More than half of Christians are watching adult films, researchers say

More than 50% of U.S. Christians acknowledge consuming sexually explicit material, and 22% say they do so weekly, according to an evangelical research firm.

The Barna Group recently reported that its survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. adults found a 6-percentage-point increase in men’s consumption of adult material since 2015, from 55% to 61%, and a 5-point increase among women, from 39% to 44%.

The 2023 Barna survey was conducted with an intentional oversample of those who regularly attend church, identify as Christian and cite their beliefs as the core of their daily lives. At the 95% confidence level, the survey had a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.

The survey also asked users about their responses to using explicit materials: 84% of all users said they deal with this issue alone, and few seek outside help.

“I think there’s a lot of shame tied up in explicit pornography use,” said the Rev. Garrett Kell, pastor of Del Ray Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and author of “Pure in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of God.”

Mr. Kell, who once struggled with what he describes as a “debilitating addiction,” said the emotional and spiritual fallout is too heavy to handle alone.

“People look to it for intimacy and connection — things that God designed us to desire. But it’s a counterfeit of the joy only God can give, and it often leads to deeper struggles like depression and isolation,” he said.

As the church encourages openness, congregants will find accountability and spiritual support, Mr. Kell said.

Marty Klein, a sex therapist and author in Palo Alto, California, said the increased use may be driven by differences in Christian viewpoints on explicit content. This disparity reflects an evolving conversation around modern sexuality, he said, but he doesn’t see that as a negative.

“There’s a spectrum of Christian views on sexuality,” Mr. Klein told The Washington Times. “Some Christians see sexuality as a divine gift, which creates different interpretations on matters like explicit content and masturbation. Not every Christian believes the same thing about what it means to manage that gift.”

Other researchers say Christians’ struggles with explicit content may stem from beliefs about the nature of explicit content rather than the behavior itself.

Nicole Prause, a Los Angeles-based neuroscientist, pointed out that people often experience guilt and shame because they perceive explicit content as a social ill that especially targets women.

“If someone believes that all women in explicit content are being exploited, they may feel they’re participating in abuse just by watching,” said Ms. Prause, a full member of the International Academy of Sex Research. “Obviously, if you think that, you’re likely to feel awful about yourself.”

A quick online search seems to lend support to that idea. Fight the New Drug, a nonprofit anti-pornography organization based in Utah, reported that a PubMed study that analyzed “hundreds of the most popular explicit content scenes … found that 88.2% contained physical violence or aggression. They also found that 48.7% contained verbal aggression.” Other studies repeatedly showed women as the targets of this violence, the report said.

Researchers seem to be at odds over whether aggression in explicit content translates into aggression in real-life sexual experiences.

Christopher Ferguson, professor and co-chair of psychology at Stetson University in Florida, said in his findings that evidence linking exposure to explicit pornography with increased sexual aggression remains thin and uncertain, suggesting more complexity than causality.

A recent meta-analysis in the Journal of Communication found consumption to be linked to sexual aggression worldwide, affecting men and women across various studies. Stronger associations were found for verbal rather than physical aggression, and violent content could be heightening this risk, the researchers reported.

“Pornography is the training ground for abuse in our sexual culture,” said Carl Trueman, a Grove City College professor and longtime writer at the Christian journal First Things.

Mr. Trueman said the Christian argument against explicit content wouldn’t be radically different, even if violence were not a factor. Instead, he said, the basis for their dissent is rooted throughout Christian theology.

“Christians have historically objected to explicit pornography, usually on the grounds that it promotes lust. We have the comment of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: that whoever’s looked lustfully at a woman has committed adultery with her in his heart,” Mr. Trueman said. “So clearly, there are Christians historically being very sensitive to see [sex] as not merely being a body — an action of the body — but as being something that has its root in the will in the mind. That renders us just as guilty, in a sense, as any bodily action.”

‘The ubiquity of the internet’

Joshua Grubbs, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico, has studied Christian use of explicit content for more than a decade. He said the shift toward open use doesn’t indicate a fundamental change in values but rather a pragmatic acceptance.

