4 minute read.
Even before this year is over, Britain’s top Google searches of 2017 were recently reported. And if you’re keeping up with how much time people all over the world spend consuming online porn, you won’t be surprised to hear the top result.
More than their own Prime Minister, Theresa May (6 million searches), the ever-popular fidget spinners (13 million searches), or the always incredible Harry Potter (4 million searches), “porn” was the top search term for 2017 with a whopping 131 million searches. It outranked number 2, “the weather,” by more than 31 million, according to a report by The Sun.
As Ron Weasley would say:
“She” being Great Britain, obviously.
Related: How Many People Are Watching Porn Right Now? (Hint: It’s A Lot.)
The study analyzing search data by Insurance2go found that the total number of porn searches in the 303 days from January 1, 2017, to October 31, 2017, breaks down to just under 432,000 searches per day for XXX related material. And in case you’re wondering, since the UK’s population is a little less than 66 million, that’s the equivalent of 2 porn searches for every single person in the entire country. Wow.
Our Pornified Society
Some people might look at these stats and laugh, but we get a distinctly different impression when we see that porn tops the charts for this year’s searches.
The normalization of hardcore porn is bleeding into every aspect of our society—from the shows we watch to the websites our generation has bookmarked—and that should be something that raises more concern than laughs.
Related: Cambridge Study Finds Similarities Between Porn Addict And Drug Addict Brains
Porn is incomparably more accessible, more widespread, and more extreme than anything that existed even a generation ago. Those centerfold magazines that were passed around among youth in previous generations were nothing compared to what youth have access to today, and the harmful effects of looking today go far beyond young people hoping their parents don’t find out.
We’re talking about porn sites that glamorize rape and assault, with videos of real men and women being choked or slapped just one click away from Google, easily accessible for any 12-year-old to find.
More Kids Are Searching for Porn
Just recently, The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), an organization based in the UK, conducted a survey of more than 1,000 children aged 11-16, and found that at least half had been exposed to online porn. Of this group, almost all (94%) have seen it by age 14—but wait, aren’t porn sites blocked off for anyone under 18 years old? Definitely not.
One of the most unsettling findings was that over half of the boys (53%) believed that the porn they had seen was realistic. They believed that what they view in porn is an accurate depiction of sex and sexuality.
Related: One In 10 Visitors To Graphic Porn Sites Are Under 10 Years Old
This was in comparison to 39% of girls who believed the same. Many of the young girls surveyed said they were worried about how porn would make boys see girls and the possible impact on attitudes to sex and relationships.
But that’s not even close to all that they found. This incredibly in-depth survey by the NSPCC (click here to read the full report) shows the massive role that porn is playing in the development of young kids these days. What they’re learning are skewed perceptions of sex and harmful attitudes about healthy sexuality.
A Tidal Wave of Harm
And over in Scotland, there’s a huge need for more sex addiction therapists to tackle a spiraling increase in the number of porn addicts, according to a report by The Daily Record.
Glasgow-based psychosexual therapist Pauline Brown said, “Quite simply, there aren’t enough of us in Scotland to cope with the workload… We’ve already lost a generation to porn—this is now about salvaging the next one.”
Related: 3 Ways You Can Help Recover Your Porn-Obsessed Brain
Brown said more consumers were seeking help as a result of being hooked on online porn. She said, “I would never see patients with erectile problems under the age of 45 when I was working 25 years ago… Now it’s quite normal for young men, even as young as 19, to be seeking help. They watch porn and everything after that in real life is vanilla sex and so they go chasing a buzz. Quite often, it’s mixed in with other addictions such as alcohol or fantasy-gaming websites.”
Does this sound like a harmless trend to you? It doesn’t to us.
Related: Porn Has Fueled A 400% Rise In Child-On-Child Assaults In The UK
These Google search numbers reveal a larger trend in most parts of the world. And if we stay silent about the growing tidal wave of harm over our society, our relationships will suffer, and our generation and the generations after us will settle for love’s hollow counterfeit over real-life, healthy connections with people.
Porn offers short-term thrills at the expense of long-term costs, and in the end, watching just isn’t worth it. It’s time we fight for something real, healthy, and crucial to having a thriving society—it’s time we fight for real love and healthy relationships.
What YOU Can Do
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Spark Conversations
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