> Search Engine Users Look Less For Sex, Entertainment
> http://unisci.com/stories/20022/0403026.htm
> People are looking less for sexually oriented material
> on the Web and more for business information, a new
> Penn State-led study says.
>
> (...)
>
> Specifically, in 1997, approximately one in six Web
> queries was about sex. By 2001, the ratio was down to
> one in 12, and many of these queries related not to
> pornography but to human sexuality.
As with the TV aggression > violence study posted a few days ago, this seems like (mostly) crap, at least the way it's being presented. Am I missing something?
It seems to be the case that the study (or the way it's being reported) doesn't take into consideration the fact that the number of internet users has mushroomed in the last 5 years - meaning that rather than the same users changing their habits (i.e. less interested in pornography for whatever reason), there are simply more users on line with different preferences. As internet use continues to expand into the mainstream, it doesn't seem at all suprising that pornography "traffic," as measured in terms of an overall percentage of search engine queries, would diminish to a significant extent.
I don't think we've seen a sea-change with regard to the level of interest in pornography. In fact, this study may be perfect illustration of "the more things change, the more they stay the same." But maybe, as I said, I'm just missing something...
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/ dave /