Porn addiction In singapore? why it’s more common than anyone admits!
Clinical Disclaimer: This article is written for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute a clinical diagnosis. If you are concerned about your pornography use or its impact on your life and relationships, please consult a registered mental health professional. You are welcome to contact Sacred Space Counselling LLP for a confidential consultation.
Let me begin with something that does not get said often enough in Singapore: if you are struggling with pornography use, you are almost certainly not the only person in your office, your church, or your block of flats who is.
That is not a guess. The data — where we have it — points clearly in that direction. And yet the silence around pornography addiction in Singapore remains near-total. Men carry this in private for years, sometimes decades, managing the shame, the failed attempts to stop, and the growing gap between who they present to the world and what they are doing behind a closed screen. They do not speak about it to their wives. They do not raise it with their pastor or their GP. They certainly do not Google it at work.
Part of what I do in my practice is help people name what has been nameless. This article is an attempt to do the same thing — to surface what the data tells us about pornography use in Singapore, to explain why it stays so hidden, and to say clearly: this is a recognised clinical condition, it responds to treatment, and you do not have to keep managing it alone.
What the Numbers Tell Us — And What They Don’t
Getting accurate data on pornography use in Singapore is genuinely difficult. This is partly a measurement problem — self-report surveys on stigmatised behaviours almost always undercount — and partly a cultural one. In a society where “saving face” is a deeply embedded social instinct, the honest answer to “do you use pornography?” is not always the real answer.
What we do have is sobering enough.
A 2016 survey by Touch Cyber Wellness, reported in The Straits Times, found that nine in ten boys aged 13 to 15 in Singapore had been exposed to sexually explicit material within the previous year. More than half — 54% — said they had sought it out intentionally. Some had been first exposed before they even started primary school. These are not figures from a different era. The young men sitting in counselling rooms across Singapore today grew up in this environment.
In faith communities, the picture is no better. A survey by the organisation Focus on the Family Singapore, drawing on three years of cumulative data from over 14,000 respondents across Singapore churches, found that 51% of Christian youth and young adults had viewed pornography at least once in the past year. It was the second-biggest sexual issue reported by Christians in Singapore, after masturbation — and the data showed these issues were highly correlated.
Globally, a landmark 2024 study by Bőthe and colleagues, published in the journal Addiction, estimated that problematic pornography use — the kind that causes genuine clinical concern — affects between 3.2% and 16.6% of the population across 42 countries. Applied conservatively to Singapore’s adult population of approximately 3.5 million, that suggests tens of thousands of people here are struggling with pornography use at a level that warrants professional attention. Most are not getting it.
In 2025, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs noted that exposure to online pornography was a contributing factor in sex crimes committed by young people, with over 460 individuals aged 19 and under arrested for such offences in 2024. One case involved a 14-year-old boy who had been watching pornography every day for three years and had come to believe that what he saw reflected normal interactions between men and women. His counsellor described his case as far from unique.
Applying global estimates of problematic pornography use conservatively to Singapore’s adult population suggests tens of thousands of people here are struggling at a level that warrants professional support. The vast majority are not getting it.
Why Does It Stay So Hidden?
Understanding why pornography addiction in Singapore goes so largely unnamed and untreated requires understanding the cultural ecosystem we live in. Several forces converge to keep this problem in the dark.
The weight of shame and “saving face”
Singapore is a collectivist society in which reputation — one’s own, and one’s family’s — carries enormous social weight. Research published in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences by Subramaniam and colleagues has documented how Singapore’s “saving face” culture creates distinctive patterns of stigma around mental health and behavioural conditions. Admitting to a struggle is experienced not merely as a personal disclosure but as a potential source of shame for the entire family.
For pornography specifically, this shame operates at multiple levels simultaneously. There is shame about the sexual content itself. There is shame about the loss of control. There is shame about the gap between who a man presents as — a good husband, a faithful Christian, a responsible father — and what he is actually doing. Each layer reinforces the silence.
The “just stop” mentality
A 2024 study found that 60% of Singaporean respondents believed mental health conditions are caused by a lack of self-discipline and willpower. This belief — that struggling with something like pornography addiction simply means you are not trying hard enough — is deeply embedded in how Singapore understands personal failure. It turns a clinical problem into a moral one, and a moral problem into something to be managed privately rather than treated professionally.
