A woman has revealed how she became dependent on porn after discovering it in primary school - but she has since turned celibate.
Courtney Daniella Boateng, 26, discovered adult websites when she was nine years old - and was soon visiting them daily. However, now in her 20s and engaged, Courtney has overcome her unhealthy dependency on porn and has turned celibate, committing to abstinence until after her wedding.
'I would always find myself fighting whether I could actually stop and it would literally just leave me feeling so powerless,' she told the BBC.
Courtney was very young when she first discovered porn, something she thinks was partially due to the lack of proper sex education available to her at school. She told the broadcaster that her classes were heavily focused on the biology of reproduction rather than the experience of sex itself.
'I ended up searching for sex videos,' she said. 'It was a very wide door that had just blown open into a whole new world.'
After visiting the sites sporadically, Courtney soon found herself watching porn every day. 'That was when I started to realise this is having a negative effect on me because I'm doing this way too often.'
Statistics estimate that 70 percent of men aged 18 to 34 visit a porn site in a typical month - far less than is found in women. Young people, especially teen boys who make up the largest consumer group of porn, can access explicit sexual content with relative ease, especially given online porn makes up 12 percent of all internet sites.
A survey from the Indiana University Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction reported nine percent of porn watchers wanted to stop but found they couldn't.
When people notice themselves withdrawing from their partners and losing satisfaction in sexual relationships, becoming desensitised and needing more extreme content while setting aside responsibilities for more time with porn, it may be a sign of a porn addiction - despite many leading authorities maintaining it is not a real condition.
While the issue is more common among men, one in six women have also reported struggling with a porn addiction.
The American Psychological Association does not recognise the habit as an addiction. Additionally, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not recognise porn addiction as an official diagnosis due to ongoing debate about what constitutes 'porn addiction.'
One camp of psychologists says uncontrollable consumption may be more compulsion than actual addiction.