Social Networking Sites more popular than Porn Sites???

Well, this news in ET yesterday caught my immediate attention which reads something like this – “Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a Web guru. Bill Tancer, a self-described “data geek”, has analysed information for over 10 million Web users to conclude that we are, in fact, what we click, with Internet searches giving an up-to-date view of how society and people are changing. Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, said one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites. He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 per cent of searches from 20 per cent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.” (Source: Economic Times dated 22^nd Sep’08)

Prima facie it looks like a good news, isn’t it? Atleast parents of growing kids and admin guys in corporates can heave a sigh of relief to read this, they need not worry about monitoring their kids and employees respectively and brooding over their wasting time on internet by searching and surfing adult contents. As per Tancer’s assumption, young people aged between 18-24 are spending more and more time on social networks and hence they are not left with much time to spend on porn sites… Hmmm interesting observation but is it the reality??? Don’t you think this is a very theoretical assumption? Well, we all know that almost all social networking sites are full of porn and adult content, infact I think its all the more easier to access such content through these social networking sites. I know of parents who have put filter for certain URLs in their home computers but of course have allowed sites like Orkut and facebook as that’s where their kids prefer to spend most of their times, now isn’t it true that most of the teenagers these days can access any kind of porn content on social networking sites like orkut or video sites like youtube? Infact finding girls / boys, contacting them, sex-chatting, dating etc have become so easy these days through these sites and almost all possible information are available at one place only. Now why will the searching of porn content not go down when everything is so easily accessible now? Social networking sites are definitely getting more and more popular day by day and yes youngsters are spending more time on such sites than specific porn sites these days but isn’t it because of apart from other X reasons like bonding with friends, finding old friends etc, youngsters are surfing lots of porn content on these sites itself? Well, atleast I strongly think so and feel porn is another spicy hook for social networking sites being so sticky apart from other reasons like friends, hobbies, games, applications, networking etc etc etc.