College graduate to expand organization helping students overcome pornography addictions at schools nationwide

A recent Notre Dame graduate wants to address pornography addiction, which he says is a pervasive issue among American men that is seldom discussed. 

Joshua Haskell, who graduated in the spring, struggled with a pornography addiction that he eventually overcame in college. He launched a network of peer-led, in-person small groups to help college men find freedom through relationships and faith. Now, he is looking to take the program to campuses nationwide. 

More than 90% of men watch pornography monthly and a content analysis of best-selling pornographic videos found that 88% of scenes portrayed physical violence, 48% of scenes portrayed verbal aggression and 94% of aggressive scenes portrayed women as targets of aggression, according to the National Institute of Health.

Statistics like those encouraged Haskell to take action. While he graduated a valedictorian finalist at Notre Dame, Haskell decided halfway through his senior year to abandon a finance job in New York and pursue his mission full-time. In May, he founded the nonprofit Ethos National, which he aims to expand to every college in the U.S. 

"I was kind of looking at the two options in front of me and I definitely felt called more to expanding this and making a franchise model that can really just be replicated at universities around the country," he told Fox News Digital. 

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Last August, Haskell published the story of his personal experience with pornography addiction in Notre Dame’s school newspaper to spread the word about his program. He said he was "fully prepared to be ostracized on campus." 

"I wrote that article and it sat in my Google Docs folder for eight months, just because it's a scary thing to post," he said. "But that's not at all what happened. There was an overwhelmingly positive response at Notre Dame from men, women, professors, alumni, just overwhelmingly positive."

Across campus, Haskell said people were coming up to him telling him their own stories and thanking him for starting the program. 

"People would open up to me, which is a really powerful thing," he added to Fox News Digital. "When people know that they're safe to share a story like that with me, because they know I've experienced it myself, it invites a lot of bravery from others as well."

He hoped for 10 people to sign up for his program, but within two weeks he had 100. 

"Four percent of the guys on Notre Dame’s campus participated practically overnight," he said. "I couldn’t resist the students in my inbox asking to set up a branch at their universities."

As part of his program, small groups of five people meet once a week for a half hour and every person has an accountability partner that they call every day, which forces consistency and vulnerability, he said. Haskell also said he recommends participants take a complete detox from technology to remove any temptation if necessary. 

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Ethos National will soon be launching an app, a student leader training program and a curriculum that will be available to thousands of students, he told Fox News Digital. As part of the effort, Haskell said he would really like to see a reduced stigma around pornography addiction, because if it's as widespread as he believes it to be, getting help should be encouraged.

Haskell explained that he was exposed to pornography at the age of 15. 

"As a young person, I just found it and eventually got into this routine that I just couldn't shake," he said to Fox News Digital. "Obviously, there's a lot of guilt and shame, and I kind of thought I was the only person struggling with this." 

Haskell described a turning point he had when he was 18 and he felt like he had hit "rock bottom" in his addiction. He found an online accountability group, joined a Zoom meeting with his camera off and sat in his car to watch what he described as "powerful, heart-wrenching testimonials" from men struggling with their own pornography addictions. 

"It was super, super shocking and crazy uncomfortable because I watched all of these grown men that were struggling with this, a lot of them with wives, with children, just making no progress decades down the road," he said. "For me, it just felt like this time machine where I was just given this image of myself in the future if I didn't act right now."

"There was this guy, he was in his car on the Zoom, and he just started bawling," he recalled. "It's really hard to see that hopelessness, especially later in life. I was 18 and this person was significantly older than me, and it motivated me, his testimony motivated me to act as a young person and get ahead of this right now."

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Haskell said to Fox News Digital that moment made him realize that this wasn't something he would simply "grow out of."

"Especially for young people, there's this image that you get married, you get in a committed relationship, and this is something that kind of disappears," he said. 

People "try to shake it and then they cannot do it and that sort of powerlessness is very frustrating," he added. "I think just realizing that powerlessness is really motivating, just acknowledging that it's time to take another step."

When Haskell was finally able to quit, he saw the strong show of support he received from his peers at Notre Dame as evidence of a culture where people are hungry for help, that oftentimes doesn't exist.

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"The most shocking thing about these small group programs … was just, how does this not exist already?" he said. "I was asking every day. How has nothing like this come to college campuses or parishes or high schools when it is such a massive issue?"

"I always assumed it didn't exist because people wouldn't go to it, but that's clearly not true," he added to Fox News Digital. "It didn't exist … because it's something so stigmatized and touchy."