Google must stop this tide of smut

THERE’S no doubt that the internet has brought many great things — but it’s also brought with it the ubiquity of pornography, and I worry about what this is doing to our young.

Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Chelmsford, said this week that online pornography gives boys a ‘warped’ attitude’ to women.

How right he is. Studies have found that 90 per cent of boys aged 11 to 16 have viewed hardcore pornography. (I suspect the other 10 per cent were lying.)

There are still large swathes of the adult population for whom pornography is Emmanuelle wearing a negligee in soft focus after eating fondue; a bit nudgenudge. This is so far from today’s pornography that I almost can’t bear to shatter the illusion.

The issue is the violence, with women routinely portrayed in degrading and abusive situations. I think many parents are unaware of exactly what their children are being exposed to — and what it’s doing to them.

Brain scans show that the prefrontal cortex — the part linked to reasoning — is the last part of the brain to fully develop. Pornography presents behaviours and attitudes as normal; but while most adults understand such images as a fantasy, not a blueprint for human relations, teenagers struggle with this.

We owe it to them to curtail this tide of filth, and the people who should take responsibility for this are the internet giants.

For too long they’ve thrown their hands in the air and said they can’t police the internet as it’s too complex. Well, I just don’t buy that. If the likes of Google put as much effort into tackling minors viewing pornography as they did avoiding paying tax, you know there’d have been a solution a long time ago.