Jamie F
A subscription-based app designed to help people quit watching porn has been launched by a man who says he had a “bad habit” of indulging in porn himself.
Subscription plans on the Remojo app, launched by 31 year-old Jack Jenkins, costs between US $3.99 and $4.99 a month. The service promises to “rewire your mind and kick your worst habit in as little as 90 days”.
The app has functions that can block porn sites, and locks your phone to prevent you from accessing porn. It promises playlists to help you “manage urges” and “find truth and integrate your sexuality in a healthy way”.
Jenkins, a graduate of the UK’s Durham University, told the Mirror that the inspiration for Remojo came from his own porn browsing experiences. “It wasn’t addiction or ruining my life, but was a bad habit that was stopping me being my best self,” he said.
The app’s slogan is, ‘Get a lust for life, not porn’.
“Gone are the days of shady adult stores and hard to reach top-shelf magazines; porn is now a multi-billion dollar, data-driven enterprise delivered directly to your phone and designed to hijack your healthy desires,” the company says.
Jenkins, who came up with the idea for the app in 2019, argues that it’s a taboo issue. “We want to make it as acceptable to say, ‘I don’t watch porn’ as it is to say, ‘I don’t smoke’.”
Guided meditation sessions are promised on the app, plus access to a community of other anonymous Remojo subscribers. You can use the app to set up ‘forfeits’ for when you ‘give in’ to your porn urges.
The company is recruiting for a behavioural psychologist to “lead the development of therapeutic content and infuse out apps with proven behavioural psychology techniques.”
If, however, you just want to find a way of blocking yourself from using specific apps on your phone, there are ways to do that without paying for a subscription. It’s also worth pointing out that while the app and site, in places, use the language of ‘addiction’ – there’s no such official disorders as sex or porn addiction included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) currently.
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