Online porn has turned me into the modern Mary Whitehouse

There isn’t an awful lot of optimism in politics these days. Faced with so many seemingly insurmountable problems, it’s hard for MPs and ministers to keep their morale up.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There is one golden opportunity on the horizon, one real chance for MPs — and the Conservatives in particular — to leave behind a legacy that will, without question, make the world a far better place.

I’m talking about the Online Safety Bill, which returns to the Commons on Monday.

It will give MPs a shot not only at protecting vulnerable children such as Molly russell (who took her own life after viewing content promoting suicide and self-harm), but also outlawing other nasty internet practices.

In particular, the legislation aims to hit social media platforms where it hurts — in the pocket — by imposing hefty fines if they fail to comply with regulation.

It’s the first step in turning the internet from a Wild West full of repulsive behaviour into something approaching a civilised environment.

What better legacy for any government to leave? For almost two decades, the internet has been spewing toxic bilge into the minds of children and young people: this is the first real attempt we’ve seen to put a stop to that.

My one sadness, though, is that it doesn’t go far enough. And, in particular, that it doesn’t shield children sufficiently from the internet’s greatest blight: hardcore pornography.

Yes, the Bill will try to enforce age verification to stop children accessing porn sites. But ministers have abandoned plans to remove ‘legal but harmful’ material on the grounds that it could obstruct free speech.

So, for example, a video that depicts sex with a woman dressed to look like a child would be legitimate in that although it invites paedophilia, it does not technically involve sex with a minor.

I don’t know about you, but I fail to see what that has to do with free speech. But then I fail to see why any form of pornography — legal or otherwise — should be available to view for free online.

It should, as it is in the real world, be restricted and regulated for appropriate audiences. What this Bill should really be doing is paving the way for online porn sites not only to introduce ageverification software (which is becoming increasingly effective), but also put up digital barriers — as Netflix and Amazon do — which ensure that only registered subscribers can gain access.

In other words, put porn behind a paywall.

If that makes me a modern-day Mary Whitehouse, so be it. But the truth is this stuff is harmful in a thousand different ways.

recent years have seen something of an unintended social experiment in establishing just how corrosive the once tightly regulated porn industry can be. And the results are clear.

The culture and aesthetics of porn now permeate every aspect of society, from music to fashion and beyond.

Take the scandal involving fashion house Balenciaga and its latest ad campaigns, one featuring young children and teddy bears appearing to wear bondage gear, the other showing U.S. Supreme Court documents about child pornography. That would never have happened were it not for online porn ‘normalising’ such things. Or TikTok — a platform hugely popular with children — where you will find countless OnlyFans ‘stars’ and other erotic ‘artistes’ boasting about how much money they make selling explicit content on that grubby site.

They don’t get taken down from TikTok because they’re not technically infringing guidelines, but the message is clear: why bother with school, kids, when you can just flog your body online?

Digital porn also normalises a violent, misogynistic rape culture that has devastating real-world consequences.

We see that not just in extreme cases of men such as Wayne Couzens — the Metropolitan Police officer who murdered Sarah everard — but also in ordinary, everyday relationships where porn-inspired practices such as choking and strangulation are commonplace.

Is this really what we want? For our culture to be ruled by the base imaginings of the porn industry? I don’t believe it is.

And I hope and pray that this Bill is just the start of something that will, in time, make the internet not only a safer space, but also a more wholesome one — where the next generation of children can grow up untainted by the twisted aesthetic of a world that should remain where it belongs: in the shadows.