A tenth of 12 to 13-year old children in the UK fear that they are “addicted” to pornography, according to a new survey by NSPCC ChildLine. One in five of those asked had seen pornographic images that shocked or upset them.
The government has introduced an overhaul of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) lessons in schools to help tackle the problems. Children as young as 11 are to receive lessons on consensual sexual relationships and “rape myths”. But ministers stopped short of making the lessons compulsory, leading to criticism from the PSHE Education Association.
The graph shows how far participants in the British Social Attitudes survey from 2000 to 2012 agreed with the statement “Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards”. How far did people of different religious affiliations agree?
Most strikingly, we can see that there was a clear difference in opinion on censorship between religious people of all groups and those of no religious affiliation. Between 50 and 60% of those with no religious affiliation agreed each year that censorship is necessary, and in 2012 53% agreed.
In contrast, in each year all religious groups showed at least 60% of support for censorship (the exception being respondents of non-Christian faiths in 2002). In 2012, the percentage agreement in all religious groups was at least 65%.
Those of non-Christian faiths showed the most variation in support for censorship, falling from 74% support in 2000 to 54% in 2002, and rising to 77% in 2009. The wide fluctuations may have been influenced by the small sample size for this group.
Anglicans were overall the most likely to group to support censorship. In each year between 72% and 78% of Anglicans supported the statement, with 76% agreeing in 2012.
Catholic and ‘Other Christian’ support for censorship declined slightly over the period, but remained above 60% in each year.
This socio-political statement is one of several asked by the BSA survey to determine where groups sit on the 'Libertarian-Authoritarian' axis:
• People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences
• For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence
• Young people today don’t have enough respect for traditional British values
• Schools should teach children to obey authority
• Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards
• The law should always be obeyed, even if a particular law is wrong
See where each group sits on the overall Libertarian-Authoritarian axis here
This snippet taken from our report on Voting and Values in Britain: Does religion count? (pp. 91).
See the full report here and an Executive Summary here for further analysis of voting behaviour and religious identity.
Data source: British Social Attitudes 2000-2012
Individual traditions within the 'Other Christian' and 'Other religion' categories are grouped together within the BSA data due to small sample sizes.
