The Sinister Crisis Ravaging America’s Young Men

It’s not a wholesome topic, much less so on a Sunday. But Christians and all others who care about the moral health of society should be thinking about the crisis of pornography and whether there are ways in which we can, at the very least, battle against it.

A recent article in Harper’s Magazine titled “The Goon Squad” sheds a disturbing new light on this problem. In that piece, journalist Daniel Kolitz descends into the hellish world of those who are known as “gooners.” These are men (and there seem to be no women) who have dedicated their lives—entirely in some cases—to watching pornography.

The destructive character of pornography has long been understood and documented. In Mary Eberstadt’s 2012 book, Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, the author cites a wealth of research showing how pornography use leads to aberrant and risky sexual behavior, psychological problems about body image, and the destruction of sexual desire for real human beings. She cited a 2003 study of divorce lawyers that showed that 62 percent reported instances of divorce that involved pornography as an antagonizing factor.

Kolitz’s account is a concentrated look into the worst possibilities of this destruction in a world in which technology facilitates the consumption of endless pornography. The reader who joins Kolitz on this journey will need a strong stomach and a healthy dose of hope and courage.

The article is not itself pornographic. Far from it. It is anti-erotic, a blunt but sympathetic treatment of a group who are themselves utterly depressing figures.

These men have abandoned founding and nurturing families, building and growing institutions benefiting American society, writing or researching important topics, and living lives that are worthy of a man made in the image of Christ. They have channeled their energy into the gathering of technology, massive collections of internet pornography to view on that technology, and the pursuit of sexual pleasure completely disconnected from marriage, children, or love.

As C.S. Lewis observed of this kind of life, not unknown even before technology made it so easy, “it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.” The problem with that harem, Lewis added, is that “once admitted, [it] works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.”

Kolitz understood this intuitively during his research. Because of the law of diminishing returns, many of these men no longer feel any desire for real women at all. Instead, they are fantasizing about fictional creatures.

At one point, he sent out a survey to the people involved in this lifestyle. Expecting none of them to have any kind of sexual relations with women, his results showed that about two in five did. But, he observes, those that did report sexual activity with real women—and it is likely that few if any were involved in a real “uniting” with women—were largely those who had come of age before the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Those who had come of age during the pandemic were more likely to describe themselves as “pornosexual”—they had no stated desire or interest in real sexual relations. Instead, they were deriving a sense of “community” from their sharing of pornography with others.

Hellish and depressing. A world of despair. Kolitz describes it as “a bunch of guys sitting alone in their rooms being viciously abused by their computers, sinking deeper into the despair that compelled them to seek out that abuse in the first place.”

More horrific is that some of those creating the material and encouraging the behavior seem to intend this end of despair. Kolitz quotes one pornography producer who tells him: “In my clips, we humiliate them for the fact that gooning to femdom videos is their sex life now. We encourage them not to have sex anymore, and to spend the rest of their life spending money on femdom clips.”  

The producer observes that he does occasionally think about the morality of what he’s doing but laughingly tells Kolitz that he doesn’t respond to such remnants of conscience because: “I enjoy my job. I like what I do.”

The frightening part of Kolitz’s account is that the number of such lost young men is growing. He holds out no hope that any of them will be able to find their way out of this dark, solitary prison of self and blinded by the flickering images on their screens.

We must staunch this wound to our society. The good news is we can do something politically to make sure young people do not have instant access to the hell-world that is internet pornography. Many Americans have begun to do so.

Within the last few years, almost two dozen states have established regulations requiring users to upload a photo of their ID for age-verification to access online pornography. In response, many pornography providers have refused to operate in most of those states.

This is a huge win. And it is one that can be extended. In January, the Ethics and Public Policy Center published a handy model legislation resource for those who would like to extend such policies to their own states.

While Kolitz’s hope has nearly vanished for those down this path, those who believe in God know that, with Him, all things are possible. Jesus Christ announced in the words of Isaiah the Prophet that He came “to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.”

We can pray for these blind captives. We can keep our eyes open for those lost in darkness. And we can extend to them real friendship and love so that they might leave their prisons of despair.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.