In her 17-minute-long Tedx Göteborg talk, anti-porn movement organizer Maria Ahlin describes a man who first stumbled upon porn at age 6. He is 19 and still using it. He describes it this way: “To me, porn is a drug.” He admits he needs “more and more aggressive porn” to get “the same kick.”
Ahlin is chair of a Swedish youth organization, Changing Attitudes, which works to challenge the attitudes that lead to sex buying. From the CA website:
In a Swedish study from 2013, it emerged that 96% of upper secondary school boys (16 years) at some time consumed pornography. 70% of these consumed pornography at least once a week and 10% consumed pornography every day.
More than half of the girls (65%) had at least some experience of consuming pornography, almost [a] third (30%) did so at times – however, most girls consumed pornography less than once a week, and only a few consumed a lot.
Author and educator Ahlin has given more than 400 public talks. In her research, she has interviewed more than 500 people in prostitution, as well as thousands of sex offenders.
Watch the full video on the harms of porn and learn more about the anti-porn movement.
I’m so relieved to hear that some young people are awake to the destruction of porn. In their lives and the lives of their friends. It’s a creeping disease that will be hard for their generations to deal with. Misogyny and violence against women and children are already a sickness that I think leads to so much that ails humanity and our relationship to our home, Mother Earth.