“My husband has a corn [sic] addiction, I’m going to answer some questions about it!” So begins a video by Madison Loftin, an influencer who makes content about her experiences of being married to someone struggling with a so-called porn addiction.
On her TikTok profile, at times moved to tears, she answers questions from followers about the struggles within her marriage. “My heart breaks for younger Maddie, who thought I wasn’t enough and that was why my husband didn’t want to be intimate with me,” she says in another video. On Instagram, she has a shared account with her husband Kyle, where they make content about their mutual “healing journey”: him creating content about his 12-step program, her discussing feelings of betrayal from throughout their marriage.
Over email, Madison shares why she thinks so many have resonated with her content, which has racked up 1.8 million likes across various posts on TikTok. “So many can unfortunately relate to [my content] because so many people struggle with [porn] addiction and many have been hurt by it,” she writes. However, there are detractors; mostly people online who encourage her to leave her husband. “The response has been 75% positive: people appreciate the vulnerability especially on a topic that isn’t talked about enough,” she explains. “The negative 25% is just people saying I don’t respect myself because I stay with my husband and normally it doesn’t bother me because I’ve seen how many people can relate.”
There’s no doubt that Madison’s content has hit a nerve, and it’s part of a wider genre: Christian and, in particular, Mormon, couples making videos exploring the impact of porn on their marriages. The Loftins are Mormon, and Madison makes frequent reference to her belief in God throughout her content. The genre includes micro-influencers like Hunter Clark and Candice Diaz, who explore ideas of ‘porn addiction’ while also documenting efforts for men to stay ‘clean’ from porn. However, thanks to the power of the internet to rip conversations from their specific roots or cultural context and push them onto FYPs everywhere, this subculture, and, in particular, LDS’ cultural norms around porn, is being exposed to a mainstream audience—one primed to accept it by an increasingly conservative worldview.
The concept of porn addiction is, in the first place, controversial. Porn addiction is not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), one of the main guides that dictates diagnosable mental health conditions. And, research has largely failed to support the idea that porn is actually addictive. Still, there are legions of people, particularly men, who say they are addicted to porn, that it’s ruined their social and dating lives, even destroyed their finances. According to Dr. Paula Hall, a sexual and relationship psychotherapist, “the term ‘porn addiction’ is the layman’s term for Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder and, according to the World Health Organization, it includes any sexual behavior, such as porn use, that is causing significant harmful consequences to a person but despite those consequences, the person usage is dysregulated and they feel unable to stop.”
But that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about. Many viral posts about porn addiction on TikTok are posted by Mormon or other religious influencers, and in that context, the threshold for so-called addiction is much, much lower.
“What’s worth noting is that porn addiction is different in the LDS church,” says Melissa Hannan, LMFT, who grew up in the Church of Latter Day Saints and now specializes in counselling former LDS members. “Any viewing of pornography would be considered a ‘porn addiction’. The church considers any sexual behaviour outside of partnered sex in the context of marriage to be a sin.” Yes, this includes masturbation and, by extension, porn. “Masturbation is considered a grave sin. Watching pornography is also considered a serious sin, as it is an adjunct activity of masturbation,” she adds. “Neither are permitted in any way.”
Online, Mormon porn addiction content often pulls on an emotional thread, largely proliferated by women who explain the hurt their husband’s porn use has caused in their relationship. They often see porn use as a threat to the intimacy and validity of their monogamous arrangement. So, when this content escapes religious circles, it can feel relatable regardless of someone’s particular attitudes about porn. “Many women have shared their stories of feeling hurt and betrayed by their partner’s porn use with the aim of supporting other partners,” says Dr. Hall. “The pain is almost always caused by the feelings of betrayal because of being lied to and feelings of sexual rejection, not by the viewing of porn itself.” This feeling is amplified for women of the Mormon faith, with Hannan explaining that “LDS women would consider pornography use to be akin to infidelity, with all the associated feelings of shame and betrayal that would come with it.”
For Hunter Clark, posting about his porn addiction has helped disrupt some of that shame. An LDS creator with about 20,000 followers on Instagram, Clark shares videos about his own journey with porn at different stages of his life. Despite his faith, Clark says porn addiction is not quite so black and white. “I do think people can have good relationships with porn but if you want to stop and can’t, even though it’s hurting your family based on your beliefs, I would consider it to be a toxic relationship,” he says. “One of the best ways to help with shame is to actually talk about it. So that’s where I started to open up about my story.”
Clark says his male viewers are often polarized by his content. “I feel like my message attracts two types of people. One where it’s like, ‘Dude, what are you talking about? It’s just porn. You’re not injecting fentanyl’. The other side is like, ‘You need to repent, you need to go back to Jesus’,” he explains. “I’m trying to bring these two sides together.” However, Hunter also offers forms of coaching around overcoming porn use, and he notes that the majority of the people reaching out for these services are wives in the LDS church who are doing so on behalf of their husbands.
Considered in the context of the religion, this kind of content might be seen as a pawn in the Mormon church’s broader anti-porn agenda. After all, there are a number of influential groups from Utah, the headquarters of the LDS church, which have dedicated themselves to fighting porn and which are increasingly going digital. This includes Fight The New Drug, an anti-porn nonprofit which describes itself as “non-religious” in the bio for its Instagram page with a 300,000 -strong following, but which was notable founded by Clay Olsen of the LDS church. There’s also the Utah-based start-up Relay, which has created an accountability app to encourage men to stop using porn.
That might explain the content’s genesis, or its popularity in the LDS community. But what about its more widespread, secular reach? There’s something to be said for good old-fashioned gawking, our collective propensity to peer inside people’s sex lives. There’s also an argument to be made for the current obsession with Mormon culture—from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (which featured its very own porn addiction storyline) to The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, the group is clearly having a moment.
But more likely, this content’s popularity may be related to the current and general social backlash to porn. PornHub is currently blocked in 23 states and Republican politicians are trying to make porn a crime. And that’s just in the US: the tubesite is also blocked at the national level in France, Australia and the UK. It seems like governments are in all-out war with the adult industry, distracting themselves from the looming shadow of generative AI, which will surely become the wild west of adult content, by slapping ban after ban on online porn. Whether it’s a ‘think of the children’ stance, or blaming porn as the origin for misogyny, it’s a good time to be a prude in politics.
When the wider zeitgeist is dominated by moral panic around porn, it’s no wonder that fringe ideas about it are slowly coming to the center.