Joel Julien

When you look at sta­tis­tics on Google Trends for the high­est num­ber of In­ter­net search­es for pornog­ra­phy per capi­ta in the world, T&T comes first. Nepal comes sec­ond.

Fur­ther analy­sis of the da­ta, ac­cord­ing to Google Trends, shows that the most search­es for pornog­ra­phy in this coun­try come from Siparia. San­gre Grande comes sec­ond. T&T has been rank­ing num­ber one since 2014.

Speak­ing at the Con­sid­er This! A Na­tion­al Con­ver­sa­tion con­fer­ence host­ed by the Arch­dioce­san Fam­i­ly Life Com­mis­sion in con­junc­tion with Ju­bilee Catholic Com­mu­ni­ty, held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Mary Anne Lawyden, PhD, said In­ter­net pornog­ra­phy is the "new crack co­caine" be­cause of its ad­dic­tive na­ture.

"Psy­chol­o­gists now call In­ter­net pornog­ra­phy the new crack co­caine and it is in fact more dan­ger­ous than crack co­caine be­cause it is hard­er to get the pornog­ra­phy ad­dict in­to re­mis­sion than it is to get a co­caine ad­dict in­to re­mis­sion and it is more like­ly that the pornog­ra­phy ad­dict is go­ing to re­lapse than the co­caine ad­dict. So this is ac­tu­al­ly tougher," Lawyden said.

"When work­ing with the co­caine ad­dict or the hero­ine ad­dict or any oth­er kind of ad­dict the first step in treat­ment is to get that ad­dic­tive sub­stance out of their sys­tem; they have to detox, clean out the hero­ine, clean out the co­caine. How do you clean out the pornog­ra­phy? It is in your brain for­ev­er. It is the first time we have to treat an ad­dic­tive sub­stance which is per­ma­nent­ly im­plant­ed in the brain. So this is a whole new kind of ad­dic­tion we are fight­ing," she said.

De­vel­op­men­tal and foren­sic pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr Sharon Coop­er said be­cause of the ill ef­fects of pornog­ra­phy par­ents must en­sure that their chil­dren are pro­tect­ed from see­ing it.

"Par­ents who put their chil­dren on au­to pi­lot with tech­nol­o­gy are putting their chil­dren at risk. A lot of par­ents do not know this when they buy tech­nol­o­gy for their chil­dren such as tablets and smart­phones," Coop­er said.

The con­fer­ence ends to­day.