John (pseudonym) was enjoying a peaceful weekend away with his wife when he received a harrowing phone call from a neighbor:
“The police are in your house. They’re looking for you.”
But he knew exactly what it was about. Without a second thought. For months, John had been viewing and sharing child sexual abuse material.
His wife was left speechless.
“Why?” she wondered. Ostensibly, it’s a simple question, but the answer is profoundly complex.
John informed her that his pornography addiction had spiraled and led him down a much more menacing path: chat rooms where people exchanged sexually explicit images and videos of minors.
“I didn’t start out wanting to see kids,” John reflected. “Those first videos start to become boring. Your brain starts to say, that’s not good enough. Soon you are watching rape fantasies – there are loads of categories like this on mainstream sites. Then it’s teenagers. The algorithms keep showing you more extreme stuff.”
Cases of pornography usage escalating to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offenses are, unfortunately, not an anomaly. It’s vital to address the root causes of CSAM offenses, so that we can effectively combat it.
Here are the facts.
When “Adult Pornography” Usage Spirals into CSAM Offenses
For some users, pornography usage can escalate quickly, spiraling into a seemingly inescapable addiction or compulsion that leaves users seeking more and more.
Research has found that the more frequently a user views pornography, the more they seek “novel” content.
Given that the Internet provides an endless variety, seeking novelty in pornography is remarkably easy. “Novelty” refers to content with new or unique themes, which in the context of pornography, sometimes means more violent, degrading and disturbing—including rape, other types of physical violence, shocking themes such as incest, and even child sexual abuse material. This is often how compulsive pornography usage leads to the viewing of child sexual abuse material and in some cases, physically committing child sexual abuse, as a meta-analysis of 59 independent studies found.
A study that anonymously surveyed 4,549 individuals who have searched for CSAM on a dark web search engine found that 40% reported habitually viewing adult pornography before searching for CSAM. Additionally, 12% of respondents explicitly stated that they viewed CSAM because they were desensitized to adult pornography.
Like with other addictions or compulsive behaviors, not everyone who uses pornography escalates to its most extreme forms. And anyone who views child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is fully responsible for that criminal act, which directly fuels the demand for more abuse to be inflicted and recorded. At the same time, it’s crucial that we, as a society, recognize how pornography often serves as fuel to a fire—especially given how many people are exposed to it and how serious the consequences are when even a minority percentage go on to view CSAM.
The Importance of Protecting Children from Pornography
The harmful impact of pornography is exacerbated when a person is exposed during their childhood or adolescence, when their brain is still developing and most vulnerable.
A 2024 study which surveyed 8,484 individuals who searched for CSAM found that 70% of respondents said that they first saw CSAM when they were under the age of 18. Nearly 40% said that they were under 13. This emphasizes just how dangerous pornography exposure is to kids, and how easy it is for them to escalate to illegal content.
This is why it is so important that we protect children from pornography, through legislation like Age Verification or the Safer Devices for Kids Act.
These are common-sense measure that simply close gaps between the way the offline and online worlds are governed. Just like a child can’t walk into a brick-and-mortar store to purchase a pornographic magazine or DVD, so too should children be protected from online pornography.
We have had significant victories lately on this front! In June 2025, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that required pornography websites use age verification to prevent children from accessing their site. The pornography industry’s lobbying arm challenged this law as unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court disagreed, affirming that this was nothing more than a common-sense regulation to apply offline standards to the online world. Further, the Safer Devices for Kids Act, which requires smartphones and tablets automatically turn on filters for sexually explicit content, is now law in Utah and Alabama.
Let’s make sure that YOUR state is next in line to protect kids from the harms of online pornography!
