A porn addiction test, and what it can and can’t tell you.
These are the five questions researchers use to screen for problematic porn use. Each asks about the last six months, answered never, occasionally or very often. It gives you a number and a plain reading. It is not a diagnosis, and it will not call you anything.
Most porn tests online are written to sell you a program. This one was written by researchers, tested on thousands of people, and is short on purpose. Answer for what actually happened, not for what you wish had.
Your answers never leave this page — nothing is sent, nothing is stored.
For adults, 18 and over. The questions are the Brief Pornography Screen by Kraus and colleagues, 2020, reproduced under CC BY-NC 4.0; the source and what we changed.
You find yourself using pornography more than you want to.
Take a breath.
Whatever the number turns out to be, you just looked at it straight. Almost no man does.
It doesn’t flag problematic porn use.
4 is the line the researchers set. In their study, about one in ten men from the community scored at or above it.
Your total sits below the line. That is a real answer, and a narrow one. These five questions ask about control, urges and guilt. They catch most men who are struggling but not all: in the research, about four in ten of the men already in treatment for this scored under the line too. So a low number is not an all-clear if something in you says otherwise.
You said you use porn to cope with strong feelings. Of your five answers, that one says the most. For a lot of men, porn is not really about porn. It is the fastest relief they ever found for sadness, anger, loneliness or stress, and that is the thread worth pulling, with someone, rather than trying harder to hold a door shut.
If that is you, you are not overreacting. Ten honest questions looks at the same ground in plain words, including the secrecy and the cost to your life, and the section further down is about the difference between losing control and losing peace.
I’m Luke — I built this. For years I’d have answered never to most of these. I was doing well. It was only sometimes.
If the answers ever start to change, you won’t have to face that alone.
It flags possible problematic porn use.
4 is the line the researchers set. In their study, about one in ten men from the community scored at or above it, and so did about six in ten of the men already in treatment.
Your total is at or above the line. The researchers call that “a positive screen for possible problematic pornography use,” and their advice is the same as mine: take a closer look, ideally with someone trained. It is a screen, not a diagnosis, and they ask for the line to be read cautiously.
You said you use porn to cope with strong feelings. Of your five answers, that one says the most. For a lot of men, porn is not really about porn. It is the fastest relief they ever found for sadness, anger, loneliness or stress, and that is the thread worth pulling, with someone, rather than trying harder to hold a door shut.
Nothing here says you’re broken, or that you are anything. It says porn has been taking more than you meant it to. What helps is not trying harder. It is not doing it alone: one man you trust, this week, and someone trained if it keeps happening. Here’s how to find them.
I’m Luke. I built this, and I’m not a brand.
For years I’d have answered never to most of these. I was doing well. It was only sometimes.
I was ten the first time. Thirty-eight before I told the truth out loud.
What finally freed me wasn’t trying harder. It was no longer doing it alone.
You’re not too far gone. I wasn’t.
It flags a pattern worth taking to someone trained.
4 is the researchers’ line for a closer look. They suggest that 6 or more may point to a need for clinical help, and the men already in treatment in their studies mostly scored well above it.
Your total is 6 or more. Read that slowly, and then read the rest, because the number is the smallest part of this. It is a screen, not a diagnosis, and only a person who sits down with you can weigh what it means in your life.
You said you use porn to cope with strong feelings. Of your five answers, that one says the most. For a lot of men, porn is not really about porn. It is the fastest relief they ever found for sadness, anger, loneliness or stress, and that is the thread worth pulling, with someone, rather than trying harder to hold a door shut.
Nothing here says you’re broken, or that you are anything. It says something has been taking more of your life than you meant it to, for a while now. What helps is not trying harder. It is not doing it alone: one man you trust, this week, and someone trained soon. Here’s how to find them.
I’m Luke. I built this, and I’m not a brand.
For years I’d have answered never to most of these. I was doing well. It was only sometimes.
I was ten the first time. Thirty-eight before I told the truth out loud.
What finally freed me wasn’t trying harder. It was no longer doing it alone.
You’re not too far gone. I wasn’t.
