Читать книгу Always Turned On - Jennifer Schneider - Страница 7

Here is a basic fact about being human: as a species, we hunger for stimulation and gratification. These are actually part of the primary drives that ensure our species’ survival. For instance, if we don’t eat and have sex—both of which are usually highly stimulating and gratifying—we don’t survive. As such, it is hardly surprising that digital technology, no matter its original purpose, is sometimes adapted and used for sexual gratification. One of the more obvious manifestations of this is online pornography.

Nobody knows exactly how much digital porn is out there or how often it is viewed. Reliable porn-related statistics are hard to find, primarily because the highly politicized nature of porn causes profoundly different sources to occasionally distort the real numbers. For example, the porn industry encourages the idea that it has billions of users worldwide. Such a perception helps to foster porn’s legitimacy and to raise potential advertising revenues. At the same time, anti-porn activists also tend to quote inflated figures in an attempt to point out the “all-pervasive” nature of the pornography “problem.”

What is crystal clear, regardless of distortions in the actual numbers, is that more people than ever can access an ever-expanding selection of sexually explicit materials in many ways. Furthermore, access to sexual content is no longer limited to private settings like a person’s home or office. In short, pornography is now ubiquitous—accessed anytime, anywhere, with content ranging from seemingly benign traditional pinup-type photos to graphic videos depicting extreme sexual violence, degradation, and more. Yes, the digital porn explosion has caused many traditional porn outlets—adult bookstores peep shows, and XXX movie houses—to wane in popularity, but porn itself is more popular than ever.