Brits Survey 18-Year-Olds About Porn, Sex

UNITED KINGDOM—An online survey of 500 British 18-year-olds conducted June 19-27 by Opinium asked 239 males, 269 females and 2 others about their opinions regarding pornography, sex education and sex in general. Ostensibly, the intent of the survey was to gauge the extent to which young adults who have been raised concurrently with the expansion of the internet have been influenced by porn. To that end, and as one might expect, the results of the survey reaffirm for advocates of the nation's recent moves to restrict access to online sexual content that they were right to pursue the agenda. "The findings add weight to the Daily Mail’s campaign to block online porn," opined Jason Groves, deputy political editor of the British newspaper most associated with trying to stoke public support for the campaign to force ISP-level filtering of sexual content onto the British public, which the country's citizens have thus far roundly rejected. This latest survey comes at porn from another direction, asking people on the cusp of adulthood to answer questions pertaining to attitudes about porn. However, while one would have thought that in order to assess individual attitudes about porn, the questions would have been framed in such a way that respondents would have been asked about their own experiences, Opinium decided to frame many of the questions generally. For instance, rather than ask if porn has had a damaging effect on the individual respondent, one "agree" or "disagree" question is framed, "Pornography can have a damaging impact on young people's views of sex or relationships." Another asks the young people to affirm or reject the assertion, "Pornography encourages society to view women as sex objects," as if they would have the knowledge base or experience to answer such a question with authority. One is tempted to suspect that the question was not asked more directly because the answers would likely have veered toward the negative rather than the 70 percent who agreed with the question as stated. Of course, that question in particular is inherently tainted, since it implies (without saying so) that either there is something wrong with being viewed as a sex object, or that porn encourages society to only view women as sex objects. As well, "society" is made up of actual people who never agree on anything, and do not see the world homogeneously, which makes the question somewhat meaningless as well as impossible to answer honestly. It should also be noted that most of the questions are worded in such a way as to emphasize the negative aspects of porn, except for rare exceptions; for example, "There's nothing wrong with watching pornography," "Pornography makes people more sexually explorative and open minded," and "Pornography helps young people learn about sex/relationship." There were some questions that, while negatively framed, did succinctly encapsulate what appears to be a prevailing point of view among those who took the survey. For instance, the question, "It’s too easy for young people to accidently see pornography online (naked or explicit sexual images, videos, live streams, or text)," resulted in a positive response from 80 percent of the respondents, leaving little doubt about how most of them feel. It was in fact that response that caught the eye of the Daily Mail editors, who made it their headline, which also more problematically includes the claim, "Survey warns explicit material is wrecking adolescence for many young people," an exaggeration if there ever was one. But while one would be naive to expect that the U.K. media, which increasingly confuses authentic news with opinion, would have the discipline not to impose dollops of moralizing into articles assessing the results of the survey, one does catch a rare attempts at editorial objectivity. The Telegraph, for one, despite choosing to hyperbolically title its piece, "Why teenagers’ obsession with porn is creating a generation of 20-year-old virgins," does at least try to provide some anecdotal evidence to support the general contention that the widespread availability of pornography has made it more difficult for some young people to develop sexual connections in real life. Indeed, in the face of first-person anecdotes from mental health professionals detailing the pain that some young people are experiencing as they try to maneuver a sexually charged world that includes a myriad of conflicting messages about sex, it would be foolish to discount the data that can be culled from a survey like this, even if some of the answers would appear to contradict other answers. How surprising is it, after all, that an 18-year-old might believe that "adults worry too much about what happens online," while also believing that "people are too casual about sex and relationships"? The percentage of people agreeing with both was almost identical, which is quite understandable when you step back and think about it for a moment. Though interesting and revealing, if not definitive, what is most worrisome about a survey like this is the extent to which it will be used by ideologues on either side of the sex/porn debate to support their side, with the anti-porners clearly able to cull more points from it than those with a more libertarian bent. Instead of serving the needs of established ideologies, surveys like this should serve as sign posts or markers, indicating where more research or inquiry is needed. That would not only result in better policy, but it would more accurately address the genuine needs of the young people for whom all of this effort is presumably intended. The complete Opinium survey results can be accessed here.