2017, J Sex Med 14(1):78-85, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2016.10.016, PMID 28011208
- Bőthe B, Tóth-Király I, Potenza MN, Orosz G, Demetrovics Z 2020, J Sex Med 17(4):793-811, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.01.007
- Mixed evidencePrevalence of problematic use has no single defensible number: it depends almost entirely on the instrument, the cut-off and the sample. In the largest standardised cross-national study the overall figure ranges from 3.2% (PPCS) to 16.6% (Brief Pornography Screen) across 42 countries. The Australian ASHR2 figure often quoted here — men 4%, women 1% — is something narrower: it is agreement with the single item "You feel you are addicted to pornography", asked only of respondents who had ever looked at pornography, which works out at roughly 3% of all men and 0.5% of all women.
- Rissel et al. 2017, J Sex Res 54(2):227-240, doi:10.1080/00224499.2016.1191597
- Bőthe et al. 2024, Addiction 119:928-950, doi:10.1111/add.16431
- Well establishedFrequency of use alone is a poor indicator of problematic use. Distress, impaired control and functional impairment are what distinguish it.
- Bőthe B, Tóth-Király I, Zsila Á, Griffiths MD, Demetrovics Z, Orosz G 2018, J Sex Res 55(3):395-406, doi:10.1080/00224499.2017.1291798, PMID 28276929 (PPCS development)
- Bőthe B, Tóth-Király I, Potenza MN, Orosz G, Demetrovics Z 2020, J Sex Med 17(4):793-811, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.01.007
- WHO ICD-11, 6C72 (clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines) — https://icd.who.int/browse/2025-01/mms/en#1630268048
- Kraus SW, Krueger RB, Briken P, First MB, Stein DJ, Kaplan MS, Voon V, Abdo CHN, Grant JE, Atalla E, Reed GM 2018, World Psychiatry 17(1):109-110, doi:10.1002/wps.20499, PMID 29352554, PMC5775124
- Mixed evidenceResearch on problematic pornography use has been predominantly male-focused, and data on women are comparatively sparse. In the largest standardised cross-national study — 82,243 respondents across 42 countries, but a self-selected sample that is 74% tertiary-educated and which the authors state is not probability-based — 0.72% of the women who completed the PPCS met its cut-off, 2.96% the PPCS-6 and 7.01% the Brief Pornography Screen, against 6.26%, 18.60% and 28.92% of men. The lower figures quoted for women come from probability samples asking a single self-perceived-addiction question: 1% in Australia and 3% in the United States. So the spread is partly instrument and cut-off, and partly that the low end and the high end are not measuring the same thing. Whether women face greater stigma for use is asserted in the secondary literature but has not been measured.
- Bőthe B, Nagy L, Koós M, Demetrovics Z, Potenza MN, International Sex Survey Consortium, Kraus SW 2024, Addiction 119(5):928-950, doi:10.1111/add.16431, PMID 38413365
- Rissel C, Richters J, de Visser RO, McKee A, Yeung A, Caruana T 2017, J Sex Res 54(2):227-240, doi:10.1080/00224499.2016.1191597, PMID 27419739 — 1% of Australian women, single-item self-perceived addiction
- Grubbs JB, Kraus SW, Perry SL 2019, J Behav Addict 8(1):88-93, doi:10.1556/2006.7.2018.134, PMID 30632378, PMC7044607 — 3% of US women, single-item self-perceived addiction
- Not a source for this entry — Klau et al. 2026, J Sex Med 23(6), doi:10.1093/jsxmed/qdag155: the route by which the "1-23%" figure this register used to carry arrived, and the reason it was dropped. The Polish 23% it passes on is traced in `source`; the Lewczuk 2022 paper behind it could not be resolved to a single record and is therefore not cited here as one.
- Well establishedNightshore is a paid subscription product, and companies in this market - apps, blockers, coaching, residential programmes, supplements - have a financial incentive favouring the addiction framing. This is a disclosure about the app and the market it sits in, not an empirical finding. This applies with extra force to AI sexual products, whose commercial model is open-ended generation: a generator has no last video the way a tube site has a last page, and the same incentive that favours the addiction framing here favours unlimited engagement there. Both statements are observations about who profits from what, not measured findings.
- docs/premium.md — this app's own commercial position, which the first half of the entry is a fact about
- Lapointe et al. 2025, doi:10.1007/s10508-025-03099-1
- Not cited as evidence of an effect, and not peer reviewed — Knox et al. 2025, arXiv:2511.14972
- Not cited as evidence of an effect, and not peer reviewed — Chen & Hiniker 2026, arXiv:2609.14696
More evidence in the app.
The full 41-lesson course is in the app, and every claim in it is graded the same way as the ones you just read. Free.
Coming to iOS and Android.