What are your kids doing?
I’m not a parent yet, but I know that question is at the forefront of just about every parent’s mind at one time or another throughout the day, especially in an age when so much information — good and bad — is right at their children’s fingertips.
Unfortunately, the concern is only growing. The world’s largest pornography website, Pornhub, may soon own one of the most well-known microblogging websites on the internet, Tumblr.
Here’s a little background
In early December 2018, it was announced Tumblr would ban all explicit content from its platform, which had become a cesspool of pornographic material. The problem had grown so large, in November, the site’s app disappeared from the Apple App Store for about a week after child pornography was found on the website.
For those who might not know, Yahoo! purchased Tumblr back in 2013 for a whopping $1.1 billion. Then, in 2017, Verizon acquired Yahoo! for $4.5 billion, handing the Verizon Media Group (VMG) — previously known as Oath — control over all the company’s assets, including Tumblr.
All was going well until the child porn incident prompted VMG to bar all pornographic content from Tumblr. After the policy shift, Tumblr’s traffic plummeted by a stunning 30 percent.
From December 2018, when smut was banned, to February of this year, Tumblr’s global traffic dwindled from 521 million visits to a mere 320 million. And unique visitors dropped from 642 million in July 2018 to just 437 million in January.
In walks Pornhub
While those numbers are obviously bad news from the VMG, it’s exactly the kind if data that makes the world’s largest porn provider giddy.
Pornhub Vice President Corey Price told BuzzFeed News earlier this month his company is “extremely interested” in buying Tumblr. And he’s in luck, because the VMG is looking to sell it. Should Pornhub purchase the site, Price would immediately reverse the microblogging company’s ban on “NSFW” (not safe for work) content.
“Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price said. “We’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.”
Parents, look out
Prior to the ban of pornographic content, it was very easy to seek out explicit material on Tumblr. In addition, it had the benefit of not looking like a traditional smut website. But it was — and could become again — every bit as dangerous.
Also worth noting is the fact Tumblr’s target audience is pretty young. The VMG-owned site’s users trend younger, generally between the ages of 18 and 24. If Pornhub acquire’s Tumblr, it would not only expand the porn provider’s footprint, it would also give the company a foothold with even younger users, potentially getting them hooked on pornography earlier in life.
The data shows pornography consumption has already reached epidemic levels in the U.S. The last thing our culture needs is one more way to obtain explicit material, yet that’s exactly what Pornhub is hoping to do.
Some 40 million Americans currently visit pornography websites on a regular basis, with a staggering 28,258 people looking at explicit content every second. Even more, 35 percent of all internet downloads are related to porn, and every 39 minutes, there’s new content to watch.
If you or someone you know is struggling to beat sexual sin, Faithwire has created a seven-week, video-based series — Set Free — designed to equip participants with the spiritual and practical tools they need to kick pornography out of their lives. For more information about the study or to enroll, click here.