34% of UK adults say porn is acceptable part of modern society: poll
A new survey finds that a third of adults in the United Kingdom say pornography is now an acceptable part of modern society and nearly one in five adults say they wouldn’t mind pursuing a career in the industry if they were paid a good salary or if the working environment was safe.
A recent Savanta ComRes poll of 2,087 adults in the U.K. finds 34% of respondents believe porn is an acceptable part of modern society. Additionally, 19% of respondents would be willing to work in the pornography industry if they were paid enough or guaranteed a safe working environment.
Commissioned by the Naked Truth Project, a U.K.-based charity that seeks to “open eyes and free lives from the damaging impact of pornography,” the study found that younger people between the ages of 18 and 34 were more likely (32%) than those 55 years and over (8%) to consider a career in pornography.
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Additionally, the poll found that more than half of respondents (51%) would be concerned if they found out that a family member was creating pornographic content on sites like Onlyfans or Pornhub.
Naked Truth Project CEO Ian Henderson said in a statement that he doesn't think porn is "acceptable."
"I believe that porn ruins lives, wrecks relationships. We certainly know that it can cause things like mental health problems, addiction, even impotency," Henderson said, according to Sky News.
“So, it may be accepted but it can’t be acceptable because people deserve much better than those things,” he added. “Someone once said that the problem with pornography is not that it shows us too much, but that it doesn’t actually show us enough. Behind the glamour is often exploitation, coercion, injustice.”
The survey results were announced about a week before The P Word Conference, an online event hosted by Naked Truth Project to equip church leaders to talk about and tackle the negative effects of pornography.
“The shift from the sex shop to the smartphone means that pornography has never been more accessible, affordable, anonymous, or addictive,” the conference's website states, adding, “One popular porn site has over 115 million hits every day.”
"Across the UK, 49% of adults visited a porn site or app in a single month in 2020," the website continues. "This isn’t an issue that exists only outside of the church. In the USA, 93% of pastors said pornography is a bigger issue than ever before in their congregations, but only 7% of those said their church had a programme to address it."
According to Premier Christian News, Anderson said that 44% of boys aged 11 to 16 were watching porn to give them ideas of what to do or try in sexual relationships. He said that trend is worrying because porn videos often show or hint at aggression and violence.
In February, two unnamed plaintiffs accused Pornhub of hosting and profiting off videos of their abuse uploaded to the popular pornography website. They filed a class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
“Sex traffickers and the Defendants worked together to earn a profit from commercial sex acts and child pornography involving the Plaintiffs and Class members,” stated the complaint. “MindGeek’s platform traditionally made it easy for traffickers, rapists, or would-be criminals to go undetected as account holders or managers who would control and recover any associated compensation.”
In May, over 700 survivors of sexual exploitation urged Congress to investigate Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, contending that the porn industry has allowed and enabled sex crimes and abuse.
