Self-check

Ten questions. No email. No verdict.

Most “porn addiction tests” are a funnel. They give you a severity score, tell you you’re in danger, and ask for your email address. This one doesn’t do any of that.

Adrian Smith · Writes from lived experience · Updated 17 July 2026
0 of 10Nothing is sent anywhere
  1. 01

    You end up watching for longer than you meant to.

  2. 02

    You’ve told yourself you’d stop, and then didn’t.

  3. 03

    It takes up space in your head when you’re not doing it.

  4. 04

    You reach for it when you’re stressed, bored, lonely or tired — rather than because you want it.

  5. 05

    It costs you something real: sleep, time, focus, or presence with people.

  6. 06

    You’ve gone looking for things that would once have surprised you.

  7. 07

    You’d be uncomfortable if someone you love saw your history.

  8. 08

    Afterwards, you feel worse about yourself — not just neutral.

  9. 09

    Feeling bad about it has, at some point, led straight back to it.

  10. 10

    You’ve been carrying this for longer than you’d like to admit.

No email. No account. Score out of 40 stays on your device.

What this is, honestly

The questions are modelled on the things researchers actually look at when they study problematic pornography use — losing control of how long you go for, how much room it takes up in your head, using it to escape a mood, whether it costs you anything real, and how you feel afterwards.

But it is not a validated instrument, and we’re not going to dress it up as one. There are real ones (the SAST, the PPCS) and they’re used by clinicians with training. This is ten questions written to help you say a true thing to yourself, in private, without anyone selling you a treatment programme at the end of it.

It’s also worth knowing that the science here is less settled than the internet suggests. The WHO’s ICD-11 recognises Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder as an impulse-control disorder, not an addiction. The DSM-5-TR doesn’t list it at all. And distress about porn use is not the same thing as compulsive porn use — people can be deeply distressed about a level of use that isn’t causing them any functional harm, usually because of what they’ve been told about it.

Which is why this one doesn’t give you a severity score. A number would imply a precision that doesn’t exist, and in this particular problem, being told you’re broken is not a neutral act — shame reliably makes it worse.