Fight the New Drug is officially 12 years old!
Consider how, if our organization was a person, there is a high likelihood that it would have been exposed to porn by now seeing as the average age of a child’s first porn exposure is between nine and eleven years old. Chilling, right?
What started over a decade ago, as a group of college friends with a shared passion to positively impact the world, has grown into a global movement. We are so proud to say that millions of people are now recognizing pornography for what it is and rejecting its influence in their lives. We are the organization we are today because of those who have fought for this cause and supported our mission to raise awareness on the harmful effects of porn using only science, facts, and personal accounts. We’re continually growing, and it is because of our Fighters that our resources have been able to educate and raise awareness on this issue across the globe.
So let’s take a walk down memory lane and look back at a few milestones that helped define this movement for love.
March 3, 2009: FTND officially launches
Our founders were friends in college with a powerful dream—change the world for the better. As they grew in friendship, it became clear that they were all passionate about changing the conversation around a particular topic: pornography. Check out our origin story:
And so marked the start of something big. While the origins of Fight the New Drug date even further back, we officially became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in March of 2009. This movement only became more powerful from there as more and more people became educated, shared their stories, and helped us change the conversation around porn.
May 2009: Fighter attributes outlined
As a way to help our supporters feel connected to this larger movement for love and instill in them the important values of this organization, we outlined the attributes of Fighter.
As Fighters, we strive to be strong, open-minded, accepting, loving, bold, rebellious, real, understanding, and encouraging.
Regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, political persuasions, or any other diversifying factor—porn can impact anyone. Because of this, we welcome everyone seeking information on the harmful effects of pornography to join this movement and learn what it means to be a Fighter.
January 2011: First live presentation given
We’re big believers in face-to-face dialogues about the harmful effects of porn. Nothing is impactful quite like a solid, thoughtful conversation with a friend or family member about something that’s so personal and often considered taboo.
We realized we could spark countless conversations in person by showing up and sharing the decades of established research about how porn harms the consumer, relationships, and our world in general with schools and communities.
Since we started giving presentations in 2011, we’ve reached over 800,000 people worldwide in live presentations.
Pre and post survey results have shown us how students are impacted by our presentations that take away the shame and stigma of porn’s harms, and draws back the curtain on its tangible and proven harmful effects. We’ve seen countless lives impacted by our message of love and hope, and cannot wait to see how many more people we can reach with this information.
January 2012: Fight the New Drug’s blog is launched
As this educational and awareness movement grew, we knew we needed to make sharable, written resources that were also informative for people wanting to learn more about the harmful effects of porn. This is when the idea of a Fight the New Drug blog was born.
From starting with just a handful of articles in 2012, now this resource has over 1,300 articles. We cover everything from sex trafficking, sexual health, porn addiction, true stories from couples and individuals around the world, and so, so much more. Check out our blog today and use the search bar to look through hundreds of different issues.
February 2013: First “Porn Kills Love” tee released
As a nonprofit organization, our programs and resources are supported by donations and funds we receive from people just like you, one way is through our online merch store. We’re able to continue growing and reach more people with the facts on porn’s harms because tens of thousands of people have believed in the cause enough to rep the movement and join the fight.
The phrase that defined this movement was born in 2013, right when things were really starting to take off for us. Now, this signature red Porn Kills Love tee is repped by over 35,000 Fighters in 146 countries.
May 2015: Terry Crews becomes a Fighter and reps the movement
As we gained influence on social media and started changing the broader conversation about porn, people started to take notice.
On our growing blog, we posted an article titled 7 Hollywood Stars Who Don’t Watch Porn. We listed a few well-known movie stars who have publicly spoken out about porn and its harmful effects, and applauded them for using their platform to talk about such an important but controversial issue. Number one on the list was actor Terry Crews.
He took notice, and became a Fighter, joining the #PornKillsLove movement for his followers to see. How cool is that?
By having people like Terry be bold enough to take a stand on this issue, we have seen more and more conversations being started, and perceptions about porn starting to change.
September 2015: Fighter Club introduced to the movement
As our support base grew, so did our need to create more interactive, engaging, educational, and awareness-raising resources. This is where Fighter Club comes in.
We decided to make a community of Fighters within our global community, and call it, “Fighter Club.” The Fighter Club is made up of dedicated people who partner with FTND every month through a regular contribution amount of their choosing from a few bucks to $100 a month.
And you might be asking, what’s the point of someone contributing? We’re so glad you asked! Every dollar counts when considering our worldwide initiative to educate and raise awareness in society on the scientifically proven harmful effects of pornography.
