Problems concentrating, lack of motivation, fits of depression, impaired brain function, trouble sleeping, social anxiety, poor self-image. These all describe the kids your age hooked on marijuana, heroin, meth or ecstasy, right? Think again.

These are symptoms of teens hooked on pornography (porn for short).

Just like using drugs, you know watching pornography is wrong. The teens at your school and elsewhere who look at it know it is wrong too. Imagine kids pulling up pictures of naked people and sharing it with their parents! It would not happen.

But with so many kids your age watching porn on their phones and tablets it can start to seem like no big deal—especially when they do not seem to face any serious consequences.

Parents and teachers constantly warn about taking drugs. But far fewer warn against watching explicit sexual content. This leaves boys and girls to find out the hard way that watching pornography can have serious and lasting effects.

What is pornography? The term is a combination of two Greek words: porne, which means prostitute, and graphein, meaning to write. But with today’s technology, pornography is much more than writing about women selling themselves for sex.

Pornography is any depiction of erotic behavior in material intended to cause sexual excitement. It can be found in television shows, magazines, books, videos, the internet and other places. It can be in cartoon form, photographs or video. All of it is wrong.

Seeing someone of the opposite sex naked was intended for husbands and wives. But now it is only a click away.

What was once overlooked by the world as kids “exploring sexuality” is now showing itself to have a negative impact on health and relationships. This should not be surprising. Viewing pornography was never a right thing to do.

Though it may not seem like it at first, watching porn can have the same effects as taking drugs or abusing alcohol. But unlike heroin or marijuana, you do not have to find a seedy drug dealer willing to sell it to you. All you need is a computer with an internet connection or cable television.

Another problem with being hooked on porn compared to being hooked on drugs is it is even more addictive.

Read what Dr. Marysia Weber, who studies how pornography impacts teens, had to say when comparing pornography addiction to drug or alcohol addiction: “Internet pornography addiction can develop even more easily than a drug or alcohol addiction because it engages the most sensitive sense we have, our eyes; and it’s readily available in unlimited quantities. It’s even more addictive than drug addictions because the images are directly stored in the memory and imagination which remain long after viewing Internet pornography, altering the structure and function of the brain” (American Osteopathic Association).

As with using illicit drugs, viewing pornography causes your brain’s own addiction-inducing chemicals to produce a “biochemical thrill.” But unlike most addictive drugs, which require you to smoke them, drink them or shoot them up, just looking at porn gets you “high.” Combine this with its near endless availability—even in a person’s memory—and it is like an addict having an endless supply of drugs to experience again and again.

Growing Use

Do not be fooled. Looking at porn is not innocent. People everywhere are becoming trapped in its snare.

Each second, 28,258 users watch pornography on the internet. Forty-million Americans admit to regularly visiting pornographic sites. Twenty-five percent of all internet searches—68 million per day—are pornography related. Twelve percent of total websites on the internet are pornographic. (These numbers are eight years old, so they are far worse today.)

Porn is ruining millions of minds, especially those of your generation.

A reported 87 percent of college-age men and 31 percent of college-age women admitted to actively using pornography. However, these users were likely hooked at a much earlier age. That is because an overwhelming 93 percent of males and 62 percent of females from this same age group admitted to viewing porn before they turned 18.

This shows that the seeds of porn addiction are planted early and grow into a much more serious problem.

The cafeterias, hallways and playgrounds of high schools and middle schools are where most kids are introduced to drugs. The same is true for porn.

You may have seen groups of kids gathering around a cellphone in a cafeteria, on a school bus, or in a gym class to watch pornographic videos. Maybe you know of others sending naked pictures of themselves and others via emails and social media apps. Sometimes, however, exposure to porn starts more innocent. You can encounter it just doing homework online or going to news sites.

In any scenario, computers and smartphones act as virtual drug dealers pushing limitless amounts of mind-altering pornographic content. You must stay far away from it for your own good. But with computers so engrained into our society, this may be easier said than done.

Most your age have never known a world without internet connection. Sixty percent of 10- and 11-year-olds have smartphones. Nearly 100 percent of public schools have one or more computers with internet access and 97 percent have them located in their classrooms. An estimated 86.8 percent of U.S. households have a computer.

No wonder the average age of a child’s first exposure to pornography is 11.

