By LAJU ARENYEKA (With Agency Reports)

Pornography is fast  moving   from a psychological  and cultural   challenge to a political one as the  Chinese government recently shut down thousands of websites and social media sites in a bid to purge the internet of online pornography. The nation’s state media services announced the progress of its ‘Cleaning the Web 2014’ campaign recently which has resulted in the closure of 110 websites and more than 3,300 accounts containing ‘obscene’ material since January. A spokesman for the official Xinhau state agency said: “Disseminating pornographic information online severely harms the physical and mental health of minors, and seriously corrupts social ethos”.

For a country notorious for it’s media censorship, this might be the only good thing to come out of Chinese Government’s stringent regulation of the country’s cyberspace.  As  statistics show, pornography isn’t child’s play. Just seven years ago, global porn revenues were estimated at $20 billion, h owever, by 2011 both global and U.S. porn revenues had been reduced by 50%, due in large part to the amount of free pornography available online. It is estimated that 80-90% of Internet porn users only access free online material. As far as online pornography is concerned, from 2001 to 2007, the Internet porn industry went from a $1-billion-a-year industry to $3-billion-a-year in the US alone.

On average, 17% of performers use condoms in heterosexual porn films. 66% of porn performers have herpes, and 7% of porn performers have HIV. A 2012 survey of porn actresses demonstrated 79% of porn stars have used marijuana, 50% have used ecstasy, 44% have used cocaine, and 39% have used hallucinogens. When hundreds of scenes were analyzed from the 50 top selling adult films, 88% of scenes contained acts of physical aggression, and 49% of scenes contained verbal aggression. To put it mildly, this is bound to have negative effects.

How then can you avoid pornographic content online?

Use an Internet filter.

There are many Internet filters that you can buy or download that will prohibit you or members of your family from opening any questionable sites.

Take advantage of search engines’ built-in filters.

Many search engines give you the option of choosing a “safer” search when using their services. For example, Google offers safe search filtering that you can toggle on or off at the Advanced Search page. This goes for all image searches too.

Don’t guess the address of a Web site.

This is probably the number one way that people get into trouble. If you are not absolutely sure what the URL of the site you’re looking for, input the term instead into your favorite search engine.

Never click on sites that seem questionable.

When in doubt, don’t click. If the site description, title, or URL seems in any way “off” to you, find another site that is more reputable, especially when using that site in a research capacity.

Choose your searches carefully.

If you’re searching for something that is perfectly innocent, but could be construed as inappropriate, think of different ways to frame your search so there are no unpleasant surprises.

There are many search engines and search directories that have extremely high standards when it comes to including sites in their indexes.

You can trust these sites to only offer information that is credible and safe.