When I heard that Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, used the Covenant Eyes app to manage his addiction to pornography—I had a zillion questions:
Honestly, I wasn’t sure that pornography addiction was even real.
Yes, sometimes. But it’s complicated.
“Porn addiction” is a colloquial term. In medical communities, excessive or problematic porn viewing is classified as a type of behavioral disorder, distinguishing it from chemical addictions like alcohol or caffeine.
The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual suggests that the behavior issue we call “porn addiction” may be on par with things like gambling, chronic overspending, kleptomania, or excessive internet use. It’s hard to say for sure though. We don’t have enough information to say exactly how much behavioral addictions mirror chemical ones.
And though the idea of porn addiction has been studied since the 70s, the ways we access porn have changed so much they render earlier studies on the topic almost meaningless.
The good news? The vast majority of people who look at porn don’t develop unhealthy habits surrounding it. Most people watch when they want and do other things when they don’t.
Watching porn is as normal and natural as masturbation or sex itself. In fact, one researcher attempted to study the impact of porn on men’s attitudes toward women, but was unable to find a control group of men who had never looked at porn. Saying ‘everybody does it’ isn’t even an exaggeration.
The Journal of Clinical Medicine tells us that classifying excessive porn use as a behavioral issue would require a “problematic consumption model.” This refers to behaviors that are perceived by the patient as harmful and can include:
My husband and I do not have porn addictions. In fact, we find porn hilarious on those rare occasions I watch it for work. As a former phonesex op, I believe strongly that adults should feel and be free to consume as much legal porn as they want to.
Pornographic content, particularly when combined with masturbation, has legit health benefits. It can reduce stress, improve sexual performance and knowledge (though we don’t recommend porn as a replacement for sexual education), and it promotes restful sleep—a cornerstone of overall good health.
But we did decide to give Covenant Eyes, and its partner app Victory, a try -- just to see what it had to offer for those struggling to watch less adult content.
I also wanted to see if there were any fun features for people who weren’t concerned about their intake of online nudity. I suspect there are lots of couples who might be very turned on to get a notification that their partner is searching for porn. Finding out you and your partner like the same porn could open up new possibilities.
Our experience...wasn’t that.
The app has two parts, Covenant Eyes, which costs $18.99 a month. A subscription is required to use Covenant Eyes features or access their therapeutic animations. That’s okay though, because the “therapy” they offered was mostly scolding and negative. Though they did have some mindfulness suggestions similar to what you might find on an Apple watch.
The other part of the program is the Victory app, which is free. Using Victory requires a friend to join up with you. As we mentioned, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he joined with his then 17-year old son.
Covenant Eyes offers surveys to judge how serious your porn addiction might be. I told it I watched porn once or twice a week and it told me I probably had a serious problem. I found that sketchy.
The overall language used by both apps was incredibly sex-negative, shame based, and puritanical. Exactly what you’d expect from people charging you to blur out wangs and nipples.
Covenant Eyes immediately took over my phone in ways I did not expect. (Note: Don’t be as irresponsible as me. Read the Terms and Conditions) I told the app it could monitor my Chrome app, and then I let it monitor “related apps.”
Feeling very protected from digital smut--I went in search of adult content. It wouldn’t let me get to any. Porn and sex-toy site “Adam & Eve” brought up — Bible stories. Clothed Bible stories.
Instagram photos wouldn’t load or were blurry. I searched for traditional dirty websites like “lemon party” and “two-girls, one cup.” I got summer drink recipes and one YouTube description of the infamous video containing zero unblurred footage of it. * sigh of relief * I couldn’t get to PornHub at all. My browser simply wouldn’t take me there. It was surreal.
Searches for hot actors (I picked James Purefoy, because he’s the hottest man in the whole damn world) were sparse. I could see social media, and plenty of headshots. No full-frontal. (Purefoy has done full-frontal nudity in several roles, but I’m not linking!)
Conversely, searching for hot women yielded almost nothing. Googling Lady Gaga literally brought up sheet music. Sheet music! I guess because there’s no photo in which Gaga does not look so sexy you just want to unzip your pants.
As far as I could tell, Covenant Eyes attempted to curb porn addiction in two ways: offering short digital animations about self-control and shame, and simply not allowing me to access any site that might have nudity.
It seems like if I asked around, I could find someone to tell me I should be ashamed of myself for way less than $18.99 a month. As such, I do not recommend either app. As someone who has flirted with rehab for chemical addiction, I felt that the “help” these apps provide is not the sort that helps addicts successfully recover. But hey, I’m not a doctor.
If there was a fun part to this experiment, this was it. The Victory app requires you to sign up with a buddy to help you control your porn usage — digitally upgrading a relationship similar to a sponsor in a 12-step program.
The person you sign up with, I chose my husband, gets a notification about anything sex-related online. Looking up some of my own articles on vibrators or condoms led to him getting a notification. Rather than a giggle-worthy slew of messages about the sort of porn I searched for—my hubs got a bunch of blurred notifications telling him all the offending websites I could have seen. Searching for simple words made the app rat me out, even when I didn’t go to any of the sites that came up. Not that it would show me those sites anyway.
The Victory App felt the need to notify my husband when I searched for all the following words and phrases:
Hilariously, whatever Covenant Eyes was doing to my phone, it kept me from signing in on Ashley Madison. I could still access the app, but not the site through a browser. My saved password suddenly wouldn’t work. Every time I tried, it ratted me out to my husband with a notification. Luckily he already knew I was using it. Adultery is bad.
Perhaps even funnier is the irate Email I sent Ashley Madison because I didn’t realize the Covenant Eyes app could actually prevent me from signing in. They told me that from their end, it appeared that I’d incorrectly entered my password multiple times. But my password was saved. So, the Covenant Eyes app must have somehow corrupted it. I’m not computer literate enough to know how that happened. But turning off the service let me log in again. I didn’t miss much.
The Victory app, which users can keep even if they delete Covenant Eyes, operates on the premise that you won’t watch porn because someone else will find out about it and then you’ll be embarrassed. Yikes. Big, cringey yikes. If someone in your life is telling you that you watch too much porn, you might want to take a long look at the person before you stop looking at the porn.
If your acountabilibuddy is not the shaming sort, maybe your experience will be helpful in curbing your porn use if that’s what you’re hoping to do. But I found that the language used in both apps was shaming enough, and I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend even if I was concerned they had a porn addiction.
If you do think you might have a problem with your consumption of pornography, you can talk it out confidentially at no cost here:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Otherwise, we suggest you type in all your favorite sexy interests and have at it.
