Dear readers of The Lowell, 

Happy new year! This semester, we welcomed 20 new reporters from the Journalism 1 class into our publication. Right off the bat, they have brought many strong ideas to the table, and have written thoughtful pieces for this issue of the magazine — for example, Uma Van Yserloo and Stella Schulte with their opinion piece about the harmful impacts of the use of the R-word, Aida Donahue with her media review of Arrival, and Danya Bayer with her work on our cover story about teenage pornography consumption. These reporters, along with the rest of our new staff, have been hard at work making content for our publication, and we can’t wait to see what they create in the future.

In this issue, we decided to cover a topic we believe has not been addressed nearly enough. Though an uncomfortable subject, pornography consumption is prevalent among Lowell’s student population; according to a survey conducted by The Lowell in January 2025, 19 percent of respondents regularly consume internet pornography. We were surprised to learn just how much of a negative impact pornography is having on the lives of our peers, and we hope that this article can provide some insight into this issue. 

Editors-in-Chief,

Thomas Harrison, Ramona Jacobson, and Katharine Kasperski