In faith communities, this often takes the form of accountability partnerships, prayer, and renewed personal resolve — all of which have genuine value, but none of which are sufficient as standalone treatments for what the World Health Organisation now classifies as a recognised impulse control disorder.
The legal and social context
Pornography is illegal in Singapore under the Films Act and the Penal Code. This creates an additional layer of complexity for people who are struggling — they are not just carrying shame about a behaviour, but a behaviour that is technically unlawful. Seeking professional help requires trusting that confidentiality will be maintained, and in a society where that trust does not come easily, many people simply do not take that step.
The absence of visible help
In countries like the United States or Australia, pornography addiction counselling is a well-established specialty with professional organisations, recovery communities, and significant public awareness. In Singapore, this infrastructure is nascent. Most general practitioners are not trained to screen for or treat compulsive sexual behaviour. Most counsellors have not received specialist training in this area. The result is that even people who want help often cannot find it — or do not know it exists.
What We Are Actually Talking About — Clinically
I want to be precise here, because the language around this matters.
Since January 2022, the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) has formally recognised Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder (CSBD) — code 6C72 — as an impulse control disorder. The ICD-11 defines it as a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour that causes marked distress or significant impairment in personal, social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, and which persists for six months or more.
Several important clinical points follow from this:
It is not simply a moral failing. CSBD is a recognised clinical condition with neurobiological underpinnings. Research has identified changes in the brain’s reward circuitry in individuals with compulsive sexual behaviour that parallel those seen in substance use disorders — including altered dopamine signalling and reduced prefrontal control over impulses.
It is not the same as high sex drive. The ICD-11 criteria are clear that distress or impairment must be present, and the behaviour must be genuinely difficult to control. Someone who uses pornography occasionally without distress or functional impairment does not meet the clinical threshold. The relevant question is not “do I use pornography?” but “has my use of pornography become something I cannot control, and is it causing harm in my life?”
Moral and religious distress complicates the picture. Research by Grubbs and colleagues has identified a construct called “moral incongruence” — where the distress a person feels about their pornography use is driven primarily by the gap between their behaviour and their moral or religious values, rather than by clinically significant compulsivity. This is an important distinction, and one that a competent clinician will work through carefully with a client. It does not mean the distress is less real. It does mean the treatment approach may differ.
Most people who need help are not getting it. A study conducted across 42 countries found that among people identified as at high risk of CSBD, only 14% had sought treatment. The treatment gap is enormous — and in Singapore’s cultural context, almost certainly larger than the global average.
What Compulsive Pornography Use Actually Looks Like
In my clinical experience, the men who come to see me about pornography use often arrive in crisis, resulting from discovery of their secret compulsion by their wife or girlfriend. The profile is remarkably consistent.
They are often high-functioning in every visible area of their lives — professionally successful, relationally presentable, active in their faith community. The pornography use is the one part of their life that does not fit the picture they have carefully constructed. They have tried to stop many times. They have used accountability software, made promises, prayed, confessed, and resolved. And they have relapsed, and felt the familiar descent back into shame, and started the cycle again.
By the time they reach a counsellor, many have been in this cycle for ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty years. They carry an enormous weight of self-contempt. They have come to believe — at a level that feels factual — that they are uniquely broken, uniquely weak, uniquely beyond help.
They are none of those things. They are dealing with a pattern of behaviour that has become neurologically entrenched, emotionally functional — it reliably numbs stress, loneliness, or anxiety — and socially isolated by shame. That is not a character description. That is a clinical picture. And it responds to clinical treatment.
What Makes Singapore Particularly Vulnerable
Several features of Singaporean life create specific risk factors for pornography addiction that are worth naming directly.
Early exposure and high internet penetration. Singapore has one of the highest rates of smartphone and internet usage in the world. Exposure to pornography among adolescents is not exceptional — it is normative. Boys who encountered pornography at 11 or 12 years old, before they had any framework for understanding what they were seeing, are now adults whose use patterns were established in adolescence. Early exposure is one of the strongest predictors of later problematic use.
The pressure-cooker culture. Singapore’s high-performance academic and professional culture produces a population under chronic stress. Research consistently links pornography use as an emotional regulation strategy — a way of numbing stress, anxiety, loneliness, or boredom. In a society where working long hours is normal, where performance pressure begins in primary school, and where emotional expression is not strongly modelled, pornography becomes, for many men, a reliable and private release valve. The problem is that it does not resolve the underlying stress. It simply suppresses it temporarily — and the shame that follows creates its own additional burden.