What the five were asking.
Five short questions, each one a different part of the same picture. Your own answers are above. Here is what each one is for, with the question exactly as the researchers wrote it.
More than you meant to
- You find yourself using pornography more than you want to.
Not how much. More than you want to. A man who looks once a week and cannot keep to his own decision has more going on than a man who looks more often and can. Frequency is the easiest thing to reassure yourself with and the least informative. The gap between what you meant and what happened is the thing this question measures.
Trying to cut back
- You have attempted to “cut back” or stop using pornography, but were unsuccessful.
Read this one as evidence of effort, not of weakness. The rules, the blockers, the Monday restarts, the stretch that held for a while all count here, and what they show is that trying harder from inside the loop was never going to be enough by itself. That is not a judgment on you. It is the most common story there is.
Strong urges
- You find it difficult to resist strong urges to use pornography.
Everyone has urges. The question is whether they win the argument most of the time. An urge is a wave: it rises, crests and passes, usually sooner than it promises. The piece on the first ninety days has more on riding one out.
To cope with strong feelings
- You find yourself using pornography to cope with strong emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, loneliness, etc.).
Of the five, this is the one that says the most about what porn has been doing in your life. Researchers who study compulsive sexual behavior keep finding the same thing underneath it: trouble handling hard feelings, with arousal and release learned as the fastest way to make them stop. Most men think they have a porn problem. Very often it is a pain problem, and porn is the quickest relief they ever found for it. If you answered occasionally or very often here, that is the thread worth pulling.
Despite the guilt
- You continue to use pornography even though you feel guilty about it.
This is the question to read most carefully if you grew up in church, because guilt can come from two places. It can come from a habit that is costing you, or from the distance between what you do and what you believe, and those are different troubles. Both are real. A score cannot tell them apart, which is why the next section exists.
This is the shape of the thing, set out as questions. It is not a verdict on you. The pattern is the bramble. You are the man underneath it.
Losing control and losing peace are different troubles.
A questionnaire can count how often a man could not stop. It cannot tell whether what hurts is the not stopping, or the distance between what he does and what he believes. Both are real. They need different help, and men who grew up in church often carry both at once.
When it is control
You decide, and it does not hold. You hide it. The cost is something you can name: time, sleep, money, a marriage, your own trust in yourself.
This is what the screen is built to catch, and what a trained counselor works on, usually with another person in the room. It was hardly ever a willpower problem.
When it is conscience
You believe it is wrong, you grieve it, and when you decide to stop, you can. That is not nothing. It is also not what the World Health Organization’s diagnosis describes, which leaves out distress that is entirely about moral judgment.
The help for it is a pastor or a counselor who will take your convictions seriously. The grief is a sign of what you love, not of a disease.
Research on religious people finds that moral disapproval often predicts feeling addicted better than the amount of use does (Grubbs and colleagues, 2019). So the first job is to find out which trouble you have, and the second is to be honest that it may be both.
If you want a second reading.
No single test settles this. These are worth knowing about, and none of them replaces a conversation.
The sexual addiction test
Nineteen questions built on the World Health Organization’s definition of compulsive sexual behavior. Wider than porn: it counts masturbation and sex with a partner too, and it looks harder at what it costs. Take the nineteen.
Ten honest questions
Plain-language questions drawn from Patrick Carnes’ criteria. No score. It asks about secrecy and about the cost to your life, which these five only touch. Answer the ten.
The two-minute reflection
Six gentle questions, no score, drawn from the screen Carnes’ team built for clinics. Take the reflection.
A person
Any licensed counselor who treats compulsive sexual behavior, or a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist found by area in the IITAP directory. Bring the number if you like. The conversation matters more than the number.
Where this comes from.
