April 27, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When it comes to startling statistics, the hidden world of pornography consumption has them in spades.
For example, every second, $3,075.64 is being spent on porn, while 28,258 Internet users are viewing it. As of 2006 Big Porn was more lucrative than Google, Apple, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo!, and Netflix combined.
But perhaps the most startling of all is the age demographic: the largest group of Internet pornography consumers is between 17 and 12 years old.
Therapists now say we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of the havoc wreaked on this “Generation XXX” as it freely surfs the Internet – where 30 percent of all traffic is dedicated to porn. They describe grade-schoolers dropping out of school to spend the day at the computer feeding their porn addiction, while their real-life budding sexuality, trained on hardcore porn, is warped away from real relationships and towards an ever-growing appetite of voyeurism and violence.
Child therapist John Woods described in a Daily Mail article on Thursday how “Jamie,” 13, found himself addicted to hardcore pornography online before he had even kissed a girl in real life.
“At first I found it a bit scary and a bit yucky … I didn’t know it was possible for people to do those sort of things — and there were lots of nasty close-ups. But it gave me funny feelings and the pictures started to stick in my head,” the boy said, according to Woods.
“The websites led me to other websites and soon I was looking at even weirder stuff I could never have imagined — animals, children, stabbing and strangling. I stopped leaving my room and seeing my friends because when I was away from the pornography, I was dying to get back to see what else I could find.”
Woods described tales from other teens who found themselves longing for violent hardcore pornography scenarios when meeting with rejection from real-life women.
“I feel like stabbing her,” one 18-year-old gave as his usual reaction when rejected by a girl, according to Woods. The same boy admitted that he enjoyed “seeing women being hurt” and fantasized about strangling them – all the while thinking of suicide himself, because he feared that hardcore porn had ruined his chances at a real relationship forever.
Another case cited by Woods was Andrew, 13, who had sexually abused his five-year-old half-sister. “Due to his two years of constant porn use, he has built up a complex fantasy world — so it was no big step for him to try to involve her,” wrote Woods.
Monica Breaux PhD, an adults-only therapist and expert in sex addiction based in Arizona, said that Woods’ scenarios are all too accurate.
“My clients are primarily adult men seeking help for pornography compulsion, but I am painfully aware that experts report there is no way to prevent children from being exposed to pornography,” Breaux told LifeSiteNews.com in an email.
Breaux said the porn trap is especially pernicious for children, who have yet to develop a sense of boundaries against acting out what they have seen with others.
“Children are naturally drawn to images of other children as models of behavior. They pressure peers to view and imitate pornography,” she said. Meanwhile, “group sex, bestiality, and sadomasochism are prevalent in pornographic materials that children stumble upon.”
Breaux said porn’s “dehumanizing” effect can spread into a person’s entire life.
“We select people in the pornographic pictures for our personal slaves. We do not think of their hunger, their wounds, their need for our genuine love and concern,” the therapist said. “This slaveholder attitude creeps into our relationship skills.”
As a sex addict loses sight of others’ dignity, said Breaux, this assessment of the human person ultimately takes root in themselves, destroying their self-esteem.
When addicted to porn, “we go blind to the goodness within us, believing we are bad and unlovable,” she said. “My clients, who turned to pornography to soothe their loneliness and emotional pain, tell me ‘Pornography ruined my life. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.’”
Woods cited a U.K. report that found four out of five 16-year-olds regularly access porn online. His own area in North London has seen 50 referrals for youths suffering from compulsive porn use in the past year.
“As a therapist, I am convinced that these images can be deeply traumatising to children — not least because a competitive market means that pornographers are trying to outdo each other to come up with the most extreme images,” he said.
“This contest to push the boundaries means that straight intercourse is considered too boring. Images of brutal anal sex and women being humiliated and degraded by two or more men at any one time are the new norms,” wrote Woods. “Some of the kids who regularly see such scenes will become conditioned to being aroused by only the most extreme practices at a critical state of their sexual development.”
Another alarming aspect of the dilemma is how easily it could be prevented: parents, he said, just aren’t in the room when kids are on the Internet. “Most parents simply have no idea of what their children are doing,” he said.
“In the Seventies and Eighties, parents were urged to ask: ‘Do you know where your child is?’ The urgent question parents should now ask is: ‘Do you know where your child is going online?’ because, in my view, where they wander on the web is potentially more dangerous.”
Without that control, the debilitating addiction could shatter a young person’s budding relationship skills and self-image for a lifetime.
Woods says Jamie told him he felt branded by the immense guilt of the addiction he had stumbled into – “as if it is written across my forehead” – and which was now completely out of his control.
“It still makes me think I might never have a proper girlfriend – because the pictures still come back to me sometimes. It make makes me want to shout, ‘Stop, stop,’” said the boy. “But sometimes they still won’t go away.”
Click here to learn more about pornography addiction.