The gap between religious identity and behaviour. Singapore has a large and active Christian community, alongside significant Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu populations, all of which hold clear moral frameworks around sexuality. For men in these communities, pornography use is not merely a clinical problem — it is experienced as a profound spiritual failure. The gap between their faith identity and their private behaviour is a source of acute shame that often prevents them from disclosing to anyone, including their pastor or counsellor.
The silence in marriage. Most of the men I see have not told their wives. The secrecy compounds the isolation. And when wives do eventually discover — through a browser history, a notification, a confession — the betrayal they experience is real and clinically significant. Betrayal trauma in partners of pornography users is a recognised clinical presentation, and it is one that receives almost no public acknowledgement in Singapore.
Recovery Is Possible — And Here Is What It Looks Like
I want to be honest about recovery, because I think the Christian community in particular sometimes presents it in ways that set people up for shame rather than growth.
Recovery from compulsive pornography use is not a single decisive moment of breakthrough. It is a process. It involves understanding what function the behaviour has been serving — what needs it has been meeting, what pain it has been managing — and finding healthier ways to meet those needs. It involves addressing the underlying psychological material: often unresolved trauma, attachment wounds, or chronic emotional dysregulation. And for men of faith, it involves integrating a robust theology of grace — one that holds conviction and compassion together, rather than using shame as a therapeutic tool.
The most effective treatment approaches combine evidence-based psychological therapy — Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, trauma-informed modalities — with attention to the relational and spiritual dimensions of the person’s experience. Accountability alone is not sufficient. Willpower alone is not sufficient. But with the right professional support, genuine recovery — not just white-knuckling through each week, but actual freedom and restored relationships — is entirely achievable.
The first step, for most men, is simply telling the truth to another person. Not performing repentance. Not promising to do better. Just being honest about what has been happening, in a space where that honesty will be met with clinical competence and genuine compassion rather than judgment.
If you are reading this and recognising yourself — that step is available to you. It is not too late. And you are not too far gone.
If you would like to speak with someone, book a confidential session here. All sessions are conducted by a SAC Registered Counsellor and ACC (Singapore) member.
If you are not sure if your pornography use is a problem, take our FREE and CONFIDENTIAL WHO-validated online assessment here.
References
- Bőthe, B., Potenza, M. N., Griffiths, M. D., et al. (2024). Problematic pornography use across countries, genders, and sexual orientations: Insights from the International Sex Survey. Addiction, 119(5), 928–950. doi:10.1111/add.16431
- Kraus, S. W., Krueger, R. B., Briken, P., et al. (2018). Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in the ICD-11. World Psychiatry, 17(1), 109–110. PMC5775124
- World Health Organization. (2022). International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Revision (ICD-11). Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder, code 6C72. icd.who.int
- Touch Cyber Wellness. (2016). Survey on teenage exposure to pornography. As reported by Janice Tai, The Straits Times, 29 June 2016. Cited in AWARE Singapore (2021). aware.org.sg
- Focus on the Family Singapore. Whole Life Inventory Survey (3-year cumulative data, 14,000+ respondents). As reported in Thirst.sg, February 2022. thirst.sg
- Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs. (2025). Over 460 youths aged 19 and below arrested for sex crimes in Singapore in 2024. As reported in Mothership.sg, May 2025. mothership.sg
- Subramaniam, M., et al. (2017). Stigma towards people with mental disorders and its components — a perspective from multi-ethnic Singapore. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 26(4), 371–382. PMC5647661
- Cigna Healthcare Singapore. (2024). Mental health stigma in Asia. cigna.com.sg
- Grubbs, J. B., Perry, S. L., Wilt, J. A., & Reid, R. C. (2019). Pornography problems due to moral incongruence: An integrative model with a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(2), 397–415. doi:10.1007/s10508-018-1248-x
- Portela, C., Dionísio, R., Sousa, S. M., & Gonçalves, M. (2023). Online pornography use during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review. European Psychiatry. doi:10.1192/j.eurpsy.2023.1650. PMC10479427
- Frontiers in Psychiatry. (2025). Asian cultural values and help-seeking: A cross-sectional study on compulsive sexual behavior. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1633160. PMC12538654
