The Opinium survey of 18-year-olds commissioned by the UK-based Institute for Public Policy Research paints a bleak picture of teenage life where 80% of young girls and boys said it was too easy to stumble across explicit images and videos on the internet. Almost half (46%) said the phenomenon of “sexting,” where people send explicit pictures of themselves to others, was “part of everyday life for teenagers nowadays.” And a majority said pornography was making life harder for adolescents. Two-thirds of girls and almost half of boys said it would be “easier growing up if pornography was less easy to access for young people.” 70% said watching porn was seen as normal among their classmates at school. One in 10 said it had become common among their peers by the age of 11. More than half (55%) said they had stumbled across images that made them “worried or uncomfortable” while surfing the internet. Just one in 10 told their parents about the episodes. Worst of all: almost half of boys (45%) said porn helped young people “learn about sex,” compared to just 30% of girls. Some 16% said their main source of information about sex and relationships was pornographic websites, with another 26% identifying the internet as a major source.
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