Pornography addiction is the scientifically controversial application of an addiction model to the use of pornography. Pornography use may be part of compulsive behavior, with negative consequences to one's physical, mental, social, or financial well-being. While the World Health Organization's ICD-11 (2022) has recognized compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD) as an impulse-control disorder, CSBD is not an addiction, and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 and the DSM-5-TR do not classify compulsive pornography consumption as a mental disorder or a behavioral addiction.

Problematic Internet pornography viewing, also known as Problematic Pornography Use (PPU) is the viewing of Internet pornography that is problematic for an individual due to personal or social reasons, including the excessive time spent viewing pornography instead of interacting with others and the facilitation of procrastination. Individuals may report depression, social isolation, career loss, decreased productivity, or financial consequences as a result of their excessive Internet pornography viewing impeding their social lives.

Pornography addiction is often defined operationally by the frequency of pornography viewing and negative consequences. The only diagnostic criteria for a behavioral addiction in the DSM-5 are for pathological gambling, and they are similar to those for substance abuse and dependence, such as preoccupation with the behavior, diminished ability to control the behavior, tolerance, withdrawal, and adverse psychosocial consequences. Diagnostic criteria have been proposed for other behavioral addictions, and these are usually also based on established diagnoses for substance abuse and dependence.

A proposed diagnosis for hypersexual disorder includes pornography as a subtype of this disorder. It includes criteria such as time consumed by sexual activity interfering with obligations, repetitive engagement in sexual activity in response to stress, repeated failed attempts to reduce these behaviors, and distress or impairment of life functioning.

According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, some psychological and behavioral changes characteristic of addiction brain changes include addictive cravings, impulsiveness, weakened executive function, desensitization, and dysphoria. BOLD fMRI results have shown that individuals diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) show enhanced cue reactivity in brain regions associated traditionally with drug-cue reactivity. These regions include the amygdala and the ventral striatum. Men without CSB who had a long history of viewing pornography exhibited a less intense response to pornographic images in the left ventral putamen, possibly suggestive of desensitization.

The position of the American Society of Addiction Medicine is that sexual addiction is not a recognized diagnosis.

Neuropsychopharmacological and psychological research on pornography addiction conducted between 2015 and 2021 have concluded that most studies have been focused entirely or almost exclusively on men in anonymous settings, and the findings are contradictory. Some researchers support the idea that pornography addiction qualifies as a form of behavioral addiction under the umbrella construct of hypersexual behavior or a subset of compulsive sexual behavior (CSB), and should be treated as such, whereas others have detected the increased activation of ventral striatal reactivity in men for cues predicting erotic but not monetary rewards and cues signaling erotic pictures, therefore suggesting similarities between pornography addiction and conventional addiction disorders.

Despite the fact that pornography is being spuriously indicted as a public health crisis in the United States and elsewhere, with problematic Internet and online pornography use reported to constitute an increasing burden on public mental health since the 2000s, psychopathological models and diagnostic criteria have lacked consensus, and the body of evidence on the effectiveness of therapeutic approaches is still scarce.^{[citation needed]}