If you’re older, a Boomer like me, when you hear about pornography you probably think of men and what we used to call “dirty magazines,” but this era is long gone, and among younger generations, including Christians, pornography is ubiquitous, insidious, and noxious.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #243 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
There are a few topics that I do not like to think, research, write, or speak about. Among these topics are LGBTQ+ and pornography. For want of a more sophisticated way of explaining my feelings, these topics are too “icky,” too disturbing for me, too much of a yuk factor.
Both these topics, in different ways, stem from sexual perversion. Now, icky or not, I feel compelled to speak again about pornography.
Let’s set the stage with some statistics:
- “Over 40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites. The average visit lasts 6 minutes and 29 seconds.
- There are around 42 million porn websites, which totals around 370 million pages of porn.
- The porn industry’s annual revenue is MORE than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. It is also more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
- 47% of families in the United States reported that pornography is a problem in their home.
- Pornography use increases the marital infidelity rate by more than 300%.
- Eleven is the average age that a child is first exposed to porn, and 94% of children will see porn by the age of 14.
- 56% of American divorcesinvolve one party having an “obsessive interest” in pornographic websites.”
A 2013 article in ExtremeTech magazine estimated that 30% of the internet’s data usage was for porn. This is a multi-billion-dollar business worldwide.
What about among those who self-identify as Christians? “Beyond The Porn Phenomenon,” published in 2024 by The Barna Group and Pure Desire Ministries, provides the most current data we have about Christians and porn use compared to the rest of the United States. According to this study:
- 61% of the general population (aged 13 and up) watches porn compared to 54% of practicing Christians.
- 75% of Christian men view pornography, compared to 78% of the general population.
- 40% of Christian women view pornography, compared to 44% of the general population.
- Two-thirds of pastors (68%) have struggled or currently struggle with pornography.
“If we combined these percentages with US census data, we can see just how many people this is: 45,174,658 Christian men watch porn, and 24,135,395 Christian women watch porn.”
Another study found that “Men are still more likely to watch porn than women in general, but the number of female porn users increases as they get younger.”
- “33% of women aged 25-and-under search for porn at least once per month.
- Only 13% of self-identified Christian women say they never watch porn –87% of Christian women have watched porn.”
Of these women watching porn,
- “88% attend church regularly, 81% pray regularly, and 72% read their Bible regularly
- Only 6.7% of respondents had heard female porn use discussed in a sermon.
Women are not immune to porn. The old dichotomy that men are visually stimulated and women are relationally stimulated is less than helpful when it comes to pornography use.”
I haven’t bothered to define pornography. Reason is, it’s like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous quote on obscenity, from the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which he noted: "I know it when I see it." He used this phrase to explain that while he couldn't precisely define "hard-core" pornography, he recognized it when he encountered it.
I’m assuming the same thing here. You know what pornography is.
The Bible doesn't mention pornography directly, but condemns the lust, sexual immorality (porneia), and objectification it involves, emphasizing sex within marriage. Key teachings include a call for purity in thoughts and actions (Ephesians 5:3, Philippians 4:8), viewing pornography as a destructive force against God's design for intimacy, leading to addiction, shame, and broken relationships.
Human beings, human hearts, are no different now than those in the ancient past or in our past. People are created by God as sexual beings, but we are also fallen, sinful creatures who are born in sin and must deal with sin throughout our lives.
What’s different today from the past, even our past if like me you are an older Baby Boomer, is that the internet – first widely available in the mid-1990s – and the smart phone – first released on the market in 2007 – puts pornography in our hands, instantaneously, a lot of it for free.
I mentioned what we used to call dirty magazines, Playboy, and the like that featured unclothed women. When I was a kid the only way men accessed porn was to buy these magazines at newsstands, hide them in brown paper bags from the women in their lives, and sneak peek. I know this not because I did this, but I certainly saw friends do it.
Now, on one’s laptop or on that smart phone in your hand, you can instantly access, for free, one of those 42+ million pornography websites. This is what I mean about ubiquitous. Porn is everywhere.
And as of the mid-2010s, just 10 years ago, the modern era of independent, creator-driven adult content subscription sites began. Adult content creators—or if you prefer, pornographers—may be anyone who is willing to post licentious media of themselves: maybe your neighbors, or actresses who discover they can make more money posting than acting, or individuals who develop a brand presence like golf or swimsuit, i.e., seeking a following for their niche content that morphs over to paywalled adult content.
Adult-content sites offer content creators a platform they do not have to build and maintain, allows them to create accounts, post their pictures and videos, use paywalls and set their own fees requiring viewer-customers to purchase subscriptions for access to certain levels or kinds of content, then the websites return to the content creators as much as 80% of the revenues.
Many of these adult content creators are also active on social media like Twitter—the widest open to sexual voyeurism—Instagram, Facebook, and more, which typically are governed by restrictive parameters vis-à-vis nudity. The value of these sites to the adult content creator is brand promotion, name recognition, enticing more followers to links that feature more prurient content.
Remember this. Porn is not just on worst sites such that if you avoid these sites, you’re in the clear. No, adult content creators or their teams are continuously trolling on otherwise harmless sites. They use what in business is called a marketing funnel, meaning many might be engaged on the top end, and fewer take the next step, fewer still the next step in the funnel, but a certain percentage get all the way to the paywall sites and subscribe.
I have not visited adult content websites, but I know how they work. A typical marketing funnel involves: Awareness – you see an Instagram post featuring a person you find attractive; Interest – you check their advertised website; Decision - you buy a subscription, say $15 per month, giving you access to that person wearing less clothing or engaging in specific sexually enticing activity. Meanwhile, you are getting hooked on explicit pornography, and the content creator is making money based upon your addictive behavior.
So, I’d say, protect yourself. I’ve twice stopped using social media platforms that kept exposing me to enticements (trolling) to pornography. I got out because the social media platform was more of a threat than a help to me. Pornography is now as big a problem in the Christian Church as it is in culture.
The Bible warns against being mastered by anything, calling for freedom from damaging behaviors (1 Corinthians 6:12) and telling us “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Cor. 10:13).
There is no temptation and no addiction more powerful than the Holy Spirit.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2026
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