Watching porn is OK

A SOCIOLOGY researcher at Brigham Young University has found that today's college students are much more accepting of pornography than their parents.

John Carroll and his colleagues surveyed 813 students online. The results of the study show that almost all young men and nearly half of young women believe that viewing porn is an acceptable way of expressing sexuality. Only 37 per cent of fathers and 20 per cent of mothers that were surveyed agreed with the younger generation's prevailing attitudes.

Not too surprisingly, the study suggests young people might have been influenced by the easy availability of X-rated pornography on the Internet, even via wireless technology on handheld mobile phones.

"We're in an age of pocket porn," Carroll told USA Today.

Young men are still vastly more inclined to view porn than young women. The research found that 86 per cent of young men reported viewing porn in the last year but that only 31 per cent of young women reported having ever seen porn. Further, 20 per cent of the men said they looked at porn daily or almost daily, but only 3.4 per cent of the women said they viewed porn daily or weekly.

The article doesn't mention whether the Brigham Young study also surveyed generational differences in parents' openness in talking about sex with their kids, relatively broader factual sex education and heightened fears regarding sexually transmitted diseases in recent decades, or shifts in cultural attitudes about sexuality over the same timeframe.

So maybe its willingness to ascribe greater acceptance of pornography by young adults to the baneful influence of the Internet should be regarded with some salt handy. Brigham Young is a conservative Mormon university. And USA Today ain't Rolling Stone.