I spent four years controlled by porn. I first was exposed at eight, and I became addicted at twelve. I believe very strongly that it leads to a devaluation of everyone. Even in the less dark material, I saw my view shift to the point that I could no longer talk to a woman professionally or personally. I couldn't look at a woman and truthfully say that I loved her, because I didn't. I just lusted after her. I didn't hold my own will. It was as freely altered by the porn as by me, and I found that I was weak. When I got into darker stuff (not really rape, but fetishes and more, all unnatural) I found that my will was gone. I longed to get home and to the internet, and leave everything behind. I was escaping from life.
And that is why, because at sixteen, I have no relationships with women, and I will have to build all from scratch and work hard to figure out what is true and what is not.
Answer this honestly, erothoniel....was it the porn controlling you, or your hormones controlling you? Survival of the human species (all species actually) is dependent on procreating, and since generally men don't live as long as women, it's beneficial for the species to start procreating much earlier than the current norms of our world dictate. I doubt you'll find a lot of 80-year-old men addicted to porn.
I, personally, don't believe we have as much free will as we are led to believe, but we are endowed with a brain that we can use to put up OUR OWN barriers to decrease our access to things we
truly want to give up. If you truly wanted to end your porn addiction at 12, you could have dismantled your computer, put it in a box, stuck it in storage, and signed up for as many meetings/groups/social outings as your waking hours would allow, so you would be too busy to extricate your computer out of storage.
I learned from my dog training expert that if your dog has a habit (like barking) that is self-rewarding, you must train an opposing behavior (like holding a ball in the dog's mouth) to over-ride and prevent the undesired behavior. Humans are different from the rest of the animal kingdom only in that we have a superior brain, which we can use to train ourselves, just as we would our pets. Conditioning an opposing behavior to extinguish the porn addiction would be a much better solution to internet porn, than to enact more laws and hire more law-enforcement personnel (who would, in turn, actually have to look at those porn sites to determine if they aren't "good" for you or if they violate the law....which means stricter porn laws would corrupt law enforcement officials, and "Net Cop" would be a job that many porn addicts would flock to).
Quit blaming the porn and the free access of it for your unhealthy relationship with it. The problem is your chemical makeup...not the existence of porn on the net.
