We need to talk about porn

Regulations banning choking or incest in porn came into force on Friday, and the left are divided. One side seems to think it’s harmless fun, the others see it as a corrosion of the social fabric. But ask a room of young people whether easy access to pornography is good for them and you will struggle to find a defender. When asked whether young people were worried about the impact of pornography, just 2 per cent of Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – strongly disagreed.

New polling from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has found 70 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old women and 62 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old men thought that the widespread availability of pornography is actively bad for men. Similar proportions said the same about its impact on women, and similar again that it is undermining relationships between the sexes. Clearly, we need to talk about porn. None of this means young people want love any less The CSJ’s latest report Relationship Recession: Pornography sets out the scale of the problem.

The average child first sees pornography at 12 or 13. A quarter see it before 11, and youth charities report first encounters at six or seven. Poorer children are 50 per cent more likely to have seen it by 11. Among men aged 18 to 29, half watch at least weekly and a quarter daily or most days. And this is not the furtive magazine under the mattress. It is a limitless, algorithmically-sharpened, stream of hardcore pornographic videos delivered to the pocket of every child with a smartphone.

What does that do to a person? The associations point consistently one way. A review of 21 studies links heavier use among men to poorer sexual function and satisfaction. Young men who began masturbating to porn earlier report more erectile difficulties. Among 18 to 24-year-old users, a third often feel guilty and a third say it conflicts with their values. Most popular James Lewisohn How Denmark turned against this horrifying reality show Arthur Reynolds Chris Whitty should spend more time at the pub Eliot Wilson Keir Starmer is wrong to think Nato is unsalvageable The deeper damage is to how young people learn what sex is.

A performer never says no, never needs patience and never asks anything in return. The viewer can simply skip to the ‘best bits’, as more than nine in ten young male users say they do. Small wonder the Children’s Commissioner found 44 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds agreeing that girls who say no can be persuaded, with agreement higher among those who had seen porn. More than a third of under-35s report having been strangled or choked during sex.

One specialist teacher described teenage boys who earnestly believed that degrading porn conventions were ordinary practice. They are not monsters. They have simply been taught by the worst possible teacher. Young women carry their own burden. Many describe feeling measured against performers and worry that they do not look or act sexy enough. Nearly nine in ten women regard directly engaging with sexual content creators as harmful or as cheating, yet nearly half of all adults have never discussed porn with any partner.

So the habit sits at the heart of many relationships, unspoken, eroding trust precisely because it cannot be named. What is more, both genders are becoming increasingly tempted by a career in porn, seen as more accessible and socially acceptable than ever before. The CSJ found that almost 3 million young Brits have considered becoming ‘OnlyFans stars’. OnlyFans is a host site for predominantly explicit content creators. None of this means young people want love any less.

Single people who are looking for a relationship are nearly twice as likely to watch porn several times a week as those who are not. Porn is not replacing the desire for connection; it is a poor substitute for it. And every hour spent with the substitute is an hour not spent learning the harder, richer business of real intimacy. What should change? Couples need to talk, and here there is hope with young people leading the way: more than half of young couples have an explicit agreement about porn, against 17 per cent of the over-65s.

Schools need relationships education that explains honestly how the industry works, what it teaches, and the corrosive harm it can do. GPs should feel able to ask about porn when young men present with erectile problems, and NHS England should follow Scotland in offering clear information and signposting. The MP Jess Asato is right: content that would be illegal to sell on a DVD should be illegal online. It is not nanny statism to ask adults to modify their behaviour to protect those, predominantly women and children, being harmed.

It is how you build a civilised society, with some give and take. Is the ‘right’ to watch extreme and violent pornography at all hours of day and night really the hill that libertarians wish to die on? Age checks initially cut Pornhub’s UK traffic by more than three-quarters. But the law can only build so much of a fence. Via loopholes and VPNs, many users have returned. The harder work, honest conversation in homes, classrooms and bedrooms, falls to the rest of us.

A generation is telling us it has been short-changed. We owe it a better education than the one it got from a screen.