I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust Pornhub to teach my kids about sex. 

Think of the last time you went to the front page of any porn site. I bet you didn’t see titles like,

• Hot pair has fun first date! They make out and decide not to have sex until they know each other better
• New couple discuss contraception and sexual preferences before making love
• He asks really great questions about how she likes to be touched and helps her orgasm
• They’re so in love and can’t get enough of each other!
• Couple gets tired mid-sex and takes a break to cuddle and chat

More vanilla or realistic sex videos do exist, but porn producers are not interested in teaching healthy and fulfilling sex. They only want your attention. When the audience is already numbed by years of heavy use, what gets their attention is the extreme and the shocking. This is how the front pages of these sites become filled with the most hardcore, eye-catching content possible.

Slavery, pedophilia, rape, cheating, police brutality, incest, abuses of power—any and all topics are fair game to the pornography industry. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, it prompted a new genre of pandemic porn. Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, not only are sex traffickers targeting desperate refugees, but pornographers are taking advantage of the crisis by sexualizing the conflict with titles like “Ukrainian soldier f***s Russian girl before going to war!” and “Porn action during war in Ukraine.”

When someone starts watching porn, they’ll probably shy away from videos like these out of moral disgust or simple disinterest. As the years go by, however, the vanilla stuff loses its flavor. You’re used to seeing the title and thumbnails of more extreme videos, even if you don’t click on them. You get curious. You rationalize that it’s just fantasy after all. You start to explore and cross lines you had previously set for yourself. You click. You’re disturbed by what you see, but somehow that adds to the excitement. You keep going. Eventually, you need the shock factor to get off anymore.

This is how chronic porn users are trained to violate their own boundaries and sexualize everything. And no matter how much you tell yourself that it’s just fantasy and doesn’t affect your real life or how you see people, the human brain doesn’t work that way. It will change you.

As a coach who has worked personally with hundreds of men who are quitting porn, one of my favorite things to see is how they rediscover the excitement of holding hands, kissing someone for the first time, physical closeness, and vanilla sex. They don’t need to chase the next fetish or fantasy anymore to have an incredible time. Trust me, you don’t realize how much you miss that electric connection you used to feel with a partner until you get it back after quitting porn.

In the age of Internet porn, instead of fumbling through and learning about pleasure through experience, young men are copying what they’ve seen online. And the girls are speaking up, complaining about teen boys who are trying to choke them, slap them, call them names, or penetrate them anally like they’ve seen in porn. We recommend the documentary Our Kids Online to learn more about this (no triggering imagery).

While neither I or REMOJO judges any sexual interest that consenting adults want to explore, Internet porn should not be the 101 class that introduces young people to sex.

Like me and my clients, hundreds and thousands of REMOJO users are discovering that after quitting porn, the extreme fantasies fade and their sensitivity returns. They can get excited just from the touch and closeness of someone they’re attracted to. Imagine that!

When you’re ready to find out what life and sex can be like without porn brain, REMOJO is here to give you the knowledge, the tools, and the community you’ll need. You can get started with the free REMOJO app right now.

Live better without porn.