“Pornography in young India”

“Only 857 sites banned…. We have a huge stocks still left! Active and banned top 50 porn sites in India”. That’s how I read the name of all those sites by scrolling my mobile screen. It was a message I had received on WhatsApp from one of my friends on the evening of 3rd August. I just had woken up after a slumber of 5-6 long hours since afternoon. Initially I thought it to be like any other joke that keeps circulating on WhatsApp but my doubt was changed into a reality when I read many statuses by some of my friends on Facebook regarding the same. I could not figure out anything for myself regarding this ban, so instead of wasting my time on this issue I got engaged in some other work. But during the midnight I got a similar message again on my WhatsApp from another friend of mine suggesting me not to worry about the ban and there were names of few porn sites with accessibility mark. The repeated texts forced me to think of the significance of pornography among the youth. It reminded me of one of the surveys done by a leading firm that I had read few days ago.

It was about how pornography has resulted in increased violence, aggressions & depression among the youths. To known what others thought about the porn sites ban, I organised a sort of group discussion & debate among my classmates & friends. They too seemed divided on the decision of banning the porn sites, with a portion of them accusing the government for limiting their freedom & rights even in a closed four wall room, while majority of them supported the government’s stand of banning such sites citing some moral and religious reasons. Countering the disadvantages & ill effects like aggressions, declining memory power and laziness, one of the girls in the debate told that she has been enjoying watching porn videos frequently right from her school time and never felt any harm of it on her studies and career.

On asking what do they generally do after watching porn videos, some of them termed it as a mere source of entertainment while most of them were of the thoughts that they go for satisfying themselves by different means. However a study published in the journal of sex research sought answers to why some people complain about missing sleep, overlooking studies, forgetting appointments, disregarding partnership etc. after soaking their minds in the warm glow of internet porn. Researchers are coming at it from the notion that internet porn causes “negative life consequences” & “disadvantages in decision making”. Finally the debate ended with the fact that differences in opinion proves that we still are free in spite of banning porn sites and our country grants its citizens the real freedom, where people have all the rights to agree or disagree with the government’s decision.

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