In fact, we designed this program so that every dollar given through Fighter Club goes straight into funding our Education and Mobilization programs—helping us to educate countless individuals on the harmful effects of porn through our Presentation Program, create engaging content to bring awareness to this issue, fulfill our mobilization initiatives and raise awareness online, and so much more to actively fight for love! (You can read all about our programs, and more, by clicking here.)
September 2016: TruthAboutPorn.org officially launches
Since we started over a decade ago, the body of research demonstrating the harmful effects of porn has grown significantly. Because we exist to raise awareness on the harmful effects of porn using only science, facts, and personal accounts, it only made sense for our resources to include a living and active database that highlights and makes this data easy to access.
And thus, TruthAboutPorn.org was launched.
We created Truth About Porn for all of the students searching out studies for their research papers, and those who want to see the raw facts without the added commentary of a blog article. If you’re into facts, and are interested in seeing the research for yourself, we created this resource with you in mind.
November 2017: Translated sites released into four new languages
This organization and this movement were founded in the U.S., and we’re still headquartered here today. But even though we were born in the States, our community of Fighters has grown to reach communities around the world and back again in the last 12 years. As of today, our website and resources have been visited by people in every country on Earth (except one), and there are communities of people from every continent who are repping the movement.
In 2017, to accommodate this growing Fighter community, we introduced translated versions of key resources on our website in four additional languages: Portuguese, French, Spanish, and German. Click here to check out our translated resources. We hope to continue adding additional languages as this movement continues to grow.
November 2018: Brain, Heart, World three-part docuseries released
Until this point, we had created resources including conversation-starting apparel, thought-provoking video campaigns, social images and infographics to spark conversations on social media, and hundreds of blog posts to help educate the millions of people visiting every year. We also have given thousands of interactive and age-appropriate school presentations.
But as our reach continued to grow, it was time to debut one of the biggest resources we’ve ever created. Brain, Heart, World is free-to-view three-part documentary series that visually showcases decades of research and countless personal stories in an interactive and engaging way, and we just launched it in November 2018!
We wanted to create a resource that could scale far beyond any live presentation event to be able to educate youth. It isn’t always possible or cost-effective for us to visit any one community or school, but this way, the impactful information still reaches youth and anyone who is interested in learning about porn’s proven harms. Again, anyone can watch it for free! Thousands already have.
Together, the experts and individuals in Brain, Heart, World, truly demonstrate porn’s impacts on individuals, relationships, and society—or the brain, the heart, and the world. Click here to learn more.
July 2019: Fight the New Drug’s own “Consider Before Consuming” podcast launches
We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to make an educated decision regarding pornography, which is why we created the Consider Before Consuming podcast.
Think about all of the things you consider every day to help keep yourself, your loved ones, and your community happy, healthy, and hopeful.
Now consider this: There is an ever-growing body of research demonstrating significant negative impacts, for yourself and the ones you love, in the consumption of pornography. It can change the way you think, harm your ability to connect with other people, and can contribute to changing the world in negative ways.
Join us every other week as we consider the harmful effects of pornography using science, facts, and personal accounts. But, we’re not just inviting you to consider the potential negative consequences of pornography, but also the benefits to a life free of porn and its influence. Will you consider before you consume?
November 2019: Fight the New Drug’s Facebook page hits five million likes
As a tangible measurement of our growing movement, we hit five million page likes on our Facebook page in November 2019. Momentum for FTND is growing by the month, and we were starting to see a shift in the culture’s attitude about porn as the research further reached communities around the world.
November 2020: Over 100k people subscribed to Fight the New Drug’s YouTube channel
There are 31 million YouTube channels in the world, and only 160,000 of those have more than 100k subscribers. That places Fight the New Drug in the top 1% of all channels.
This is a huge milestone in our efforts to educate individuals around the world on the harms of pornography. With over 100K subscribers, Fight the New Drug will have a larger reach and more credibility for people looking to learn more about the impacts of pornography on individuals, relationships, and the world.
What happens next?
As you can see, we’ve come an incredibly long way since our humble but passionate beginnings. With over five million Fighters worldwide, we’re proud of the impact we’ve collectively made in the last decade. But we ultimately couldn’t achieve any of these milestones without you.
So as we celebrate this month, we dedicate our fight to you, our supporters. Thank you for staying with us and choosing real love alongside us. Thank you for fighting for love, and thank you for sharing our resources so this community can grow, and continue to change our world.
To say we look forward to seeing what we can do together for years to come is an understatement—we know we’re just getting started, and we can’t wait to see where this movement will go in the next 12 years.
