Still Watching: A Year in the Life of Problematic Porn Use and Mental Distress
Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Let’s start with the bad news: if you’re struggling with pornography use in a way that feels out of control, chances are... you still will be six months from now.
And a year after that.
At least according to a massive new longitudinal study published in Addictive Behaviors.
The good news? You’re not alone.
And there may be more emotional logic to your behavior than the moral panic machine gives you credit for.
The Setup: One Big, Nervous Sample
Robin Engelhardt and a team of researchers from Bundeswehr University and several U.S. institutions followed 4,363 American adults for a year—checking in at three points (Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023).
The sample spanned ages 18 to 96, skewed slightly toward the middle-aged, and included an oversample of sports bettors for statistical robustness. (It seems people who gamble also tend to binge-watch other things. Go figure.)
The research question was simple: Does problematic porn use change over time? And how tightly is it linked to mental distress?
The answers: Not much. And very.
The Metrics: Cravings, Clicking, and Crashing
To measure problematic pornography use, the team used the Brief Pornography Screen—a five-item test that asks whether you’re using porn in ways that cause problems or feel hard to control. A score of 4+ flagged you as potentially dysregulated.
To measure mental distress, they bundled together two well-known and reliable instruments: the GAD-2 (for anxiety) and the PHQ-9(for depression).
I use these with my clinic clients on a regular basis. Think of it as a snapshot of your brain when it’s not doing so hot.
What they found, across all three waves of data, was alarmingly consistent:
67% of people stayed in the “no problem” zone the entire year.
14% stayed in the “yes, this is a problem” category the whole time.
Only a small group moved between the two—some for better, some for worse.
In other words: for most people, whatever struggle they had with pornography was remarkably stable—a trait, not a temporary crisis.
The Big Link: Dysregulation and Distress, Holding Hands
Here’s the headline: people who had trouble regulating their porn use also tended to report more anxiety and depression. The connection was strong and consistent.
And this wasn’t just a fluke. It wasn’t just that bad days lead to binges.
The researchers found what they called a “trait-like relationship”—meaning problematic porn use and psychological distress were less like cause and effect, and more like two flavors of the same internal storm.
As Engelhardt put it:
“Problematic pornography use appears a part of psychological distress—and psychological distress a part of problematic pornography use.”
That’s not a sexy soundbite. But it is an important one.
But Wait—There’s a Twist
The researchers also tried to answer a second question: Does distress lead to more porn use over time—or vice versa?
The answer? Not really.
Surprisingly, they found a tiny, negative short-term effect.
When someone reported an increase in distress at one time point, they were actually slightly less likely to report an increase in porn dysregulation six months later. And when porn use ticked up, distress didn’t necessarily follow—it sometimes went down.
This was unexpected.
Every therapist and pop psychology influencer on the internet will tell you that problematic behaviors and distress chase each other in circles. But this study says: not so fast.
So what gives?
Coping Mechanism or Catch-22?
The authors offered a few plausible explanations.
First: porn might work—temporarily.
Not as a solution, but as a nervous system band-aid. Feeling anxious? Depressed?
The dopamine hit of porn may calm the storm—for a moment.
But as any dopamine-chasing brain will tell you, the relief is short-lived. And over time, the pattern becomes less about pleasure and more about managing distress with a screen.
Second: depression can dampen sexual desire.
If you’re truly in the hole—flattened, numbed, or existentially adrift—you might not have the energy to click anything, much less feel pleasure doing it. So distress may suppress porn use in the short term, creating misleading data about cause and effect.
These explanations aren’t mutually exclusive. They suggest a grim but human reality: pornography may act as both a sedative and a source of shame, a release valve that ultimately rusts the machine.
What This Means (and Doesn’t)
Let’s be clear: this study didn’t measure how often people used porn. It measured how out of control they felt, and how that overlapped with emotional suffering.
So this isn’t a morality play. This is about dysregulation—when something becomes a maladaptive coping tool that stops being a choice and starts being a reflex.
The big takeaway?
Problematic porn use doesn’t fluctuate much.
It’s deeply tied to mental distress.
And short-term changes in one don’t reliably predict changes in the other.
In a world that loves blaming porn for everything and also trivializing it as “just a guy thing,” this data lives in the uncomfortable middle.
It suggests that problematic porn use may be less a behavior problem and more a distress signal—a blinking check engine light on the emotional dashboard.
What’s Next?
The researchers recommend a few things:
Longer studies to track these dynamics beyond a single year.
Finer-grained, daily tracking to see what happens in real time.
Clinical trials to see if reducing porn dysregulation improves mental health—or if it just changes the flavor of the problem.
Until then, therapists, coaches, and curious bystanders might do well to stop asking “Why are you watching?” and start asking “What are you trying not to feel?”
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Engelhardt, R., Geppert, R., Grubbs, J. B., von Oertzen, T., Trommer, D., Maes, J., & Kraus, S. W. (2024). Problematic pornography use and psychological distress: A longitudinal study in a large US sample. Addictive Behaviors, 150, 107872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2024.107872