The five questions, the three answers, the scoring and the line at 4 are the Brief Pornography Screen (BPS): Kraus, S. W., Gola, M., Grubbs, J. B., Kowalewska, E., Hoff, R. A., Lew-Starowicz, M., Martino, S., Shirk, S. D., & Potenza, M. N. (2020). Validation of a Brief Pornography Screen across multiple samples. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 9(2), 259–271. doi:10.1556/2006.2020.00038. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
What we changed, as the licence asks us to say. The questions are shown one at a time, in the researchers’ order and their words. The headings and everything written about your result are ours; the researchers did not write or endorse them. The scoring is theirs, unchanged: never counts 0, occasionally 1, very often 2, added up for a total between 0 and 10, with the line at 4.
What the research shows, and what it doesn’t. The screen was tested across several samples of adults in the United States and Poland, including US veterans and a large national sample. The line at 4 came from comparing men seeking treatment for compulsive sexual behavior with men from the community: most of the men in treatment scored 4 or more, roughly a third or more of them did not, and only a small share of the community men did. The researchers call 4 or more “a positive screen for possible problematic pornography use,” ask that it be read cautiously, and suggest that 6 or more may point to a need for clinical help. They tested that line only in heterosexual Polish men, so it is a guide, not a ruling.
The definition behind it. “Porn addiction” is not a diagnosis in either of the major manuals. The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 lists compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (code 6C72), a persistent failure to control intense, repetitive sexual urges, over an extended period, causing marked distress or significant impairment, and porn is one of the ways it shows. It does not count distress that is entirely about moral judgment. The longer answer is here.
Honest answers.
Is this a porn addiction test?
It is the closest honest thing to one. “Porn addiction” is not a diagnosis in either of the major manuals, so no test can confirm it. What researchers can do is screen for problematic porn use: a pattern of using it more than you want to, failing to cut back and paying for it. That is what these five questions do. The Brief Pornography Screen was published in 2020 and tested in five samples in the United States and Poland. It gives you a reason to look closer, or not. It does not give you a label.
What does a score of 4 or more mean?
In the research that set the line, 4 out of 10 best separated men seeking treatment for compulsive sexual behavior from men in the community. About six in ten of the men in treatment scored 4 or more, and about one in ten of the community men did. The researchers call 4 or more a positive screen for possible problematic pornography use, ask that it be read cautiously, and suggest that 6 or more may point to a need for clinical help. It is a reason to take a closer look with someone trained, not a conclusion.
I scored low but it still feels like a problem. Am I wrong?
No. In the same research, about four in ten of the men already in treatment scored under the line, so a low number is not an all-clear. These five questions ask about control, urges, coping and guilt. They do not ask about secrecy, what it costs your marriage or how you have come to see people, and any of those can be the real trouble. Ten honest questions covers more of that ground, and a conversation with a pastor or counselor covers the rest.
I am a Christian and a lot of this feels like guilt. Does that skew the result?
It can. The fifth question asks whether you keep going despite feeling guilty, and research on religious people finds that moral disapproval often predicts feeling addicted better than the amount of use does. So a man of faith can score higher on that question for reasons that are about conscience as much as control. Both are real, and they need different help. The World Health Organization’s definition of compulsive sexual behavior explicitly leaves out distress that is entirely about moral judgment, and someone sitting across from you can sort the two in a way a questionnaire cannot.
How is this different from the sexual addiction test?
This one is about porn alone, and it is short: five questions, about two minutes. The sexual addiction test on this site is the CSBD-19, nineteen questions built on the World Health Organization’s definition of compulsive sexual behavior, and it counts masturbation and sex with a partner as well as porn. If porn is the whole of it for you, start here. If it reaches further, take the nineteen as a second reading.
Is anything I answer saved or sent?
No. Your answers stay on this page. Nothing is sent to Bramble or anyone else, nothing is stored in your browser, and nothing is put in the address. Close the tab and they are gone. If you allow analytics, the page is counted as a visit like any other page on the site, and your answers are never part of that.
What should I do with a high score?
Tell one person you trust this week, and then find someone trained. A Certified Sex Addiction Therapist is listed in the IITAP directory by area, and any licensed counselor who treats compulsive sexual behavior is a fair place to start. Bring the number if you like, but the conversation matters more than it does. And if you want something standing in the doorway in the meantime, that is what Bramble is for: a free porn blocker for your phone, with a way to bring other men in.