Survey: 34% UK adults think porn is acceptable part of modern society

A survey commissioned by the Naked Truth Project suggests that a third of UK adults think pornography is acceptable and one in five adults would consider a career in the industry if the salary was high enough or if they were guaranteed a safe working environment.

Ahead of the P Word conference, an online event aimed at equipping church leaders to talk about and tackle the negative effects of pornography, the charity the Naked Truth Project sought to find out society's general opinion on porn by surveying 2,087 individuals aged 18 and over from the UK.

Thirty-four per cent of respondents said they thought pornography was an acceptable part of modern society.

CEO of the Naked Truth Project Ian Henderson said: "I could never call it acceptable. I believe that porn ruins lives, wrecks relationships, we certainly know that it can cause things like mental health problems, addiction even, impotency. So, it may be accepted but it can't be acceptable because people deserve much better than those things."

"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."

One surprising factor was the number of people who said they not only watched porn but would be willing to take part in it. Thirty-two per cent of those aged 18-34 said they were tempted by the money they could make in the industry and eight per cent of those aged over 55 said the same.

However, the Savanta ComRes survey found that 51 per cent of UK adults would be concerned if someone in their family was creating pornographic content on the internet.

Ian Henderson said the ease with which young people find sexual content is alarming, with some of the biggest websites being free and with one getting 44 billion hits in one year, as well as many people finding content through social media.

He said 44 per cent of boys aged eleven to 16 said they were watching porn to give them ideas of what to do or try in sexual relationships - which was worrying given the amount of aggression, depravity and violence often seen or hinted at in explicit videos.

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