The old saying is that their are lies, damn lies, and statistics. I don't give much stock to the stats reported online, since usually they are either originated by a blog or online magazine with a non-statistical sample size (like one survey I read with a 300 person sample, pulled from the Facebook of a British adult toy and lingerie company). Or are just re-reported stats with no fact checking, like a post published on Fox news that had been republished from the Sun, which originally came from who-knows-where.
Also, the top hits I got on my search weren't exactly current. Seems this was a hot topic in 2010, and circulated. Why then? Who knows. But digging back over the past decade is an interesting way to try to get a larger sense of a social trend.
A 2001 study of 506 undergraduate students found that 35% of women had accessed "sexually explicit materials" on the internet "at least once." In 2006 another study of 563 college students found that 62% female respondents had seen online pornography before coming to college. Who knows if that's from the same college, or even colleges in the same country. But if we can generalize enough and assume perhaps the two samples of approximately 500 students are from similar enough colleges, the face value of the numbers suggest that twice as many female college students had seen online porn in 2006 than in 2001. I'd say this has to be somewhat true, since it's probably equally true that twice as many students were online in 2006 than in 2001.
Speaking from personal experience, I was at college in 2001, and we were on dial-up modems, and most of us were still using the college computer labs. (This was a state school, a Pac 10, and therefore what one might consider an "average" American student body.) In 5 short years, laptops were common and people got online via wi-fi. We're talking about the years from chat-rooms to Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. As such, the amount of porn online, and the ability to download it, or upload it changed radically from the start of the milleium through its first decade.
A report in 2007 claimed that 17 million women watched porn on a monthly basis. I don't know if that's 17 million American women, or exactly who the sample population was, so who knows what percentage that represents of whom. I guess the point is that 17 million women is a lot of women looking at smut.
The survey reported in the Sun in 2010 stated that out of 4,200 women surveyed, 76% said that porn was part of their sex lives. A more recent article, just a year old, sited the Nielsen report that said one in three adults browsing adult porn sites are women. So there you have it: if you have three women, at least one, quite likely two, and just possibly all three have spent a little time looking at sexy stuff online.
The reports usually also note that its more likely that younger women (ie Millennials) are looking at online porn than older women. But that should be no surprise. I'm sure you'd also see that reflecting in which age group of women accesses and uses the internet the most. (I think my Mom literally still has an AOL account, and my grandmother adamantly refuses to own a computer.)
What is most encouraging to me is the current trends of DIY porn. The 2010 survey from the British toy/lingerie company reported that 40% of the women polled had made their own porn. As I mentioned, they only had a survey size of 300. But the good news is that in the group, at least 120 women had made their own porn. Think about that the next time you are in a public space, like having dinner in a restaurant.
One thing is most certainly true: the numbers are under, rather than over, reported. Let's be honest: not everyone is willing to share every intimate detail of their sexual lives with researchers. A lot of people skip over polls. Maybe people looking at porn would rather look at porn than take a survey about it. I'm no statistician, but let's just say that I'm a woman who loves porn, and no one has ever asked me in a poll, so I am one of the uncounted.
What can we take away from this? Lies, damn lies and statistics? Can we infer anything concrete from the numbers, or just that the numbers seem to follow what we'd expect anyway: over the last 10 years, more women are online looking at things; more often than not, those women are younger women; and at least two out of three woman are taking a moment to check out sexual content. Possible two out of three. And the third is my grandma.
I guess that isn't exactly shocking news. But what I hope comes from this is that as more and more people (men and women) are able to access the wide world of online porn, people will be able to see the variety of human sexuality, and in the viewing of such diversity, come to realize that: a) sex is fundamental to the human experience; b) everyone is different and so no one is "normal" and conversely, the thing you are into that you thought so "abnormal," you realize is shared by hundreds, maybe thousands, or maybe even millions of others; c) my personal favorite--if you don't see anything that reflects you and your experience, you can simply make your own.
The survey reported in the Sun in 2010 stated that out of 4,200 women surveyed, 76% said that porn was part of their sex lives. A more recent article, just a year old, sited the Nielsen report that said one in three adults browsing adult porn sites are women. So there you have it: if you have three women, at least one, quite likely two, and just possibly all three have spent a little time looking at sexy stuff online.
The reports usually also note that its more likely that younger women (ie Millennials) are looking at online porn than older women. But that should be no surprise. I'm sure you'd also see that reflecting in which age group of women accesses and uses the internet the most. (I think my Mom literally still has an AOL account, and my grandmother adamantly refuses to own a computer.)
What is most encouraging to me is the current trends of DIY porn. The 2010 survey from the British toy/lingerie company reported that 40% of the women polled had made their own porn. As I mentioned, they only had a survey size of 300. But the good news is that in the group, at least 120 women had made their own porn. Think about that the next time you are in a public space, like having dinner in a restaurant.
One thing is most certainly true: the numbers are under, rather than over, reported. Let's be honest: not everyone is willing to share every intimate detail of their sexual lives with researchers. A lot of people skip over polls. Maybe people looking at porn would rather look at porn than take a survey about it. I'm no statistician, but let's just say that I'm a woman who loves porn, and no one has ever asked me in a poll, so I am one of the uncounted.
What can we take away from this? Lies, damn lies and statistics? Can we infer anything concrete from the numbers, or just that the numbers seem to follow what we'd expect anyway: over the last 10 years, more women are online looking at things; more often than not, those women are younger women; and at least two out of three woman are taking a moment to check out sexual content. Possible two out of three. And the third is my grandma.
I guess that isn't exactly shocking news. But what I hope comes from this is that as more and more people (men and women) are able to access the wide world of online porn, people will be able to see the variety of human sexuality, and in the viewing of such diversity, come to realize that: a) sex is fundamental to the human experience; b) everyone is different and so no one is "normal" and conversely, the thing you are into that you thought so "abnormal," you realize is shared by hundreds, maybe thousands, or maybe even millions of others; c) my personal favorite--if you don't see anything that reflects you and your experience, you can simply make your own.
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