Speaking in Washington this week, advocates for internet safety called on Congress and the Department of Justice to enforce obscenity laws more vigorously and drew parallels between the spread of web porn and the BP oil spill. Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough Is Enough, a Virginia-based non-profit that aims to make the web more family-friendly, says internet pornography has reached "epidemic" proportions: "We are facing a national crisis that is every bit as damaging to our citizens and our culture as the oil spill is to... the Gulf community." (Watch Hughes' testimony on the internet porn epidemic.) Following, a statistical look at the online porn explosion:
12
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
25
Percentage of search engine requests related to pornography
28,000
Number of internet users viewing porn, every second
75 million
Average monthly unique visitors to adult websites between 2005 and 2008
43
Percentage of all internet users who view pornographic material online
75
Percentage of people who "accidentally" viewed a pornographic site
81
Percentage of Americans who believe federal laws against internet obscenity should be "vigorously enforced"
266
Number of new pornographic websites that appear online, every day
3,000
Approximate number of English-language websites that distribute child pornography
1 in 7
Number of "youths" who report being solicited for sex online
11
Age at which the average child is first exposed to adult material
7 in 10
Number of children who've inadvertently viewed online pornography
1,536
Number of sites featuring child pornography in 2008, according to the Internet Watch Foundation
58
Percentage of those sites that are housed in the United States
48
Percentage of kindergarten and first grade students who have reported seeing online content that "made them feel uncomfortable," according to a 2008 study by the Rochester Institute of Technology
34
Percentage of teenage girls who've shared photos or physical descriptions of themselves online, compared to 15 percent of teenage boys
$89
Amount spent on internet pornography, every second
$13 billion
Estimated revenue generated by pornography in the U.S. in 2006, including $2.84 billion from online pornography
$97 billion
Approximate total worldwide revenue generated by pornography annually, as of 2006
This article was updated on June 22.
Sources: Washington Times, CNBC, Good, ThePinkCross.org, MSNBC, Enough.org, NationalCoalition.org, Huffington Post