“Back in the early 2000s, church leaders often said that if a man viewed explicit content, he wasn’t fit to lead,” said Mr. Grubbs, an investigator at the Center on Alcohol, Substance Use and Addictions. “But at some point, they realized: ‘If that’s the standard, then no men would be left to lead.’

“It’s not that Christians are now saying explicit content is OK,” he said, “but they’re acknowledging that it’s a reality for many people.”

The numbers bring that to bear. In 2023, the U.S. adult film industry raked in $1.15 billion — matching the revenue of the NCAA and underscoring explicit content’s vast reach, according to data from FHE Health, a behavioral health treatment facility in Florida.

Adult content is also available on 12% of all websites, and the sheer volume is staggering. Viewing them all would require one visit per day for 84 years. In the past year alone, up to 80% of men in the U.S. tuned in, FHE reported.

Mr. Trueman said the proliferation of adult films is directly tied to internet access.

“I think it’s the ubiquity of the internet. … I don’t think today’s young men are intrinsically any more evil than the young men of my generation,” he said, and the typical social shame mechanisms don’t apply anymore.

“In my generation, if I’d wanted to indulge in pornography, I’d got to actually go to that creepy cinema, or I’d got to be seen buying that dubious magazine from the sleazy bookshop. It could have been spotted by a neighbor or by my grandparents, something like that,” Mr. Trueman said.

As self-reported explicit content addiction rates grow, Ms. Prause said, research links “addictive” explicit content behaviors with narcissism, wherein people externalize their struggles as problems caused by explicit content rather than taking personal responsibility.

“There’s often a victim mentality where people feel like the ‘explicit content industry’ is against them,” she said. “But that’s often more about self-perception than the act of watching explicit content itself.”

NoFap, a secular movement promoting abstinence from explicit content and masturbation, often emphasizes this “battle mentality” of resistance against a sort of societal conspiracy targeting masculinity. Ms. Prause said that view reinforces narcissistic rather than moral attitudes.

Depression also likely plays a role, she said.

“We’re literally just getting data on this — so [the study] is not published — but overwhelmingly, people who think they have explicit pornography problems would qualify for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder,” Ms. Prause said.

“Well, you say, OK, then if you’re using explicit content, it’s because maybe you’re isolating, maybe it’s the one thing that still brings you pleasure. That’s a very, very common pattern with major depressive disorder,” she said. “Our hypothesis is a lot of people who think they’re struggling with porn issues actually have another underlying issue. It just happens to manifest in that domain for them.”

Mr. Klein, the sex therapist, said meaningful discussions about explicit content among Christians start with a fundamental question about attitudes toward sexuality as a whole. Adult videos, he said, are almost exclusively used in the context of masturbation, which he believes is the real subject of a much-needed conversation among Christian groups.

“If a person can’t accept that masturbation is legitimate, then porn is going to be viewed as inherently troubling,” he said.

Mr. Klein said religious communities can facilitate a more constructive conversation by understanding what’s behind an individual’s struggle and focusing first on beliefs about personal practices.

The Barna study shows that those conversations are happening much less than churchgoers would like. Just 10% of Christians said their churches offer help to those struggling, even though 58% of congregants said the issue is important to address.

“That is an abdication of pastoral responsibility,” said Mr. Kell, the pastor. “So whatever church is not addressing this from the pulpit and in small groups and in normal one-on-one conversations, I think it’s pastoral negligence.”

Many Christians feel that acknowledging explicit content use openly, rather than avoiding the subject, is essential to helping congregants, he said.

Mr. Kell said faith communities need to offer support that goes beyond moral condemnation.

“We’re not just training people to avoid lust; we’re helping them respect themselves and others,” he said.

As more Christians acknowledge the realities of adult film, these perspectives reveal an evolving openness and the desire for compassionate, practical support.

“People need to know they’re not alone,” Mr. Kell said. “No matter where they’re coming from, that’s the first step.”

In the meantime, Mr. Trueman said, focusing on pragmatic acceptance within the church risks compromising core beliefs.

“If we shrug it off as inevitable, what does that say about our values?” he asked.