TRF in the Press 2024
Journalists have discovered The Reward Foundation. They are spreading the word about our work including: our lessons about risks from long term bingeing on porn; the call for effective, brain-focused sex education in all schools; need for training of NHS healthcare providers on pornography addiction and our contribution to research on porn-induced sexual dysfunctions and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder. This page documents our appearance in newspapers and online.
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The Scots lawyer taking on US porn barons
She compares the health impact of viewing explicit content to smoking — and says the industry is using Big Tobacco’s tactics to fight curbs in the Supreme Court
Saturday December 07 2024, 6.00pm
Mary Sharpe’s Reward Foundation, a global authority on porn addiction, is embroiled in a battle between the Texas attorney-general and the porn industry over a state law through which viewers of adult content must confirm they are over 18.
When Mary Sharpe invited an obscure US academic to Glasgow to talk about porn addiction she never imagined it would launch her into a global culture war that is about to land in the US Supreme Court.
Sharpe, a former European Commission consumer law adviser, was on the board of TEDxGlasgow — part of the hugely influential global TED Talks conference platform — for its 2012 series.
She urged the board to feature Gary Wilson, an anatomy teacher who had recently launched a website called Your Brain On Porn.
His talk subsequently racked up over 17 million views on YouTube, putting it among the top 25 most popular TEDx talks in history, and spawned a book of the same name which funds the charity that Sharpe now runs from Edinburgh.
The Reward Foundation has since become a global authority on porn addiction, continuing Wilson’s legacy following his death aged 65 in 2021.
However, it is also embroiled in a major battle between the attorney-general of Texas and the porn industry over a state law which requires viewers of adult content to confirm they are over 18.
The industry claims the law forces adults “to incur severe privacy and security risks” to access pornography, and breaches their constitutional right to free speech.
Sharpe’s charity has submitted evidence to the Supreme Court arguing that online porn is a “defective product” which should be regulated with age limits like knives, gambling, alcohol, cigarettes and medication.
Porn industry outriders have attacked the foundation, and Wilson’s legacy, forcing TEDx to attach a disclaimer to his talk warning that it “contains several assertions that are not supported by academically respected studies in medicine and psychology”.
Sharpe, 65, said: “They try to introduce the notion of doubt just like in a criminal trial. If the defence can put doubt in the jury’s minds about whether a person committed a crime you can get them off.
“It’s what I used to do as a defence counsel. It’s now part of the playbook for big harmful industries. They lobby the public, decision-makers, politicians, journalists, to create doubt.
“They’re happy to lie. Big Tobacco did this very successfully for 30 years to kill any court actions that tried to link smoking to cancer. This playbook is now being used by the gaming industry, the oil industry, all sorts.”
Wilson was invited by the US navy to investigate the impact of porn addiction in 2016, after physicians noticed an unusually high rate of erectile dysfunction among servicemen.
“Military men are forbidden from associating with women and from drinking when they’re on manoeuvres, so porn is a favourite pastime,” said Sharpe. “Of course, when they go home to their partners they can’t perform sexually.
“They asked three men to quit porn. Only two were able to do it, but the third man was seriously addicted. The study showed causation because the men’s erectile function returned after they stopped watching porn. So it was the porn causing it. Not food, sadness or performance anxiety. It was porn.”
The study has since been replicated with larger sample sizes, building a body of evidence that indicates porn addiction creates similar physiological problems to those caused by alcohol and drugs.
Sharpe said that when people quit porn “a huge range of mental and physical symptoms cease” — their depression lifts, social anxiety goes and sexual dysfunction disappears.
She added that the lack of filters or age verification tools means that seven-year-olds are watching porn. “If you’re watching porn every day from seven years of age, imagine what your brain will be like at 13,” she said. “That’s why this legislation is so important.”
She said of the porn industry’s response to her foundation and Wilson’s research: “[They claim] Gary invented porn addiction to sell books for his own financial gain. The book became a bestseller on Amazon but the proceeds went towards the foundation of our charity in 2014. It has been translated into 15 languages with three more in the pipeline.
