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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Harriet Grant

‘It stole my soul’: readers on how watching porn at a young age affected their life

Child looks at a screen in the dark
‘A friend showed me after school one day. It was violent and degrading, I felt sick. But I was glued to it.’ Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty

Sam was 14 when he stumbled across pornography while looking for Pokémon on his Nintendo DS. “I chatted to people while playing video games and connected with others who were interested in the same porn,” he recalls.

“We would all share links. The scary thing is you didn’t know how old anyone really was. I made one friend and it turned out later that we were both lying, pretending to be 18.”

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