jamie will carefully Schedule his days to set aside time alone to watch porn and masturbate – often up to five times a day.
The 32-year-old Michigan engineer, who did not want his real name used due to privacy concerns, first viewed porn at the impressionable age of 12, but never realized he had a problem until right after his father’s funeral three years ago.
“I didn’t shed a single tear,” he says. “I didn’t know how to react with happiness or sadness at anything.” That’s when his porn consumption increased – along with stress, anxiety and depression – and he locked himself in his room “all day”. The only thing that seemed obvious, he recalls, was “that rush of dopamine” generated by an intense session of watching hardcore porn. But for Jamie, who is Christian, those fleeting moments of porn-fueled transcendence were followed by much deeper ups and downs, including suicidal thoughts.
Last March, Jamie says her partner angrily confronted her over her porn consumption and accused her of lying and adultery.
Jamie’s “whole world came down.” He admitted that he thought she was addicted, apologized to her, temporarily moved back in with his mother and quit porn. That’s when she found Relay, an app created by a pair of Mormon college students that claims it can help people “take back control from porn, one day at a time.” Jamie promised his partner he’d never look at porn again—and he gave her a chance.
The app offers a comprehensive plan to stop watching porn, including videos by therapists, daily journal prompts, live group sharing sessions, and a function to address severe urges. Users also keep track of each other’s porn-free streaks with a “Live Milestone” ticker. It’s all in an effort to help subscribers, who pay $149 a year for full access, uncover underlying issues like loneliness and trauma to help prevent recidivism. The app has been downloaded more than 110,000 times, with company data showing that 89 percent of its users are male.
This month, Riley has partnered with anti-porn advocacy nonprofit Fight the New Drug for the “November Project” – a new initiative to encourage people to stay away from porn – with 28,000 sign-ups so far.
Relay CEO Chandler Rogers claims that the scale of pornography use represents “a modern epidemic”. The 27-year-old was inspired to co-found the app in August 2021 to provide her Gen Z peers a way to stop watching porn. It follows his self-described years-long addiction to explicit material. Rogers, who attended Brigham Young University in Utah, where he met both his co-founder and chief of staff, says he “tried to stop at least 100 times, and couldn’t go more than a week without returning to pornography.”