“We’ve developed free lesson plans for schools, a one-day training course for professionals and a free parents guide.”
Sharpe and her colleagues take their message to conferences around the world and a trip to Washington DC in August sent them on a mission to the Supreme Court.
Brad Littlejohn, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center — an evangelical think tank which promotes “the Judeo-Christian moral tradition” — invited the foundation to make a submission to the court to bolster the case for the Texas law.
While the Reward Foundation affirms its secular credentials, it is sharing a platform with religious groups who object to porn on moral as well as health grounds. This has fuelled industry claims that the foundation is part of an ideological assault on American civil liberties.
Also among the parties giving evidence to the Supreme Court is the Alliance Defending Freedom. The US group of evangelical lawyers has taken a side in several Scottish culture wars in recent years, including abortion clinic buffer zones, gender recognition reform, and the Glasgow University student council’s attempt to refuse accreditation to an anti-abortion group.
It remains to be seen how the US Supreme Court will receive the latest case, with its conservative majority featuring three justices picked by Donald Trump for their right-leaning views. The court sent shockwaves through liberal America in 2022 when it repealed a 49-year-old statutory guarantee to abortion rights known as Roe v Wade
Sharpe expects the porn industry to lobby heavily to prevent the planned introduction of age verification in the UK in January 2025. “The chances are it will be watered down and there is going to be unbelievable pressure to regulate it,” she said.
The Free Speech Coalition, the porn industry trade association that took the Texas attorney-general to the US Supreme Court, confirmed it is in regular contact with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator overseeing the implementation of age verification.
“We are looking forward to seeing the guidance in January,” the coalition said.
Age verification was initially due to be implemented in July 2019. It was shelved by Boris Johnson’s government shortly before the general election in December that year.
“We were told by people at the coalface that Boris Johnson pulled it because he was scared it would upset adult men in the red wall constituencies and put them off voting Tory,” Sharpe said.
“One week we were sitting in the office of the British Board of Film Classification, who were involved in the implementation of the regulations, and the next day it was pulled after years and years of cross-bench work to protect children.
“Ultra-liberal Boris Johnson didn’t want to do anything that prevented people accessing porn. Then Covid happened and millions of children have been adversely affected by the lack of protection.”
The Conservative Party was contacted for comment.
Plans for age verification were resurrected in the Online Safety Act 2023 but Sharpe is concerned they will never see the light of day.
Your Brain on Porn, by Gary Wilson, became a bestseller on Amazon and was translated into 15 languages
“The porn industry is terrified porn will be seen as a health risk like smoking,” she said. “This is a harder argument than smoking because you can’t immediately see the impact of porn on the brain unless you have an MRI scanner.
“The porn industry would say porn is not like taking drugs, thalidomide, or smoking. To them it’s an issue of freedom of speech. We are saying this is a health issue, so Texas is perfectly entitled to legislate on this, and it’s not a matter for the Supreme Court.”
The Free Speech Coalition declined to comment directly about the Reward Foundation’s submission to the Supreme Court. It pointed to comments by Dr Nicole Prause, a research scientist in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who is an outspoken critic of porn addiction theory.
Prause has attacked the Reward Foundation on X, describing it as “anti-women” and “antisemitic”.
She has also accused Sharpe of promoting a practice called Karezza to delay climax during sex. Prause wrote: “Beware, Mary Sharpe is simply a Karezza preacher pushing her religious claims on the public, not trained in any of the areas of ‘instruction’ … [she is] lying about science using misogyny.”
Ofcom confirmed it will issue guidance in January on how online services should implement age assurance. By July 2025, all platforms “must have a highly effective age assurance solution in place to protect under-18s”.
The watchdog said: “As part of our ongoing supervision work Ofcom is in contact with the Free Speech Coalition regularly — along with industry, services, charities and other trade bodies — as the relevant trade association for the pornography industry that we regulate.”
