The United Kingdom is currently in the process of introducing an ‘opt-in’ requirement for any web user wishing to view adult content. Within the next eighteen months, Prime Minister David Cameron has requested that all internet service providers (ISPs) block access to adult material by default, requiring that any user trying to access such content must tell their ISP that they wish to do so. For now, ISP compliance is voluntary, but Prime Minister Cameron has indicated that he will consider introducing legislation to force those that don’t comply.
Unsurprisingly, this has caused a bit of a fuss in the UK, with many decrying the puritanical approach as overkill, calling on parents to take greater responsibility for what their children are accessing online. Plenty of Brits love their porn, it seems, and there’s data to prove it.
By tracking clicks online during June 2013, internet analytics company SimilarWeb learned that watching porn is a British favourite when it comes to spending time online. Indeed, with 8.5% of traffic made up of visits to view adult content, it’s even more popular than social networking – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, and all the other networks combined, which only made up 7.3% of online activity in the UK.
Only search engines (15.7%) and arts and entertainment (9.6%) ranked higher, with the largest overall category being the ambiguous ‘other’ at 30.3%.
It’s worth noting that these figures put the UK above the worldwide average (7.7%) when it comes to looking at boobs and other naked things online. Brits are slightly ahead of their friends over the pond in the United States (8.3%) and their Irish neighbours (7.5%). But the UK is way behind those frisky beasts in Germany, where 12.5% of online activity is on adult sites.
SimilarWeb’s findings are based on actual clicks from millions of computers worldwide. The company claims that it collects data from around 1% of users in most western countries.
Source: SimilarWeb via The Guardian