WINNR
The evidence

What the research shows, and where it runs out.

You should be able to check anything we tell you. So here is the evidence behind the programme, with the sample sizes attached, and a list of the things we will not say because the research does not back them.

What the problem actually is

Doctors do not call this an addiction. That diagnosis was proposed for the DSM-5 in 2013 and turned down. What exists is Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder, code 6C72 in the ICD-112, and it sits with the impulse-control conditions. The same entry says that distress which comes purely from moral disapproval of your own sexual behaviour does not count. Feeling guilty about watching porn is not, on its own, the condition.

The number of hours matters less than most people assume. What separates the men with a problem from the men without one is distress, loss of control, and how they handle their own urges. Men who deal with unwanted feelings by escaping them are the ones whose viewing tends to become a problem.3

In a Swedish study of 1,913 adults, 13% of men reported some problems with online sexual use and 5% reported serious problems.5 Across 19 studies, anxiety and depression track with problematic use. General use shows no such link, and the association is strongest in men under 25.1

How common problems with online sexual use are among men A grid of 100 squares representing 100 men. Thirteen are marked as reporting some problems, and five of those are marked darker as reporting serious problems. ■ 13 report some problems ■ 5 of those, serious
Out of 100 men. Ross, Månsson & Daneback, 2012, n = 1,913.

What the programme is built on

Five things, each with the evidence and the sample size that comes with it.

  1. 01

    Acceptance and commitment therapy

    Every other method on this page was tested on something else and borrowed. This one was tested on the actual problem. In a randomised trial, men doing a structured programme cut their viewing by 93%. The men left on the waiting list managed 21%. Most of the first group still held the change three months later.6 An earlier pilot found 85%.7

    The catch: 28 men in the trial, 6 in the pilot, most of them from one religious community. Promising, a long way from proven. This is the biggest hole in the evidence for what we are building.

    Reduction in viewing, programme versus waiting list Men doing the programme reduced viewing by 93 per cent. Men on the waiting list reduced viewing by 21 per cent. 93% programme 21% waiting list 28 men
  2. 02

    Not fighting the urge

    People told to push an unwanted thought out of their head could not do it, and felt worse for trying. People taught to let the thought sit there felt better, and the thoughts arrived just as often.4 So this skill does not make urges go away. It changes what they cost you, which is the honest version and still the useful one. It is also why "just stop" is a strategy we will never sell you.

  3. 03

    Deciding the move in advance

    An if-then plan means settling what you will do before the moment arrives. "When it is late and I am on my own, I will put my phone on the charger in the hall." Across 94 studies these plans have a medium-to-large effect, d = 0.65, on whether people reach a goal.8 They work better when written in that if-then shape, and better again when the person already wants the outcome. It is the best-supported thing on this page, which is why you get one before you have paid us anything.

  4. 04

    Goals, tracking and feedback together

    Specific hard goals beat vague ones, and beat telling yourself to do your best. Four decades of research says so.9 Tracking your own behaviour works too, but it works far better in company: interventions that combine self-tracking with a clear goal and regular feedback outperform the ones that leave any of the three out.10 A daily check-in against a target you set is exactly that combination.

  5. 05

    Delivering it through a phone

    Across randomised trials, mental health apps do help, modestly: depression g = 0.28, anxiety g = 0.30, stress and quality of life g = 0.35.11 Two details shape how we build. Apps built on a proper therapeutic model beat general wellness apps, and apps with human guidance and reminders beat apps without them.

    The catch: those numbers shrink when the comparison group is given something real to do instead of nothing. Part of what looks like benefit is the effect of opening any app at all.

  6. 06

    Not doing it alone

    The best evidence that structured peer support beats going it alone comes from drinking, not porn. A Cochrane review pooled 27 studies and 10,565 people and found that programmes built around peer support produced higher long-term abstinence than other established treatments, including CBT, and cut healthcare costs as well.15 In the largest of those trials, 24% of people in the peer-support arm stayed abstinent for the whole year after treatment, against 15% for CBT.

    The catch: that is alcohol, and it is a whole programme rather than one accountability partner. It is a good reason to build this. It is not proof that our version of it works.

    The accountability screen in the WINNR app A phone screen headed Your buddy, showing a matched person on day 41 against your day 38, with buttons to send a message and see their posts. YOUR BUDDY Matched day 41 you, day 38 Send a message See their posts Pair up with someone near the same day count. You go through it together.
    Mockup of the buddy screen, using the app's own wording. Not a photograph of a shipped build.

How big are these effects, really?

Effect sizes on a standard scale On the conventional scale, 0.2 is a small effect, 0.5 medium and 0.8 large. Mental health app effects sit at about 0.3, small. If-then plans sit at 0.65, between medium and large. 0 0.2 small 0.5 medium 0.8 large apps, 0.3 if-then plans 0.65
Cohen's conventional bands. We are showing you this because it makes our own app evidence look modest, which it is.

