The accessibility of pornography in our hypersexualized culture is trapping not only men but women into its poisonous clutches, as we’ve written about in our Women and Pornography publication. Only after being trapped in addiction is our generation realizing the devastating effects that it has on their mind, body, and soul.
And for Gracelyn Sorrell, 19, that’s exactly what pornography was like to her—a drug. “I couldn’t live without it.”
This female teen opened up to Fox News recently about conquering her pornography addiction.
Sorrell’s first exposure to pornography was at 14 years old (which is around the typical age tweens/teens first get exposure to pornographic material), “when an explicit picture on social media triggered her ‘impure desires’ and prompted her to delve further into X-rated websites.”
Porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. Even social media sites such as Twitter are home to an estimated 10 million porn accounts.
Gracelyn said pornography became a way to comfort herself and escape from the grief of losing her father and being sexually assaulted by women.
“My phone was the easiest way I could access porn,” she said. “I could sneak around and do it in the afternoon when I got home from school, and my mom was at work…I was watching about four hours of porn every day.” She even began to have trouble focusing and keeping her grades up in school and found herself distracted when she was with family and friends.
Her story is not uncommon. Current statistics show that 61 percent of all pornography is now consumed on mobile devices. Three percent of all women say they either thought they might be addicted or are unsure if they are addicted to pornography—this equates to three million women. According to one report, “76 percent of 18 to 30-year-old American women report that they watch porn at least once a month.”
As a Christian, Sorrell felt like she was leading a double life. She eventually admitted to her mother that she had a porn addiction and began journaling as a way of praying to God. She also started deleting apps on her phone that could tempt her “self-control.”
“I felt like that transparency helped me get back on track,” she says. Today, Sorrell spends her time ministering to others about purity and freedom in Christ.
If you or someone you know is struggling with this, there is help. As Sorrell has found, freedom and forgiveness abound in fullness at the foot of the Cross, but the first step is confessing it. Sin festers in the darkness and tricks its victims into believing that they are safer in the dark than they are in the light. Who better to lead a generation out of the clutches of pornography than the ones who have already fought and won? In the darkness you are a victim, in the light you are a warrior. In the darkness is defeat, and in the light, there is victory.
As God is transforming hearts, we have a duty to do everything we can to help increase the cultural atmosphere’s freedom to thrive. FRC and other advocates such as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and state representatives have joined the #fixappratings campaign to hold tech companies accountable for the damage they are doing to young minds. As the campaign website states, “Many apps popular with youth are incorrectly self-rated and include dishonest and generic app descriptions that deceive parents about the dangers kids face on these platforms.”
The images Sorrell were exposed to were, in her own words, “dehumanizing especially to women. It’s not healthy to watch. I wish it could all just be taken off the Internet for good.” Typical scenes of pornography depict violence towards women, and we must stop and think about what type of impact this has on healthy sexual development and attitudes towards women, as I testified here.
Because apps such as Instagram and Twitter are so popular among youth and our generation, they provide the easiest access to explicit pornographic content. This should be a public concern.
Join child advocates around the country who are calling for accurate app ratings and descriptions due to the rise of online grooming, sex trafficking, pornography, and sexual exploitation.
