Taiwanese Net surfers have proved themselves to be a randy bunch by racking up most of their time online clicking sites offering pornographic material, according to results of a survey released yesterday.
In a three-month survey of Net surfing habits in Asia, Internet research firm Netvalue Taiwan discovered that local net surfers visited porn sites far more frequently and for much longer duration than any other type of site.
According to the results, Taiwan net surfers on average visited 2,556 porn sites over the survey period -- much more than the 1,485 portal sites that took second place -- and remained at the sites for around one hour per session.
Standings among the five countries surveyed -- China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore -- in terms of average time spent viewing porn sites per session saw Taiwan take second place with 62.3 minutes, behind Hong Kong at 69.7 minutes, according to the survey.
Most visitors to general adult sites were aged between 15 and 24, according to the survey, a figure likely to further worry social welfare organizations like the Garden of Hope Foundation (
Welfare organizations have claimed that the accessibility of graphic sexual and violent material on the Web to children could lead to negative behavior among Taiwan's youth.
But of course accessibility is the major attraction of online porn, according to a couple of keen Net surfers in Taiwan.
"You don't have to go through the embarrassment of buying a pornographic magazine from a newsagent," said one Net surfer, who requested anonymity.
"You can find anything you want, it's totally private and a lot of it is free" said another who claimed to spend around four hours per month scouring the Web for porn.
And while opposition to Web porn might be strong among welfare groups and parents, it is generally acknowledged that the porn industry helped to pave the way for Internet applications by developing software required for online purchasing and the download of detailed pictures.
In general, adult content sites tended to attract people from lower income groups, according to the survey, although one popular site jpadult.com (JP 成人網), which contains Chinese-language text and pictures of naked Asian girls, boasts that 34.5 percent of its visitors cpme from the middle income group.
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