If you spend a lot of time on the Internet (aka if you're a normal teenager or young adult pretty much) you've most likely stumbled across pornographic images or videos at some point, even if completely by accident. Or you may be someone who regularly enjoys viewing porn, whether for the purpose of pleasure or just sheer entertainment. And that is perfectly fine - I am not here to tell you otherwise.

But I am here to tell you something you may not be aware of about the porn you like to watch. The reason why I avoid viewing it, along with the fact that I'm genuinely just not interested in it.

I'm firmly against porn for many reasons. Not the porn stars who participate in it - I actually have a huge amount of respect for sex workers, because I believe it takes a lot of confidence in yourself physically and mentally to be able to go into that kind of career field and I know I'd never be able to do it. But I'm very against the porn industry itself, for how they treat those sex workers -- and how they endorse a great deal of human trafficking.

In case you don't know what human trafficking is, I'll enlighten you: it involves kidnapping people and forcing them into grueling, laborious tasks against their will. In this specific case it's sex trafficking, which is forcing people into abusive sexual labor. It's basically modern day slavery, except it can happen to anyone all over the world, of any race, background, culture, gender or sexuality.

You're probably wondering, if slavery was outlawed 160 years ago, how is this modern-day form of slavery legal? Well I'll make it clear that it's most definitely not legal. Several laws have been put in place, both in the U.S. and around the world, to criminalize human trafficking. For example we have the U.S. Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, as well as when John Kerry issued a speech and a report against it in 2013. There is also a Council of Europe Convention Against Trafficking to attempt to combat trafficking in other areas of the world. The thing is though, that it's still very easy to get away with. The government can only do so much about it because it happens right under our noses all the time, and it is very difficult, if not impossible to even notice when it happens, much less stop it.

But what does all this have to do with porn? Well, a lot. While sex trafficking can target absolutely anyone, an overwhelming majority of the victims in statistics are female and/or children. A lot of the time, one of the many awful things that happen to these victims once they are taken into captivity is being forced to participate in pornographic acts. And the porn companies often do nothing about it.

In fact, they usually hide it. And they unfortunately hide it very well. It’s hard to tell but oftentimes many of the girls and women who we may come across in pornographic photos, videos, phone calls, or strip clubs are not always involved in these things by choice. So when you view porn, there's no way to tell whether or not the people you are seeing have consented to the acts you're seeing them perform. Those porn stars in the videos you're watching could appear as if they're truly enjoying themselves but in actuality they could very well be getting abused and raped.

You don't even have any way of knowing if the girls you see in porn are over age 18 or not. According to statistics, one in five pornographic images on the Internet feature girls who are minors. Also, child porn generates about $3 billion per year. So even if you see messages on pornographic sites stating that everyone involved in the videos is of legal age and has consented to being there, those statements are not necessarily true. As if the porn and sex trafficking industries couldn't get any worse, many of the victims are coerced into their sex work through forced alcohol or drug consumption.

Even for those sex workers who are in that career field by choice, the industry still doesn't treat them very well. Lots of women get abused without their consent - no matter what statements porn sites may try to make - because lots of porn is becoming more and more violently rough nowadays and the companies want to pander to people who enjoy watching that, rather than to, well, you know, the people who actually have to participate in it. Porn companies often condone violence and rape on their female employees, solely going off of the fact that they make money off of participating therefore they must be OK with it. When in reality these women are definitely not OK with being degraded and taken advantage of like that and the only factor that keeps them in is the desperate need for a means of earning money. The porn industry is said to be the most abusive field for women to work in.

So am I saying that if you watch porn you should absolutely never look at it again? Of course not. It's neither my job nor my concern to police how you go about your personal life. I'm simply spreading this information in hopes people will be more mindful now whenever they watch porn. I honestly don't think viewing porn, even if you know what the industry entails, makes you a bad person or means you don't care about what those trafficking/abuse victims go through. An analogy: I'm a vegetarian because I hate how animals in factory farms are treated and I personally feel that eating meat would cause me to support that cruelty; however, I won't preach about how everyone else should stop eating meat as well because I recognize that other people eating meat doesn't mean they support animal cruelty.

I hope earnestly that I've been able to spread some awareness by writing this. But if you want to look further than this article for facts about sex trafficking and the porn industry, these two sites are very informative sources. Also, here  are some resources of info about abuse of women in the industry, containing testimonials right from women who have experienced it. Although I haven't seen it myself, I know of a Netflix documentary called "Hot Girls Wanted" that goes into more detail about abuse in porn. If you'd like to know more about human trafficking in general, this site is pretty decent.

If you like porn, then by all means keep viewing it. All I'm trying to do is raise awareness of the many human rights issues porn entails. I don't intend to shame anyone for being involved in it; I just hope that if you're going to continue being involved in it, you'll be mindful of what the people on the screen may be going through. If you've had sex before, it's pretty easy to tell that porn isn't a realistic portrayal of what sex is actually like, however it's not as easy to tell what the level of that unrealistic portrayal is, to the point that sometimes it's not even consensual.