With access to the internet comes access to pornography. And teens want more of it. One teacher who sees firsthand the problem of teens accessing porn through the internet said that some students “can’t make it through the school day without fulfilling their ‘need’ to see explicit images” (The Daily Telegraph).

Internet access in schools is difficult to control. Most schools have firewalls and other protections in place to block porn internet sites, but sexual content is being placed on more mainstream parts of the web. Also, students can work around a school’s firewall protections through cellular connections on their personal devices. Because of school shootings and other threats, administrators are reluctant to ban smartphones from schools.

Plus, what happens in school is only a part of a child’s day. There is everything that happens on the way to and from school, on weekends and at home.

You must make an active choice to avoid pornography addiction. To do so, it is vital that you understand its real impact. Watching, even just a little bit, can lead you down a dangerous path you will eventually regret. The physical, mental and spiritual effects of watching porn are not worth the temporary thrill.

Biological Impact

Drug abuse generally creates dependency to a chemical substance. Porn use, which causes the release of certain chemicals in the body, can also create this same dependency.

One such chemical released when viewing sexually explicit content is dopamine, which God created to regulate a person’s mood.

Dopamine creates a drive for personal reward. When you engage in any stimulating or potentially addictive habit, your body releases a flood of dopamine into your brain, making you feel good. Over time, your brain can be rewired to crave this dopamine rush, driving you to engage in the addictive behavior to feel the same “high.”

Porn users, like heroin users, have increased dopamine levels.

The brain is at its highest dopamine production levels during the teen years, when it is not fully developed. Thus, young minds are highly vulnerable to addiction and rewiring. In fact, our brains are most sensitive to dopamine around age 15 and react up to four times more strongly to images perceived as exciting.

This helps explain why those ages 12 to 17 are most vulnerable to porn addiction.

Endorphins also explain porn addiction. True to its name as a contraction for “endogenous morphine,” endorphins are hormones that are released within the body to inhibit pain and produce feelings of pleasure. Like dopamine, viewing sexually explicit images releases endorphins. Once these endorphins reach the brain, it locks in the images that caused the release. At this point, merely thinking about the images can cause the same feelings. All it takes is a memory for the person to get high!

Other detrimental effects include decreased brain matter in those who view internet pornography for hours each week. Those viewing excessive amounts of porn have fewer neurons and neuroconnectivity in the pleasure centers of their brains. This leaves their brains craving more stimulating images while at the same time making it harder for the same images to provide pleasure. Therefore, it takes increasingly deviant sexual imagery to satisfy their craving. Pornography becomes the “gateway drug” to more vile content—and behavior.

According to Dr. Weber, “Internet pornography leaves people wanting more and more, but they may not necessarily like what they see, which contributes to symptoms of anxiety and depression. Over time, your senses dull and it’s harder to find pleasure in the images, or even in everyday life.”

Because teenagers’ brains are still developing, it is even more difficult for the pleasure centers of their brains to fully recover compared to adults. “Boys show more interest in deviant and illegal pornography and are more likely to act out than older adults,” Dr. Weber added.

With the internet providing more disturbing images to keep addicts viewing, Dr. Weber says the FBI is noticing an increase in violent sex crimes and child pornography, as well as sex trafficking—now an estimated $32 billion industry worldwide. “There are more sex slaves today worldwide than there have been in the history of mankind,” she said.

Impact on Family and Friends

According to the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, 47 percent of U.S. families reported that pornography was a problem in their homes. More than 70 percent of teens admit to hiding their online activities from parents.

Children as young as 12 are getting hooked and are finding it difficult to perform their normal activities including schoolwork and spending time with family or friends. They are becoming increasingly driven by the need to access pornography and do so for excessive amounts of time.

More and more teens are beginning to see the terrible mistake they made by starting to watch pornography. Read what a few shared with Fight the New Drug, a nonprofit anti-pornography group, about their struggles.

The first is from a girl who described what drove her to watching porn and how it made her feel even worse: “I feel alone, and when I feel alone, I decide to watch porn to help me deal with it. I have tried to stop by myself, but obviously it’s not helping. I don’t have any money, and I’m too embarrassed to tell my parents. So now, I feel stuck. I’m getting depressed, to the point I want to end my life.”

This next one is from a boy admitting his daily—and sometimes multiple times a day—involvement with pornography and self-stimulation: “I think of myself as a good guy, who generally shows a lot of respect towards women, but porn seems to be the exception, and it’s starting to creep into my other interactions. I start looking at women as objects, and that terrifies me.”