Sharpe was born in Glasgow and grew up in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. She studied at Glasgow University before practising as a solicitor and advocate for the next 13 years in Scotland and five years at the European Commission in Brussel. Sharpe then undertook post-graduate work at the University of Cambridge and became a tutor there for ten years. She remains a member of the College of Justice and Faculty of Advocates.
Sharpe explains her campaigning thus: “It seemed no one in health or criminal justice knew how widespread porn use was, especially among young men, nor the harm it was causing some people, especially in relationships. So I decided this was an important area for me to work in, especially as there were lots of good news stories about how well users became once they quit porn, or at least tried to. Right from 2012 the porn industry attacked us for daring to shed light on the dark side of this seemingly harmless form of free adult entertainment.”
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/the-edinburgh-lawyer-taking-on-us-porn-barons-x7zzmhwzx
Boys’ unrestricted access to ‘violent and deviant material’ is fuelling what some describe as ’the largest unregulated social experiment’ in human history.
By Owen Evans, March 22, 2024
Unrestricted access to pornography is causing profound and alarming changes in the cognitive development of boys hailing from the most economically deprived backgrounds, campaigners have warned.
Young boys from tough economic backgrounds having unfettered access to ever novel and increasingly violent and deviant material is a “slow-motion car crash” for society, said an education charity that promotes pornography harm awareness.
Mary Sharpe, CEO of The Reward Foundation, told The Epoch Times that this is “the biggest unregulated social experiment in the history of mankind.”
“Never before have people had unfettered access to ever novel and increasingly violent and deviant material that can reshape their sexual tastes and cause sexual dysfunction from over-stimulation,” she said.
“It is a nightmare for social services and the criminal justice system which is at breaking point with the number of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse cases being reported,” she added.
‘The Eye of Sauron’
Campaigners, children’s groups, and online safety experts have all raised concerns about children’s access to porn.
But those who work directly with some of the most deprived children in the UK have seen major changes to boys in real time because of such materials.
The organiser of a Christian outdoor learning activities centre, who has decades of experience teaching children from this group, told The EpochTimes that he has noticed a drastic change in the boys, who often also have autism, in the way they use explicit sexual language.
The Epoch Times has chosen not to name the person or the centre.
The Epoch Times found that the debate surrounding the societal impacts of pornography in the United States is notably more intense than in the UK.
Campaigners, journalists, and academics advocating for the acknowledgement of potential addiction or harm from pornography claim they frequently face attacks from associates of the industry.
“When you hear them talking, so not all kids but some kids, we are like ‘what, we have never heard of stuff like that,’” the organiser said, adding that the boys are watching “really graphic extreme stuff.”
Smartphones are banned from site. “They are like the Eye of Sauron,” he said, but he added that taking their devices is “a big issue.”
“It’s their lives, their whole identity is their phones,” he said.
But he said that when the boys go home, they will still have access to porn.
“The only person that can do anything is the parent,” he said.
But now the bar is so high, the problem so profoundly widespread, that it is difficult for social services or schools to do anything, he said.
“And even if a parent can go upstairs to confront their kid, boys can often trash the house if they don’t get their Wi-Fi,” he added.
Porn Just Adds Fat to the Fire’
Ms. Sharpe told The Epoch Times that the “impact of ‘porn addiction,’ or compulsive use, is totally underestimated in general and certainly amongst socially deprived children in particular.”
She said that they have often suffered added stress in their childhood owing to poverty, abuse, or poor parental attachment. These are part of the adverse childhood experiences list, or ACEs.
“Those factors make them more prone to developing addictions during adolescence. Porn just adds fat to the fire. Early exposure to porn is considered an additional ACE. It’s a slow-motion car crash for society,” she said.
She said that parents are justifiably worried that their kids will “kick off” if their phone is removed, because when “someone is hooked, it feels to them like a matter of life or death, to get their next hit.”
“Such is the power of cravings and the discomfort of withdrawal. But parents have to educate themselves about how porn affects the teen brain and be brave enough to face the arguments and guide their kids through this difficult stage of development. If they don’t do it, who will?
“The porn industry is only too willing profit from the young person’s attention to their sites as they will gather and sell their personal data and groom them as future paying customers,” she added.
