Porn gives ‘unrealistic expextations’ so why are UK youths using porn as sex education?

New figures from the National Union of Students (NUS) show that porn is still the number one source young adults go to when they want to learn about sex. This is a massive problem; after all, they are learning all they know about sex from a glorified industry.

In 2013 the UK ranked third in the world for the amount of people who had been treated for an STI, only beaten by Sweden and Germany.

There must be a reason why the UK ranks as an STI haven and it makes me wonder: Did anyone tell today’s youth that you can, and mostly likely will, contract an STI if you do not use a condom?

And more importantly – did anyone teach them how to use a condom?

According to stats, it is a safe bet to say no.

The NUS survey showed that of the 2,500 students asked, 60 per cent used porn to learn about sex and 40 per cent of the same group said porn helped to improve their understanding of sex, but it also gave them “unrealistic expectations”.

Obviously porn gives unrealistic expectations to sex – anyone who has received a good sex education in school would know that.

The problem with students educating themselves with porn goes beyond the obvious notion that they will try things that should not necessarily be tried at home; it also creates a youth too insecure of themselves to talk about sex with a potential partner.

After all, if they do it in porn it must be ok and there is obviously no reason to talk about it?

Whether it is the fault of UK schools or the government is debatable, but we need to create a new platform for people to learn about sex before we ban the ‘go to’ source that is porn for sex education.

If we do not, and embrace the government’s rather conservative view and ban creative porn, it will only increase the gap in knowledge in an already lacking youth.

We do not need a government to censure our access to sexual content; we need a government to heed the plea for proper sex education so we ourselves can make a judgement call on what realistic sex is and stop learning from porn.