A 19-year-old girl has admitted to becoming addicted to porn at the age of eight and that it has had a devastating impact on her life reports DailyMail.
She began by watching ordinary porn but as time progressed she got into harder core porn that skewed her view of sex and led to violent and degrading relationships.
The girl who wished to be known only as Rebecca spoke of her addiction with Tom Tilley on last nightโs airing of Australians on Porn on the ABC2.
โWhen I first started watching porn, I would just watch kind of I guess โnormalโ or โvanillaโ porn, just heterosexual, just run of the mill,โ Rebecca told the ABC.
โAnd then as I got older it started becoming more violent, more aggressive and demeaning, I guess. I would watch it kind of multiple times a day and I felt like I couldnโt stop.
โI think I definitely lost control of my sexuality watching the really violent porn and things like bestiality.โ
ยฉABC
It was when Rebecca began her own sexual exploration that the true effects of porn became apparent as she felt that the submissive role often portrayed in porn is how sex should be, so she sought violence and degradation from her partners.
โLooking back now, a 16-year-old shouldnโt have been engaging in really violent sex where there wasnโt a huge amount of respect or love involved,โ Rebecca said.
Rebecca is now seeking therapy for her addiction and she hopes to have a mutually respectful relationship in the future.
โRetrospectively I wish Iโd never seen it.โ
A University of Sydney, Australia, study found that the average first exposure to porn is age 11 and that 80% of 15 to 17 year olds have had multiple exposures to hard core porn. It is an epidemic in our society and that is where many teenagers are learning about sex.