Washington, DC – Across the country, several major companies are taking action against pornography use. Tumblr, Starbucks, Comcast, and multiple hotel chains have all taken steps to reduce pornography access within their respective industry. These decisions come during a time of increasing awareness over the harms of pornography.
“Companies are quickly realizing the harms of pornography create a serious liability against the well-being of their costumers,” stated Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “It is encouraging to see these companies recognizing their corporate responsibility to create safe environments and family-friendly products that focus on digital safety.”
Tumblr announced that it would be removing all pornographic content from their site after child pornography was discovered. Starbucks stated it would filter pornography from their WiFi and several hotel chains have removed access to on-demand pornography, creating an environment free from degrading and graphic pornography.
Comcast recently made major improvements to their products. These changes include improved parental controls, restricting access to pornography to prevent unwanted exposure, and increased investment in digital safety. Comcast worked closely with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in making these improvements towards digital well-being.
There is a growing portfolio of research highlighting the detrimental effects of pornography use. Findings from these studies include pornography being linked to increased sexual violence, negative body image, pressure to perform pornographic acts, and hijacking of the brain’s reward system, among others. The result is a new public health crisis created by pornography.
“Pornography creates an environment conducive to sexual harassment and unhealthy sexuality,” Hawkins noted. “The presence of pornography creates a toxic environment for both customers and employees. It also increases the risk of children being exposed to highly graphic and degrading content which, as the research shows, can have severe negative effects on healthy sexual development.”
Comcast was recently praised by NCOSE for their aforementioned improvements to parental controls, filtering, and focus on digital safety. Comcast has become an industry leader in thoughtful, family-oriented, digital design. As a result, Comcast is being removed from the Dirty Dozen List—a campaign by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation that names 12 companies contributing to sexual exploitation every year.
