Meet the British teenager who's  taking on the porn industry

Times

2 days ago

When porn is an industry worth tens of billions of dollars, the anti-porn business can also be pretty lucrative. That becomes clear when Alex Slater turns his camera around to show me where he is living.
The 19-year-old from southwest London is the co-founder of an app designed to help young men wean themselves off their porn-watching habit. The app has quickly become popular enough that he and his team have moved into a rented home in south Miami.
During our video call, a quick scan with the camera from the terrace where he is sitting with Connor McLaren, his American business partner, reveals a pool, lush lawn and a substantial, gleaming white mansion. 'It's a $10 million house,' says Slater, an astonishingly self-possessed teenager who is confident that he will become a billionaire and describes himself as 'Future Prime Minister' on Twitter and LinkedIn.
His inventiveness, he suggests, derives from his mother, an artist, and his father, a DJ, producer and musician who had a hit in the 1990s with a track entitled Passion. 'I used all of that creativity from both sides of my family to design and build apps. I always had a lot of drive because I notice many things about society and the world that I want to improve upon and don't want to sit around waiting for other people to solve it for me.' He went to a state school in Epsom before college and has a younger brother and sister.
Slater designed the app, Quittr, which promises to help Gen Z men 'regain control' and stop watching porn. He claims the app, which costs £44.99 a year, has been so successful that they have had a million downloads and are making $500,000 a month.
Slater grew up in Worcester Park, near Wimbledon, but felt 'very confined in classrooms'. He dropped out of Kingston College, a sixth-form college where he was studying business, to start building apps after having taught himself to code. 'British culture is very closed-minded. I took a visit to the States when I was 17 on my own and my mind got opened so much, I was like, OK, I'm dropping out of school, I'm going to do this full time.'
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He fell down the 'rabbit hole called self-improvement'. Here he listened to messages that have convinced many young men to hit the gym, go on diets and engage in abstinence of different kinds. 'Things that are so normalised are actually really, really bad for us. Like overconsumption of social media, sugar, food, porn. What I found in my journey in self-improvement is porn is the hardest to fight because it's so accessible. It's free, everyone has a phone. Instinctively we want to go out there and find a girlfriend because that's what humans are built to do but, because we have phones in our hands, we just access porn instead because it's easier.'
Did he have a problem with porn? 'I definitely did use it. Just like everyone else did. People use porn to fill a void in their life, but actually it's porn that creates the void.'
Our media and social media have become 'oversexualised', he says. 'That's what gets the clicks, that's what gets the likes, and that's what feeds the algorithm. That's why Bonnie Blue is so successful.'
Ah yes, Tia Billinger, aka Bonnie Blue, the woman who arranged to be filmed having sex with, she claims, more than 1,000 men in 12 hours and was the subject of a controversial recent Channel 4 documentary. These two Gen Z men look distinctly unimpressed. McLaren is disgusted by all those involved. 'It's sad, to be completely honest with you. It's sad the amount of men that lined up and it's sad that she was willing to do that.'
I report that Tia/Bonnie recently told Janice Turner in an interview in The Times: 'Each day I wake up so excited. I can't believe this is my life.' McLaren shakes his head emphatically: 'She has to be lying.'
McLaren had the idea of helping men to stop using porn because his peers told him how they were feeling. 'We saw a shift with Gen Z expressing the fact that porn's bad, it's not good for you, you should quit watching porn. It wasn't really cool to watch porn any more, it was kind of just like: you're a loser if you watch porn,' he says. 'Once you put it into perspective, it's like, 'Really? That's disgusting!''
McLaren mentions some of the 'big guys' of the manosphere, including Jordan Peterson, the psychologist, Andrew Huberman, the neuroscientist and podcaster, and Joe Rogan, the king of the podcast bros. Slater says that while he was down his rabbit hole he watched some of Andrew Tate's videos. 'While I didn't agree with everything, some of his messaging around discipline, masculinity and quitting porn aligned with the changes I was trying to make in my own life. The stuff around women I don't stand behind.'
Tate, a self-professed misogynist, is facing charges in the UK that include rape, which he denies. His message about porn is, to say the least, very confusing. He has called pornography 'a plague' but profited from a webcam sex business. 'Yes, it's extremely contradictory. That's why I try to separate the message from the messenger. The truth about porn being harmful stands, regardless of who says it,' Slater says.
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Slater and McLaren had connected online when exploring another project and discovered they had both had the same idea for an app that would become Quittr. Similar apps were aimed at older men. 'There was a massive underserved community of young guys who were just struggling, had no one to talk to because it was embarrassing, and were fighting this on their own,' Slater says.
Those planning to subscribe to the app are asked about how they consume pornography, and how often, as well as whether it has an impact on their mood, concentration and motivation. They are told porn is a drug and it reduces hunger for real relationships. Subscribers are asked to pledge not to watch porn again and recommit to this every day. They choose goals such as stronger relationships, more energy, improved self-control, focus, clarity and a better sex life.
The app offers a 'panic button' that users press when they think they are about to relapse. Your phone will vibrate and the camera will come on so that you see yourself, as if to say, Slater explains: 'Look at you. Why are you doing this? You have goals you need to fight for. You have your family to feed. What is jerking off going to do for you? Nothing.'
The app can also block access to porn sites. It offers an AI chatbot and exercises that claim to be able to rewire your brain and rebuild dopamine receptors. A forum enables discussion with other subscribers about a subject they may not have felt comfortable exploring in real life. 'It's very taboo. You don't want to speak about it with your friends. It's awkward. This is a community of people all struggling with the same thing because they never got to speak about it,' Slater says.
The pair launched the app with $3,000 of McLaren's savings and made $30,000 in the first month. And now? 'Half a million dollars a month,' Slater says. They promote the app through influencers and social media, including a viral post claiming they planned to buy OnlyFans, the subscription site known for its adult content, and close it down.
Perhaps because of where the duo are marketing themselves, very few subscribers are over 40. But, they say, 50 per cent of those downloading the app are under 18. 'You're still very fresh to the earth when you're under 18. So the fact it's already a problem in people's lives, to the point where they download a whole app for it and even pay for it — that's insane,' Slater says. Many people appear to be downloading VPNs (virtual private networks) to circumvent the new age verification requirements for accessing porn sites in the UK.
Slater and McLaren (a grand old man of 23) plan to build more apps in the men's health sphere. A few months ago Slater said he envisaged selling Quittr for $50 million or more, but for now they are reinvesting most of their earnings in the business, while paying themselves enough to drive flash cars and rent their fancy pad. Even that, Slater insists, is part of selling their brand: 'The point is to get more views on YouTube. It feels great, because not only do we have a successful business, but we're also helping thousands and thousands of people.'
There is no doubt Slater is very focused on making money. In one YouTube video he boasts that he will be a billionaire in ten years or so. 'I think it will come naturally as a result of everything I do,' he says matter-of-factly when I bring this up.
He certainly has the supreme confidence of youth. On Twitter he has said: 'End goal is my last name being ubiquitous and associated with greatness.' And when he has that fame and fortune, the crusade against porn will just be part of a CV for a political career.
'New people bring fresh ideas and we need a lot of fresh ideas in the UK right now,' he says. 'I think my stint in the US and building businesses and building a social brand for myself will be great in politics and I can bring this energy back to the UK and transform it to its former glory.'