Grammy-winning singer Billie Eilish says she began watching porn at age 11, gravitating to violent videos that warped her perspective on healthy sex. (Listen to the audio below.)
In a revealing interview on “The Howard Stern Show” on Monday, the “Bad Guy” pop star explained how porn “destroyed my brain.”
“I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was like 11,” said Eilish, who turns 20 on Saturday. “I thought that’s how you learned how to have sex. I was watching abusive porn, to be honest, when I was like 14.”
“I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she continued, attributing it to her sleep paralysis and night terrors.
Her obsession with extreme content spiraled. “I couldn’t watch anything else. Unless it was violent, I didn’t think it was attractive.”
There were consequences, she said.
“I was a virgin,” Eilish said. “I had never done anything. And so, it led to problems. The first few times I had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. And it’s because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to.”
“I’m so angry that porn is so loved,” she added.
Many children begin watching porn when Eilish did, Brad Salzman, founder of the New York Sexual Addiction Center, told the New York Post.
“Parents aren’t paying attention and it [porn exposure] can affect them for the rest of their lives,” Salzman said. “It totally colors their perception of what normal sexuality is supposed to look like and it changes the way they think that they’re supposed to interact. They can begin seeing other people as sex objects as opposed to human beings.”