Choking Is 'Normalised' Among Young People, Minister Warns As Porn Laws Roll In

On Friday, 6 November, it became a criminal offence to “possess or publish pornographic images that explicitly and realistically depict” some sex acts in England and Wales. This includes porn depicting : strangulation or suffocation, some sex that is or plausibly appears to be incestuous, or sex acts that include someone pretending to be under 16. Speaking to HuffPost UK, MP Alex Davies-Jones, the Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women, said these changes were informed by the real-life harms these types of pornography may contribute to.

For instance, sex-related choking appears remarkably common among teenagers, though experts worry this age group doesn’t understand its risks . Not all of these cases are consensual, either . “E very single day, I sadly meet a survivor of domestic abuse or sexual assault, and nearly all of them have had non-fatal strangulation done to them as part of that abuse or assault. And it is terrifying,” Davies-Jones told us. “ There is no safe way to strangle someone, and the rise in this being seen as a crime and coming forward as a healthcare emergency is why the government acted here.

“Because it is being normalised in sex, our young men are being told that they should carry this out in a normal sexual relationship, and our young women are being told that they should want it and enjoy it.” Peer-on-peer sexual assault and violence between schoolchildren has previously been described as “widespread, normalised and too often brushed under the carpet” by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza. National Director of student-led charity Sexpression:UK, Sreeya Sengupta, said the new legislation is a “step in the right direction” for a “ harmful and very influential” topic.

“Parents don’t want to talk about [porn], schools don’t want to talk about it,” she told HuffPost UK. However, she shared that the changes in law may not address underlying issues completely: “T he education needs to back the legislation”. “The unfortunate thing is that a lot of young people, by the time they’ve even entered secondary school, have already been exposed to pornography at some point,” she added. “We are almost playing a bit of a catch-up game all the time.

“Unfortunately, young people are exposed to porn before sex education can do what it needs to do, which is why we try to encourage more of the critical thinking of, ‘Is what I’m seeing online right or wrong, or what’s nuanced about it?’, rather than trying to pre-empt what they might see online.” The new porn laws, which appear to have gone down well in early YouGov polls , come after a group of teenage girls called for a ban on school uniforms in pornography .

Davies-Jones told us she plans t o meet with the campaigners at the Cooper School in Bicester “to discuss their campaign, and what more we can do”. “I’m extremely clear that the criminal law is a very blunt instrument to tackle some of these issues, and I am more concerned about the culture, and why it is that school uniforms have been sexualised to the extent that they have. Why is it that they are so popular?” she asked. And the new rules follow age verification porn laws, introduced in 2025.

Previously, some experts worried that people – especially younger people – would increasingly resort to “fringe”, unregulated sites to access sexual content, including on the so-called “Dark Web”. Neither Davies-Jones nor Sengupta seemed to feel this risk outweighed the benefits in the case of the new porn laws, however. “T hat’s not something that I’ve seen or have had reported to me. I think, look, we need to take action here,” said Davies-Jones.

“Ultimately, responsibility lies with the platforms and the websites that are showing and depicting this type of pornography. “That is why we have given Ofcom, as a regulator, the powers in the Online Safety Act and through the Crime and Policing Act to take action where necessary against the platforms [that] are not abiding by the criminal law.” For Sengupta’s part, the charity director added: “ The way that I feel about this legislation is kind of the same [way] I feel about age verification.

Whilst there’s always going to be people that are going to see that content – we can’t change everybody – I think the numbers will reduce, and I think that will have enough of an effect. “It’s just about how long that might take for that effect to actually be visible. I’m sure there’ll still be people who seek out that kind of content, and there’ll still be people who are opposed to [the laws], but there’ll also be people who do respond to it and actually do stop and think ‘Well, okay, maybe it’s illegal for a reason’.”

So far, the Minister pointed out, age verification laws have had a “significant” impact, with visits to porn sites down by about a third. This, the government said, could mean children are “less likely to stumble across material they should never see”. “A ll of this is having an impact. Yes, it’s not enough,” Davies-Jones stated. “We need to do more, but hopefully [age verification] combined with the measures that are coming into force regarding extreme pornography [today], and education programs will help in terms of trying to tackle the impact of harmful pornography on our young people.”