Sarah Harte: Do we just accept young children looking at porn as a fact of life?

Plenty of adults enjoy porn as part of a fun and engaging sex life. Where the problem arises is how commercial porn is produced and who’s watching it, writes Sarah Harte

Porn has the power to shape the sexual expectations of young people at a time when their beliefs about acceptable behaviour in relationships are forming.

It turns out we like porn. Recently, a European market research body called IntoTheMinds revealed that ‘adult websites’ topped Google searches by Irish people. This emerged from an analysis of internet search users in the 27 EU countries.

Adult websites were also the most searched keywords in Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, and Romania. The thought did occur that five of the countries listed have or had a strong Catholic tradition. Maybe this is a coincidence or maybe purity is the new sin.