Shocking news on the BBC today courtesy of security firm Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton, a web-monitoring service for parents. It turns out that teenagers use the Internet to search for porn! I know I know, we had no idea either. Shocking but funny stuff none the less. Up at the top of the search results recorded by the resident big brother software were YouTube, google and facebook with a surprising result at the bottom (number 10) for Fred who I was only vaguely aware of before today.

My favourite quote from the article though comes right at the end where Ms Merritt, Symantec’s internet safety advocate, plays down the potential fury of Daily Mail reading types by saying…

“Any of us who have been teenagers are not surprised kids look for information about sex,” Ms Merritt told AFP news agency.

“I think we have all gotten over our shock that the Internet has porn.”

Very well said however what I found most interesting and truly shocking is that even though these computers were covered in parental protection software which presumably the kids were aware of, they still happily and regularly searched for porn!

Personally I’m convinced that the real search results and the truly gargantuan amounts of porn consumed by this age group will never fully be known because if I and my generation had enough savvy to find workarounds for this type of software today’s crop of teenagers with access to more portable bootable storage and software than ever before, certainly do. Or of course maybe it was just me that really REALLY didn’t want to have that awkward conversation with my mum about Google and teenagers today are just too bold to care.