Protect Your Kids
Protect Your Kids 3 minute read

Will the UK Block All Internet Porn?

Last Updated: April 10, 2015

The UK government has asked Internet service providers to figure out a way to block all pornography online in order to prevent children from being exposed to it. The initiative has prompted a lively debate, raising concerns on both a legal and a technical level.

Communications Minister Ed Vaizey said, “This is a very serious matter. I think it’s very important that it’s the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children.” Minister Vaizey’s concern echoes issues raised on both sides of the pond as more and more of the Internet generation has entered adulthood. Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. writes,

Pornography viewing among teenagers disorients them during that developmental phase when they have to learn how to handle their sexuality and when they are most vulnerable to uncertainty about their sexual beliefs and moral values.

According to a recent survey, more than 80% of kids ages 14 to 16 in the UK say they regularly access porn online, and almost a third said they first saw Internet pornography by age 10. In response to this data, John Carr of the Children’s Charities’ Coalition for Internet Safety says adults are lining up outside counseling offices with relationship problems related to pornography consumption. “If adults are having problems coping with this new mass availability of these types of images,” Carr warns, “then it’s not unreasonable to deduce that children, who are exposed to exactly the same images, in exactly the same way, must be getting into all kinds of difficulties.”

Blocking Porn at the “Source”

“I think it is very important that it’s the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children,” says Vaizey. “I’m hoping they will get their acts together so we don’t have to legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years.”

The plan is to have an “opt-in” process for adults. Those who want to consume pornography online would need to contact their ISP with a list of domains they want to allow into their home.

Some think this technologically is impossible to accomplish. Trefor Davies, Chief Technology Officer at ISP Timico, says the sheer volume of pornographic material online and the number of ways that people access it make the job impossible. “You end up with a system that’s either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites,” Davies says, “or it’s just not effective.”

Government Censorship Debate

Some fear what might be censored next on the Internet. Charlie White of Mashable.com writes,

It’s a slippery slope the British government will be navigating here. Who will decide precisely what porn is? Will ISPs be required to install bare-skin-detecting software, and if so, who will pay for that? Will instructional videos such as breast-feeding demonstrations be considered porn? And how will British residents feel about adding their names to a list of people who specifically asked for access to pornography?

Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason Magazine agrees: “Since we’re already slip-sliding down the famous slope, it’s worth pointing out that various kinds of religious and political speech are the next stops on the way down.”

However, Cris Clapp Logan, Director of Communications and Congressional Relations at Enough is Enough, has a very different take on the censorship issue. “In the physical world, we have always had clear measures in place to protect children from accessing adult pornography.” In the U.S., for example, Logan says patrons need to be 18 years old to purchase an adult movie or magazine. “These protections are in place,” Logan comments, “because of the overwhelming body of research that attests to the fact that young children do not have the cognitive skills to cope with these images and which shows that exposure to pornography can have a detrimental effect on a child’s mental, emotional, and physical health.”

Logan reasons: Why should the Internet be any different? “Unfortunately, these protections have not extended into the online world, and any child with unrestricted Internet access is just one click away from hard-core, fetish-filled pornography.” She believes this hardly amounts to censorship: “They are not seeking to censor or prevent adults from accessing pornography, but they are requiring adults to ‘opt-in’ into the online world of pornography in the same way they have always been required to opt-in to the pornography offline.”

(Photo credit: PinkMoose, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.)

Related in Protect Your Kids

Editor's Picks

Phone and a computer configured to block porn sites.

Protect Your Kids

How To Block Porn Sites

The amount of pornography available online can be disheartening. But here are…

8 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Close-up of parent holding a child's hand.

Protect Your Kids

How Churches Can Rescue This Generation From Pornography

Culture is always changing. And there are things in our culture that…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Female student writing a scholarship essay.

Protect Your Kids

5 Eye-Opening Revelations From 850 Scholarship Essays

Each year, Covenant Eyes holds a scholarship contest for current members who…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Silhouette of a man walking through a tunnel.

Protect Your Kids

The Sound of Freedom and the Problem of Pornography

The Covenant Eyes Podcast recently sat down with Operation Underground Railroad founder,…

2 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

A group of three young computer programmers working on laptops.

Protect Your Kids

Porn and Artificial Intelligence

When Chat GPT launched in November 2022, artificial intelligence took the world…

4 minute read

Read Post

Editor's Picks

Parents with their teenage son.

Protect Your Kids

Why Parents Must Talk About Sex

When my son was sixteen, he attended a youth group meeting during…

5 minute read

Read Post

Related in Protect Your Kids

Phone and a computer configured to block porn sites.

Protect Your Kids

How To Block Porn Sites

The amount of pornography available online can be disheartening. But here are…

The amount of pornography available online can be disheartening. But here are some practical steps you can take to block porn sites on your computer or mobile device. Porn-blocking software makes it easier to block…

8 minute read

0 comments

Close-up of parent holding a child's hand.

Protect Your Kids

How Churches Can Rescue This Generation From Pornography

Culture is always changing. And there are things in our culture that…

Culture is always changing. And there are things in our culture that take us away from Christ. Every generation tends to feel doom and gloom at the rate of change. Ours is not different in…

4 minute read

0 comments

Female student writing a scholarship essay.

Protect Your Kids

5 Eye-Opening Revelations From 850 Scholarship Essays

Each year, Covenant Eyes holds a scholarship contest for current members who…

Each year, Covenant Eyes holds a scholarship contest for current members who are enrolled as full-time students. This year, we had over 850 applicants! These amazing students answered questions about integrity using today’s technology, their…

4 minute read

0 comments

Silhouette of a man walking through a tunnel.

Protect Your Kids

The Sound of Freedom and the Problem of Pornography

The Covenant Eyes Podcast recently sat down with Operation Underground Railroad founder,…

The Covenant Eyes Podcast recently sat down with Operation Underground Railroad founder, Tim Ballard. Tim’s story has been dramatized in the new blockbuster movie, The Sound of Freedom. In our conversation with Tim, we learned…

2 minute read

0 comments

A group of three young computer programmers working on laptops.

Protect Your Kids

Porn and Artificial Intelligence

When Chat GPT launched in November 2022, artificial intelligence took the world…

When Chat GPT launched in November 2022, artificial intelligence took the world by storm. And with good reason—the wide array of AI tools now available to the public offer truly breathtaking capabilities. At Covenant Eyes,…

4 minute read

0 comments

Parents with their teenage son.

Protect Your Kids

Why Parents Must Talk About Sex

When my son was sixteen, he attended a youth group meeting during…

When my son was sixteen, he attended a youth group meeting during which the male leader spoke with the guys about pornography and enumerated the ramifications porn could have on marriages and families. He learned…

5 minute read

0 comments