Sex survey 2019 as the decade of desire where it has mapped 'India's journey from reticence to exuberance'

Obviously sex sells. That's why every year we have to dip a thermometer into our privates to figure out the slightest fluctuations in our sexual temperature. But as the images make clear, the needle has hardly moved in how the magazines themselves think about sex. Sex is still tee-hee, giggle-giggle, peekaboo and soft-focus, all grainy images and shocking red bindi. And it never has faces, because, despite the alleged sexual revolution that's heating up India, sex is still regarded as something dirty and secretive. Chhii, chhii, no faces please, we are Indian.

Once, India is in the throes of a major sexual revolution.

Scantily-clad women eating popsicles in an ice cream ad. Sex scenes in Bollywood films. Indians ranked number six in the world for online porn views. Five-star hotels being used as modern-day harems. Sexual encounters, gay or straight, just a click away. Resurgent syphilis.

The sex survey complete with headless women, silhouetted couple, and risqué artwork in magazines.

No matter that the surveys get increasingly ludicrous and based on suspect samples, blithely ordaining say, a Lucknow as the oral sex capital of India or decreeing that a town like Asansol is a hotbed for wife-swapping. They remain an annual ritual.

Parts of the country have now become more sex-forward, as the average age at which one has his or her first sexual encounter has come down. In Guwahati, for instance, 61 percent of the respondents said they had their first sexual encounter in their teens, which was the highest among all cities surveyed. Today, 33 percent of the respondents claim they had their first sexual experience in their teenage years.

It is a far cry from the results of our first sex survey in 2003, when 8 percent of respondents said they had their first sexual encounter before they turned 18. Increased exposure to the web, wider acceptance of one's sexuality and the perceived convenience of the morning-after pill perhaps has led to this early sexual start.

This year, in addition to the regular set of questions assessing changing sexual behavior and attitudes, we introduced several new questions that tapped people's fantasies, attitudes to fidelity and extramarital sex, pornography and the use of performance-enhancers like Viagra.

More than three-fourths of the respondents said they watched porn regularly or occasionally-85 percent of the male respondents said they did so; 48 percent of men also admitted to having paid sex while only 3 percent of women respondents admitted to doing the same. Despite this, a majority of the respondents-89 per cent-were against filming themselves or taking pictures while having sex; 74.4 percent were also closed to the idea of threesomes.

This either reflects wariness with experimentation or a reluctance on the part of the respondents to share their darkest fantasies with those surveying them. In a similar vein, 64.4 percent were not open to going to a strip club or a swinger's club with their partners, and 57 percent were not open to any kind of S&M activity in the name of experimentation. While those in the 14-29 age group were definitely more liberal when it came to questions that involved role play, threesomes, spanking orbiting their partners, or using dildos, vibrators etc, the percentage difference was negligible.

A month after its landmark ruling on homosexuality, in September 2018, the apex court struck down another colonial-era law linked to adultery, ruling that extramarital sex was no longer a criminal offence in India.

PORN ADDICTION : SOCIAL MEDIAL ALL A MESSY JOB

Social media. It's grown to be a staple in the realm of our modern society's communication and self-expression, but it's also a major hub for all types of dark content—including pornography and child exploitation.

With huge amounts of users comes huge amounts of responsibility, and it looks like no-one site has developed a porn-proof filtering system or thorough enough moderation team.

Here, we take a look at some of the most popular platforms and their reported struggles to keep hardcore content from plaguing users everywhere. We've ranked the sites from most to least users, using Smart Insights' data on how many people are on each platform. Knowing what you're dealing with as a user of any of these sites can be helpful when looking for content to report, block, and flag.

Social media apps are also making the web a messy, unwieldy space where pedophiles have easy access, and cyber-blackmailing, sextortion and revenge pornography are growing. While the Indian government is blocking major porn sites, 'mirror sites' are appearing with lightning speed. The dark, vicious side of the internet remains a black hole that is largely unregulated. According to cybersecurity specialist Ritesh Bhatia, "Social networking sites, dating portals and smartphone apps massively contribute towards crimes such as sextortion and cyberstalking. The lack of awareness of the dangerous effects of smartphone applications and tech-based capabilities is one of the topmost reasons why individuals become victims of cybercrimes."

