Love Survey: The Results Part 2

Following The Tab‘s pornography debate between Shelley Lubben and Anna Span, we can exclusively reveal how much time Cambridge’s students spend watching porn. And, the results are pretty surprising:

– In Cambridge, The Tab is MORE VIEWED than porn

– 46% of male students watch porn MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK

– 57% of students think watching porn is MORALLY WRONG

Procrastination

When it comes to spending time on the Internet, Cambridge students can’t get enough of The Tab. When asked which student news service they use most regularly, an overwhelming 82% answered: The Tab, with the average student spending 1 hour, 44 minutes a week on the site. Not to blow our own trumpet or anything…

What’s more, 45% of students claim to spend 1 hour a week on The Tab, while a further 23% spend 2-3 hours on the site. This stands in stark contrast to the mere 44% of students who view porn less than monthly.

And, Tab readers watch porn just under 2 times per week.

Watching Porn

Cambridge students are on top form with regard to watching porn, with 87% claiming to have come across porn at some point in their lives. 10% of students claim never to have watched pornography, whereas 3% are unsure as to whether or not what they’ve been watching constitutes porn. We won’t ask…

Of the people who admitted to having viewed pornography, 6% said they view porn daily, with a further 26% claiming to view porn a few times a week.

Unsurprisingly, men are watching more porn than women. Two thirds of women claim to watch porn less than monthly, whereas almost half of the men surveyed watch porn weekly.

Of the people who claim not to watch porn, 59% said they don’t see the need for it, whereas 28% said that they don’t approve of porn. These two responses were the runaway reactions, although 10% of respondents claim not to watch porn because they don’t have enough time, and a further 9% claim that they are uncomfortable with the idea of college monitoring their Internet viewing.

Sexpert Opinion:

“There’s nothing per se about pornography that has to be bad – I’m not saying all of it’s brilliant… ask yourself why is it wrong to look at people having sex? It’s a performance like any other; it’s entertainment like any other… I don’t think porn is art but I do think it’s culture, it’s a valid part of culture.”

Anna Span, pornographic film director

Paying for Porn

Although Cambridge students are watching plenty of porn, they’re not paying for it. Fewer than 5% said they had paid for porn; of this 3% of people said they had paid but wouldn’t do it again.

Nearly 60% of people said that they hadn’t paid for porn but had no theoretical objection to people buying pornographic material, and 35% of people said that they wouldn’t pay because they don’t approve.

Four times as many men as women have paid for porn.

The Ethics of Porn

Despite being avid porn viewers, 11% of Cambridge students think that watching porn is always morally wrong, and a further 46% say it is ‘sometimes wrong’.

Just 31% of those who took part in the survey said that there is nothing morally abhorrent about porn. But, the genders disagree on this matter, with four times as many women as men disapproving of porn.

These results tie in with the Union pornography debate, as despite the fact that 231 people were confident enough in porn as a good public service to overcome 187 noes, 197 abstentions shows that opinion is by no means firmly decided in Cambridge.

However morally questionable porn may be, we can reveal that watching porn will not help you find love, and probably won’t improve your sex life either. Almost half you you laughed at us when we asked whether porn has helped your sex or love lives. Only a fifth of students reckon that porn has helped their sex lives, and just 0.4% say that it has helped them find love. This may or may not come as a surprise, as porn director Anna Span and porn actor Johnny Anglais both argued strongly the educational value of porn in Thursday’s debate.

Sexpert Opinion:

“The porn industry lures in damaged under-30s who want to make quick money. The people who go into porn have usually suffered from parental neglect, or sexual abuse. Every porn star I have ever met has some kind of history of neglect and abuse.”

Shelley Lubben, ex-porn star

There was a noticeable decline in the number of responses we had to our questions on pornography – down to an 87% response rate on the question: ‘how often do you look at porn?’ So, is pornography really still taboo amongst students in 2011?