LONDON —With the media awash with daily commentary on — and concerns about — Internet porn, the Independent asked: Why isn’t there research to lend weight to the (often conflicting) claims being made?
Its piece finds no definitive conclusion, but instead seeks to raise awareness about consistent academic negligence.
“With public fear around such a highly moralized subject, there is a real danger of the debate being dominated by the loudest voices with the evidence either being ignored or worse, misrepresented, to bolster arguments by both sides,” author Robin Bisson wrote.
The article comes in the wake of several U.K.-specific major mainstream porn mentions, including David Cameron’s recent directive to ISPs to institute default “family friendly” filters and the emphasis on the fact that the murderers Mark Bridger and Stuart Hazell were habitual porn watchers.
While there has been little dispute about the increased prevalence of porn in people’s lives via the Internet — and many studies to back up the common sense supposition — interpretation has been far more varied.
“People have made equally reasonable hypotheses that the availability of online porn may help explain falling rates of violent sex crimes,” Bisson writes as a counterpoint to the notion that more porn is always a bad thing. “We don’t have to wait for the science before making decisions about what young people can access. Surely we should wait for the science to prove hypotheses about what impact that access has.”
To read the full article on The Independent, click here.
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