porn addiction can lead to an interest in child pornography

Fight The New Drug tells the story of a teen in Mustang OK arrested on child pornography charges after cops found a large collection in his home. The article includes good information about the effects of addiction to pornography.

For some consistent porn viewers, after a while, “regular” porn just doesn’t do it for them anymore. Just like any other drug or behavioral addiction like gambling, research has shown that porn is a behavior that escalates. And for some people, porn use can eventually evolve into a curiosity or an appetite for violent porn or child pornography.

Someone who looks at child porn may have had a longtime interest in legal porn. The fact that he has looked at child porn does not mean that his sexual interest has changed from an interest in adults to an interest in children anymore than looking at gay porn means the viewer is now gay or looking at straight porn makes gays straight.

Every day, children are filmed while they’re sexually abused and the content is then distributed worldwide. It’s a booming underground industry that continues to grow year after year.

Driving child porn underground may seem like the best idea for something we wish were not available at all but if we care about the children in the images who have been abused, we should be making it more possible to see those images, to keep the evidence of those crimes visible. Abusers count on their crimes going undiscovered and that is no way to put an end to the abuse.

We cannot let our distaste--our horror--of those images stand in the way of stopping the abuse.

While some child-porn viewers can be classified with a diagnosable disorder of pedophilia, others find themselves attracted to children after years of legal porn use.

Attracted to children or drawn to illegal images of children? The distinction is important and usually ignored.

Not only is child pornography damaging to the viewer, it creates a demand and when there is a demand there will always be a supplier ready to make money off of it.

There may be some sites that charge fees but most child porn available through the Internet is free.

Child porn viewers do not appear out of thin air, they develop with a history of “regular” pornography use. Porn use is a slippery slope to ideas and behavior that negatively affect the individual and our society as a whole.

Fight the New Drug is a non-profit whose mission is...

...to raise awareness on the harmful effects of pornography through creative mediums.

Their website is full of information about the effects of pornography. It is worth spending some time there.