Rise in crime apart, porn addiction is also breeding sexual insecurity and causing strife in relationships. "Porn addiction is definitely rampant today,"

800 - MILLION ACTIVE PORN USERS ON INSTAGRAM, FOOD PORN

While there are no reported hard numbers to be found on the amount of porn on this hugely popular platform, our messages from Fighters speak for themselves. In the last two months, we've received countless pleas from Fighters who have seen extremely graphic pornographic content on Instagram, specifically on their "Discover" page, and have reported it—many times, without action being taken against the account.

At one point, one of the popular hashtags associated with our Instagram page, @fightthenewdrug, was bombarded for an extended period of time with pornographic videos (don't worry, it's not anymore). This goes to show that pornbots and spammers will use any means necessary to get their explicit content embedded into popular hashtags and trending topics, and on an entire photo and video-based platform with users as young as 13, that is a HUGE issue.

While Instagram prides itself on banning specific hashtags associated with pornographic content, it has a long way to go before it can be considered totally appropriate and safe for users.

TWITTER- 330, MILLION ACTIVE PORN USERS

And over on the "wild west of the internet," the dark corners of Twitter have become points of exchange between child pornographers and their customers. In fact, recent estimates indicate that at least 14,000 active accounts are involved in the creation and distribution of child porn. BBC reported that the victims of these tweets are as young as 5 years old, and all are below the age of 15.

With an estimated 10 million "pornbots" Twitter accounts dedicated to posting all types of pornographic content, that means there are more pictures of porn than of pets, people, or products. And what's worse? Right now, Twitter won't automatically remove abusive users or these pornbots, only block them from users who report them, because removing porn accounts could easily remove 1% to 2% of active users—and that looks bad for business.

SNAP CHAT – 150 MILLION ACTIVE PORN USERS

One of the most trending apps among the millennials nowadays. As a result of those younger users, the app has yielded a number of different unique terms and names for its features, from "snaps" to "story".

With more than 100 million daily active users, Snapchat has become the go-to social media app for millennials. Headed by a 26-year-old CEO, the app is constantly evolving and creating new and engaging features that allow people to connect. Not long ago, Snapchat released a 'featured stories' section, that includes curated content from online publications such as VICE, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail, MTV, and other mainstream digital news sources. What started as interesting news to be watched and read on Snapchat, has quickly devolved into the vast majority of these featured stories posting sex tips and topless celebrities.

And while it was recently announced that Snapchat will be updating its policies on the content posted by publishers on its Featured section, we've had many Fighters let us know that their "clean up" has been more disappointing than anything. Basically, the new rules more explicitly restricted publishers from posting questionable pictures on featured stories that do not have news or editorial value reports the New York Times, and yet they keep appearing.

At least now, if you hold down the inappropriate story in the Featured section, you can hide the content you can't see…but it's an issue that the content is there at all. Not cool, Snapchat.

PINTEREST - 150 ACTIVE USERS

Pinterest's section on Pin Etiquette states, "We do not allow nudity or hateful content." Period. Furthermore, Pinterest's terms of service prohibit "any content…is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, vulgar or offensive." Pinterest community manager Enid Hwang elaborates, "Photographic images that depict full-frontal nudity, fully exposed breasts and/or buttocks are not allowed on Pinterest." That pretty much covers all the bases, right?

Not exactly. We've been getting messages from Fighters that say they've found blatantly hardcore pornographic content in their regular feeds…and this issue seems to be even worse if they've marked their gender as "male" on the site, from what we've seen. And, like Instagram, there are no hard numbers to be found for how many explicit posts there actually are on the site, but it's on our radar as a problematic platform for questionable content.

What the students have to say?

Precautions have to be taken. One have to safeguard students from sexual content and hurtful messages, a survey finds, as reported on Tes.

Four-in-five students do not think that social media companies are doing enough to protect them from pornography, bullying and self-harm, new research shows. Of the 1,696 junior high students surveyed, 81% said that social media sites needed to do more to protect young users from explicit or harmful content.

The students rated websites ASKfm (an anonymous question-asking site), Omegle (a free chat website), IMVU (an animated chat website) and Facebook as being the riskiest.

One 16-year-old girl said of ASKfm: "It had no strict controls, which led to lots of hurtful messages being spread about people, which I believe contributed to people self-harming or just feeling negative about themselves."

A Child aged 15 also said of the same website: " he hates the fact that someone can say things to you, but not show their name."