Young Australians Reveal Porn Habits in Wide-Ranging New Survey

The popular Australian radio station “Triple J,” owned by the independent but largely government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has released the resuts of its wide-ranging annual survey of attitudes among young Aussies, ages 18-29. And with an entire section of the survey devoted to porn viewing habits, the station found that most young Australians watch porn—but few actually pay for the privilege. With 15,000 Australians born between 1990 and 2001 answering the survey, the results showed that more than two of every three young adult Australians say that they watch porn, including 58 percent of young Australian women. Men, predictably, were far more likely to watch porn, with 93 percent answering “yes” to the question, and 65 percent saying that they watch “a few times a week or more,” and 14 percent saying they watch porn on a daily basis. While about 2 percent of young Aussie women said that they watched porn once per day, the same percentage of young men said they viewed porn “multiple times” per day. Only 14 percent of women in the survey acknowledged watching porn at least “a few times” weekly. But while 18-to-29-year-old Australians appear to be largely enthusiastic consumers of porn, the survey nonetheless offered grim news for the adult industry or anyone hoping to make a buck from porn. An overwhelming 98 percent of all young Australians who said that watch porn also said that they do not pay for porn. A mere 2 percent said they shelled out cash to view adult content. More than half of all of the men in the survey, 54 percent, also said that they worry about watching too much porn. Only one in five women share the same concern, however, according to the Triple J survey. When it came down to narrowing porn preferences by genre, women—whether straight, lesbian or bisexual/pansexual—all listed lesbian porn as their favorite category. While lesbian porn was also popular among straight men, “straight” and “amateur” topped that group’s list of porn preferences. Gay men, also perhaps unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly preferred gay porn. Finally the survey asked the under-30 Aussies whether watching porn had affected their romantic relationships. Overwhelmingly, 82 percent said that porn had no effect at all on their relationships, and while 6 percent said that porn had a “negative” effect, 12 percent—more than one in 10—claimed the opposite. Porn has had a positive effect on their relationships, they told the radio station. Photo by City of Boston Archives / Wikimedia Commons