Finally, words from a 13-year-old boy: “I want to enjoy my life as a kid. Not have to look at [pornography] before I do my homework or go see my friends.”

Yet there are a number of other negative impacts teens reported.

Depression and Loss of Interest: The highs of porn use are often followed by the lows of depression when it is not available. These lows of depression are intensified due to the secretive nature of porn addiction. Depression lowers the enjoyment of other activities, which makes it more likely that only the “rush” of using porn will break its users out of their funk and creates a cycle of addiction.

Lack of Sleep and Poor School Performance: Teens hooked on porn often stay up late into the night engaging in it, forgoing sleep. This leads to poor performance in school, rushed or missed homework assignments, poor test scores, moodiness and overall irritability. Household chores and other responsibilities also suffer.

Dishonesty, Lying, Stealing and Shame: A willingness to lie and sneak around to hide their use of pornography makes it easier for teens to develop other habits of dishonesty. Teens have reported efforts to hide their behavior such as clearing their internet browsing history, creating multiple user accounts, and sneaking computers into their rooms. Dishonest internet habits can lead to lying about things other than pornography and stealing money from parents.

Dishonest acts initially cause teens to feel intense shame. Over time, shame can turn into outright rebellion and defiance.

The Future (and Purpose) of Sex

Teens engaging in premarital sex has declined over recent years. According to Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the percentage of high school students who had sex dropped from 54 to 40 percent. Teen pregnancy rates also declined sharply.

While this seems like a positive trend, it is really a sign of another even bigger problem.

A study published in the Journal of Population Economics looked at the spread of internet access and found that its arrival explained 7 to 13 percent of the teen-birth-rate decline from 1999 to 2007.

In fact, some 500,000 fewer American babies were born in 2017 than in 2007, even though more women were of prime childbearing age. People are no longer being fruitful and multiplying as God commanded (Gen. 1:28).

Premarital sex is wrong, but so is replacing proper physical sexual conduct with porn addiction.

Pornography is giving teens (and adults) a wrong view of sex. Sex was created by God as a gift to mankind. It is not only vital to continuing the human race, but also an expression of love between a husband and wife. It is an expression of selflessness—not selfishness—which is what pornography is all about. When people watch porn, they are only thinking of themselves.

Realize: Those who use pornography are stealing from their current or future mates!

But this is not the only problem with addiction to sexually explicit materials. The human family is a type of the Family of God. God is reproducing Himself in human beings. He uses the act of sex between a husband and wife, along with the child that comes as a result, as an example of how He grows His spiritual Family.

Satan, who is a fallen angel who can never become God, warps this understanding by getting people hooked on pornography.

Porn addiction also interferes with normal sexual development. It prematurely stimulates sexual activity. It leads to unhealthy views of the opposite sex. It creates unrealistic expectations of sex and intimate relationships. It also normalizes sexual violence.

There are emotional side effects as well such as nightmares and feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety and confusion.

Christ said that whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery in his heart (Matt. 5:27-28). Committing adultery breaks one of the Ten Commandments. It is serious to God.

We should therefore not be surprised about the negative consequences of viewing porn. It can ruin your life, including limiting job prospects and damaging relationships.

If you are watching porn, get help. Talk to your parents or your minister. Porn addiction is treatable, but it will take making overall changes in your life. And it will take time.

First, you have to want to change. This article should help with that.

In I Corinthians 6:18 it states: “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is without the body; but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.”

Understand that using pornography for sexual satisfaction is a form of fornication. This is the same principle Christ laid out in Matthew 5:27-28. This shows people can commit fornication and adultery in their hearts.

From there, you have to remove triggers. This means staying away from the wrong websites and television shows. You can use internet filters and parental controls to help with this. You should also have a person to talk to.

In addition to removing the bad, fill your time instead with productive activities. You can pick up a hobby to decrease boredom and give yourself a way to occupy your time. Be active! Go for a run, start a simple weightlifting routine, play a sport with your siblings or friends.

The more you are away from internet-connected devices, the less chance you will be tempted to misuse them.

Study God’s Word on the subject of fornication—the passage starting in Proverbs 6:23 through the end of chapter 7 discusses in detail the pitfalls of illicit sex. These are just a few ways to help you overcome or avoid the problem altogether.

Do all you can to stay out of the trap of porn addiction. Think about your future. Think about your future mate. And most important, focus on pleasing God.