Before you change anything, get a picture of where you actually are. Not to judge it — to have something to compare against in six weeks, because memory is unreliable and progress is easy to miss.
Researchers who study this measure six things, not one. They come from a model used across compulsive behaviours: salience (how much mental space it takes up), mood modification (whether you use it to manage feelings), tolerance (whether you need more or different to get the same effect), withdrawal (how you feel when you can't), conflict (what it costs you — time, relationships, work, self-respect), and relapse (whether attempts to cut down keep failing).
Notice that "how many times a week" isn't on that list. Frequency is context. These six are the signal.
Answer honestly. These answers stay on this phone. They're written to your device's own storage, they aren't sent to us or to anyone else, and Delete my data in Settings erases them along with everything else. The single most useful thing you can do in the next five minutes is give yourself accurate numbers rather than flattering ones.
Takeaways
- Six components, not one number: salience, mood, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, relapse.
- Distress and conflict are the ones worth watching move.
- Your answers live on this phone. Nothing here is sent anywhere.
In the app, this lesson ends with a practice
Where are you right now?
Sources and how strong they are (3)
- Well establishedThe Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale measures problematic use through the six components of Griffiths' (2005) model - salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict and relapse. Not every instrument in the field is built this way: the Brief Pornography Screen, which produces the highest prevalence figures quoted at C05 and C06, is a short screen rather than a six-component measure. The tolerance subscale is three items, only one of which concerns content — "I gradually watched more 'extreme' porn, because the porn I watched before was less satisfying" — so most published escalation findings rest on one retrospective self-report question (see C55).
- Bőthe B, Tóth-Király I, Zsila Á, Griffiths MD, Demetrovics Z, Orosz G 2018, "The Development of the Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale (PPCS)", J Sex Res 55(3):395-406, doi:10.1080/00224499.2017.1291798, PMID 28276929
- 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 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
Questions this lesson answers
More on patterns in the app.
The full 41-lesson course is in the app, every claim graded the same way, and an evening check-in that maps your own patterns. Free.
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