Porn — the one word that makes a person blush whenever spoken about. However, though this word refers to intimate and private content, the topic needs to be banned as it creates a health issue on people who are addicted to it. And what’s worse — our young are quickly learning about the topic and are able to access it with great ease — thanks to the internet that is cheap and readily available today.
Personally, I remember myself learning about porn in my teens — I was just 16 and would get my monthly dose of the adult content via the local video rental and magazine store. In those days, we would have to make time and hunt for a vacant friend’s home to watch porn using the old, faithful VCP/VCR (video tape player). A bunch of friends would gather, shell out some dough and one of them would have his ‘influence’ with the local video rental libraries to get the ‘stuff’. And there was also the local magazine stall who would sell us kids the ‘usual stuff’, which would be hidden from parents and ogled when in private.
But those days were soon taken over by the internet, which had loads of stuff at our finger tips. Within a decade, porn was almost all over — in the form of photos, animated gifs and videos, and then there was no stopping it.
In fact, the pornography industry is one of the first to adapt the very best technology, before anyone could even get onboard. VHS, CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, 4K, VR — you name it. The adult entertainment has left no stone unturned to give its patrons the very best in quality and technology. Porn is served across the world today with the help of the internet, and torrenting, VPN are presently one of the best sources for porn.
While most governments are taking help of IT experts to help ban the content on their land, it is still difficult to get them banned. When one website is pulled down, they are popping up with another name, another domain address and even hopping from one country to the other. Since most porn-serving servers stay on the cloud, it is difficult to get them down as rules for different countries are different.
The other option was to ban the said websites and keywords from the network itself. This can be done at ISP level, wherein the user will simply get an error if he types in the specific website or keywords. However, VPNs are now flourishing by a huge extent, which allows users to stay anonymous and bypass their local ISP’s blocking mechanisms to tunnel themselves through another country where it is not banned.
But now, though online websites are slowly being banned, blocked and taken down, the biggest threat is social media, that has seen an enormous growth — thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and many other such platforms that give us our daily dose of information. While most social media platforms are meant for socialising and news content, the social platform is also serving a huge amount of porn content to the needful.
Social media websites cannot be banned so easily. They are the need of the hour for most people, especially businesses, who communicate and get their source of information. So if you are looking for porn, adult content, your smartphone, PC and tablet is still your best friend. Even though your ISP and office IT admin has blocked adult content on your network, you can still happily serve yourself with the porn content you need. Your office or ISP simply cannot block the type of content available on social media platforms.
Full-fledged porn is readily available on your social media apps.
Yes, you can avail of adult content on your social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and a lot others. Though you may not find porn openly available on all platforms, Twitter and Tumblr are some examples where adult content is easily available. There are many accounts, and groups, that serve nothing more than porn on these platforms. So if you have desires to watch something intimate, head to Twitter, Tumblr and enjoy it.
No we are not promoting it, but this article is to make you aware that your kids could be exposed to something worse.
If you are a parent, you are definitely concerned of the content your little ones are being exposed to. Young children, as small as 8-year-olds, today are being gifted with smartphones and tablets. Each of their internet channels are probably being monitored and ruled by parental software. But can you control what comes through green channels such as Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr? I’m sure you can’t.
Try this out — create a Tumblr or Twitter account by registering yourself as a 13-year-old. You can create an account and head right in. Next, search with some adult-rated keywords within the apps. Voila! You got what you want. Filthy, right? Yes, we know — and it’s pathetically disturbing. And what’s worse, we can’t do anything about it.
Social media websites have an age restriction to control who can join these platforms. However, there seems to be no concrete age verification methods that are in place. While some ask for the DOB, others go as far as using credit card details. However, these can be easily bluffed.
I experimented with two such social platforms — Twitter and Tumblr. The research was shocking! I could feed myself with the entire adult content I would ever ask for — animated Gifs, video, chats, and even VR. All needed was to hunt for the filthy tags and they appeared in plenty.
So if you are allowing your teens and younger generation to socialise on such platforms, you should be aware that your kids are prone to being exposed to something they should not be at their age. A timely check on your kids’ activities on the phone by looking at the timeline and the subscribed channels/accounts would give you an insider on what they are looking at.
It’s sad that social media is the next to ‘expose’ the youth to pornography as easily. What are the social media companies doing about it? While Facebook is constantly being dragged for allowing unwanted posts, photos and videos and also working to curb fake news with AI engines, what are the other social media platforms doing about pornographic content that is widely and openly flourishing online, and that too in plain sight?
We got in touch with Tumblr to find out if they are doing anything about the issue on their part. However, the reply was surprising!
"At Tumblr we want to make sure people aren't surprised by content they find offensive and are always working to put more control in the users' hands. We provide tools to allow our users to filter their Tumblr experience accordingly, and we've scrubbed all NSFW content in our Tag and Search functions by default unless a user has individually opted to display this type of content."
So it seems like porn is probably here to stay for sure and will continue to jump from platform to platform, irrespective of governing rules from the top above. While many, including myself, would say that ‘let them be and let each person take his/her own decision to watch it,’ it still is a matter of concern on how open it is for anyone to fall into its trap.
Companies running the social media platform should probably have stringent rules about the matter and make sure that the younger generation is not exposed to the type of content they are not ready for. Exposing a younger generation to pornography would only lead to more crimes and health/mental issues ahead.
If you are a parent and reading this topic, we advise you to keep a vigil on the type of applications your young ones are exposed to. A timely check on their online and social activities will give you peace of mind and will help your children grow to be more responsible in future. Educate them when the time is right so that they don’t fall into the trap of the type of adult-rated content the porn industry is showcasing.
