The UK is currently experiencing a persistent and meaningful decline in the relationships between young men and women. Today, as a young man approaches 25, he is 26 times more likely to live with his mum than his wife. In England and Wales, there are now around 3.7 million fewer married people under 30 than in 1976, despite the greater number of young people.
The purpose of this report is to focus on a specific concern: what impact is pornography having on young people’s relationships? CSJ polling has found that two thirds of 18–24-year-old men and women believe that the widespread availability of pornography is bad for men, and that it is undermining relationships between the sexes (70 per cent of women and 62 per cent of men). Pornography is a significant and growing influence in the lives of young people.
The average age of first encountering pornography sits between 12 and 13 years old. One quarter of children will encounter it before the age of 11. Low-income children were 50 per cent more likely to have encountered pornography by age 11 than their non-deprived peers. But qualitative evidence suggests many children encounter it around the ages of six or seven
A 2022 YouGov survey found that half (49 per cent) of men aged 18–29 watched pornography at least weekly, compared with around one in seven (14 per cent) women of the same age. One quarter of young men watched daily or most days, compared with two per cent of young women. In 2025, over half (53 per cent) of therapists who work with men with addiction said they noticed a rise in pornography addiction in the previous year.
Nearly one in twenty people (4.69 per cent) in the UK are at high risk of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, which can include problematic pornography use. This is higher than comparable addiction rates to things like gambling, alcohol, and drugs.
In the UK, 19 per cent of students said that they or a friend had interacted with AI to have a romantic relationship.
A combined £5.4 billion was spent on OnlyFans in 2024. Since 2019, the number of creators on OnlyFans has multiplied 14 times, from under 350,000 to over 5 million. One in six young people (18.1 per cent) aged 18–34 have considered uploading their own content to OnlyFans or a similar site in the past year. This represents more than 2.7 million people.
One of the harms of watching pornography is the deeper relational damage to trust, intimacy, and communication. The simplest and most powerful solutions are therefore those best implemented by individuals and couples themselves. The report recommends a range of solutions targeting individuals and couples, parents, health providers, government, and educators.