“The challenge, too, is that young people from economically deprived backgrounds are being lured by porn-friendly social media sites to believe they can make lots of money selling sexual acts online via platforms like OnlyFans or TikTok,” she said.
“They might think it’s safe because they don’t have to meet the clients in real life, but what we hear from those who have exited from what is basically virtual prostitution, is the psychological damage it does to them over time if they are recognised, in addition to the physical injuries,” she added.
“The challenge with this social group is that their expectations of the future are low anyway. Heavy porn use, often till late at night, deprives them of much needed sleep that would help them pay attention and learn at school. Easy access to extremely stimulating sexual material that is basically free, seems like an obvious solution to the normal challenges of adolescence,” said Ms. Sharpe.
She said that research into porn addiction has found that it causes social anxiety, depression, sexual arousal difficulties, and contributes to “attitudes and behaviours that objectify women as body parts to be consumed and then ignored.”
“This in turn is causing huge mental health issues for young women who are not getting into relationships where they feel cherished and loved, but rather expected to be available for male pleasure for little or nothing in return. It destroys what is already very fragile self confidence.
“The type of sex they are learning is increasingly violent and coercive and not supportive of intimacy that would give deprived kids a chance of a supportive relationship,” she added.
Dopamine
Last year, research from the Children’s Commissionerfor England found pornography exposure is related to the age at which children are given their phones.
It also said that children—boys were more likely than girls to search for pornography regularly—who had first viewed online pornography at age 11 or younger were significantly more likely to access pornography frequently.
Porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined and about one-third of all web downloads in the United States are porn-related.
Pornography addiction is not categorised as an addictive behaviour in the reference book the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” often known as the “DSM-5.” This means there is no officially recognised diagnostic criteria for porn addiction.
Despite this, different British rehabilitation centres say that pornography addiction is becoming increasingly common among young people in the UK.
UK Rehab said that medical experts are now warning that “regularly watching porn could have an adverse effect on the brain by essentially rewiring it.”
“The act of having sex or watching pornography results in the brain releasing the chemical dopamine, which is responsible for pleasure and reward. However, continually causing dopamine to be released into the body can mean that the brain becomes tolerant to the effects,” it wrote.
Everybody Agrees Here That Kids Shouldn’t Be Seeing This Stuff’
The Safescreens campaign, which is run by children’s rights group UsForThem, is calling on the government to introduce a framework for selling and marketing smartphones to children in order to safeguard their well-being.
Arabella Skinner, director of Safescreens, told The Epoch Times by email the “lack of any meaningful regulation around smartphones means that children are exposed to the most extreme content including violence and extreme porn.”
“This clearly impacts their social development, but also for those who become addicted it has implications for their school attendance. As a society, we have to get to grips with the damage that unrestricted smartphone use is having on our children, and call on politicians to commit to real measures to address this,” she said.
John Carr, one of the world’s leading authorities on children’s and young people’s use of digital technologies, told The Epoch Times that he believes that the Online Safety Act will prevent children from accessing porn as previous laws dealt with gambling companies’ lack of action to prevent underage gaming, despite claiming to take the issue seriously.
Under internet regulation, sites and apps that display or publish pornographic content must now ensure that children are not normally able to encounter pornography on their service.
The communications regulator Ofcom, which is in charge of policing the Online Safety Act and has powers to take enforcement action, said that if “you or your business has an online service that hosts pornographic content, you will need to estimate or verify your users’ ages so that children cannot view it.”
Mr. Carr said social media companies have age restrictions to access their platforms, but there are children much younger than 13 on there, though many of the sites still provide access to pornography.
“The whole thing is a complete mess,” he said.
“Britain is the first country in the world [that is a] liberal democracy to try to address the problem. And we’ll see how well it works. We’re not there yet,” he added.
He said that it’s very difficult to find anybody in the UK making an argument that porn companies shouldn’t restrict access to children.
“Everybody agrees here that kids shouldn’t be seeing this stuff,” he added.