What we will not tell you

All five are standard in this category. None of them holds up.

"Porn rewires your brain"

The paper behind this argued from studies of cocaine, obesity and paedophilia, and never from men who watch porn. Another team replied in the same journal that it took "excessive liberties and misleading interpretations of neuroscience research".1213 The brain scans it leans on were taken at a single point in time, so they cannot show what caused what. The authors are still arguing about it in print. We are not going to build a product on an argument that is still running.

"You are addicted"

Nobody can tell you that from a questionnaire, and the classification does not use the word. There is also good evidence that men who call themselves porn addicts are often driven by how guilty they feel about watching, more than by how much they watch.

"It always escalates"

Some men do notice themselves seeking harder material over time. It has been documented in some users. It has never been shown to be a law. If you have seen it in yourself, take it seriously. If you have not, you have not been promised it.

"Quit for 7 days and you will feel the difference"

A randomised controlled study put regular users through a seven-day abstinence period and measured them against a control group every night. It found no withdrawal symptoms and no change in wellbeing.14 Stopping by itself did nothing measurable. The structure around stopping is where the change comes from.

"Clinically proven"

WINNR is not a medical device and has never been through a trial. Everything above is evidence for the methods we build on. None of it is evidence about our product.

That gap is the one we are actually working on. From September our founder is on the PhD Valorisation Program run by Tilburg University's Knowledge Transfer Office with the THRIVE Institute, which is where the time and the academic supervision to run a proper study come from. Sitting on a university programme is not a university endorsing us, and we will not dress it up as one.

What we do not know yet

Ask whether WINNR works and the honest answer is that nobody has checked, us included. Borrowing other people's trials is a fair way to design a programme. It is not a way to claim a result.

So we intend to find out. Once the app is live we will run a small controlled study: one group using it, one group waiting, measured before and after on instruments other people validated. That is what the Tilburg programme is for on our side, and it is the difference between wanting to test this and having the supervision to do it properly. The study will be small and it will settle nothing on its own. It will be ours, and we will publish what it says whichever way it goes.

References

  1. Systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 studies on pornography consumption, anxiety and depression. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2026. doi.org/10.3390/jcm15135030
  2. World Health Organization. Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder, ICD-11 code 6C72. Adopted 2019, in force January 2022.
  3. Levin, Lillis & Hayes. When is online pornography viewing problematic among college males? Examining the moderating role of experiential avoidance. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 2012.
  4. Marcks & Woods. A comparison of thought suppression to an acceptance-based technique in the management of personal intrusive thoughts: a controlled evaluation. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2005; 43(4):433–445. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15701355
  5. Ross, Månsson & Daneback. Prevalence, severity, and correlates of problematic sexual internet use in Swedish men and women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2012; 41:459–466, n = 1,913.
  6. Crosby & Twohig. Acceptance and commitment therapy for problematic internet pornography use: a randomized trial. Behavior Therapy, 2016; 47(3):355–366, n = 28. doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2016.02.001
  7. Twohig & Crosby. Acceptance and commitment therapy as a treatment for problematic internet pornography viewing. Behavior Therapy, 2010, n = 6.
  8. Gollwitzer & Sheeran. Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006; 94 studies, d = 0.65.
  9. Locke & Latham. Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 2002.
  10. Michie et al. Effective techniques in healthy eating and physical activity interventions: self-monitoring combined with goal setting and feedback. Health Psychology, 2009.
  11. Linardon, Cuijpers, Carlbring, Messer & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz. The efficacy of app-supported smartphone interventions for mental health problems: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. World Psychiatry, 2019. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31496095
  12. Hilton & Watts. Pornography addiction: a neuroscience perspective. Surgical Neurology International, 2011; 2:19.
  13. Reid, Carpenter & Fong. Neuroscience research fails to support claims that excessive pornography consumption causes brain damage. Surgical Neurology International, 2011; 2:64. Read it
  14. Fernandez, Kuss, Justice, Fernandez & Griffiths. Effects of a 7-day pornography abstinence period on withdrawal-related symptoms in regular pornography users: a randomized controlled study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2023. Read it
  15. Kelly, Humphreys & Ferri. Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs for alcohol use disorder. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020; 27 studies, n = 10,565. cochranelibrary.com
  16. Bőthe et al. The Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale (PPCS-6), the screener used in our questionnaire. Journal of Sex Research, 2020.

If you think we have any of this wrong, or you have read a paper more carefully than we have, write to winnr.now@gmail.com. We would rather be corrected than quoted.

See where you actually stand.

The questionnaire uses the PPCS-6, a screener other researchers validated16. It takes about four minutes. It is a screen, and it is not a diagnosis.

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