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)
- 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
- Well establishedWhether compulsive pornography use is best modelled as an addiction is genuinely unresolved among researchers.Kraus et al. 2018; Grubbs et al. 2020; Prause critiques
- Well establishedMost people who use pornography do not have a problem with it. Profile studies typically place around three-quarters of users in a non-problematic group.Bőthe et al. 2020; Vaillancourt-Morel et al. 2017
- 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 et al. 2018, 2020; ICD-11 CSBD criteria
- 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 (N=82,243, 42 countries) 0.72% of women met the PPCS cut-off, 2.96% the PPCS-6 and 7.01% the Brief Pornography Screen, against 6.26%, 18.60% and 28.92% of men. A defensible general-population range for women is roughly 1-7%, and the spread is driven by which instrument and cut-off is used rather than by real disagreement. Whether women face greater stigma for use is asserted in the secondary literature but has not been measured.Bőthe et al. 2024, Addiction 119:928-950; Rissel et al. 2017 (1% of Australian women); Grubbs, Kraus & Perry 2019 (3% of US women). The "1-23%" this register used to carry is a background sentence in…
- 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.docs/premium.md, which records Nightshore Premium as a RevenueCat subscription; the course's own commercial position
The app adds Panic.
One tap for the moment an urge hits, offline, and an evening check-in that turns lessons like this one into a plan for your own triggers. Free.
Coming to iOS and Android.