For people of my generation, porn was something you found in bushes on the way to school or in your friend’s father’s toolbox.

The reason buses were late was not because of heavy traffic or scheduling difficulties, but because the drivers and conductors were waylaid by bored housewives who dressed in sexy negligees, even in the afternoon.

Window cleaners and driving instructors engaged in practices so debauched they required ecclesiastical intervention, in the form of the confessional.

I remember knowing instinctively when these bawdy, sub-Carry On romps came to our local picture house, without really understanding what they involved, that they were not intended for the likes of me. They had been given an X certificate such was their power to corrupt young minds.

It transpires that porn does have the power to corrupt, but not in the way we imagined back in the 1970s.

Today porn is everywhere, instantly available and ubiquitous, in all guises and extremities and to people of all ages. A study published last year revealed that a third of nine-year-olds had unintentionally accessed porn by the age of nine.

The potential problems this might create for society is not, particularly, to do with the severity of content – most porn is formulaic, predictable, and banal – but rather with the habits it generates.

Catherine Carr’s radio series About the Boys, currently airing on Radio Four, paints a fascinating and insightful picture of how young men engage with porn, young women, other young men and with society, in 2024.

She travelled the country, interviewing teenage boys on a range of subjects, from sex to pornography, feelings and isolation, and her findings are as troubling as they are revelatory.

A common theme is how boys have become so used to viewing pornography that when they come to have sex, the experience seems inauthentic and unsatisfying.

In particular, they report confusion and misunderstanding over behaviours which are portrayed in pornography as acceptable and even routine - such as slapping and strangulation - but which in reality are anything but.

It’s not just with sex that modern forms of communication appear to be distancing young men from the real world. Carr’s interviewees also revealed the impact that the Covid pandemic has had on their relationships with friends, where face-to-face contact appears to be becoming the exception, rather than the norm.

The mother of one boy, worried that he was spending so much time alone, in his bedroom, encouraged him to visit his friend.

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She was told that neither he, nor his friend, had dual controls on their gaming consoles and so, in order to engage with each other, they had to be physically apart, in their own homes, where each had their own gaming decks set up.

It seems that barely a day goes by when some new study or another reveals yet more ways in which personal contact between people is being thwarted by the intervention of technology.

Earlier this week it was revealed that a quarter of 18-to-34 year-olds questioned in a survey said that they had never answered their phones. When their phones ring they simply ignore it and then text or WhatsApp the caller. Anyone with Gen Z-age children will know the frustrations of this behaviour.

I know from experience of employing young people that they will do almost anything to avoid speaking on the phone. When they do, they are more likely to leave a voice note rather than engage in a continuous, uninterrupted conversation.

Does any of this really matter? After all, history is littered with examples of false alarms over the dangers that technologies pose for society, only for them to be assimilated and adapted into new, often more effective, ways of doing things.

To bring the subject back to sex however, there are worrying signs that the unprecedented growth of online platforms, and new behaviours introduced during the pandemic, have had a society-wide impacts that could negatively affect future population rates.

A recent study by the US-based Pew Research Center revealed that more than 60% of young men are currently single, with sexual intimacy at a 30 year-low across genders.

The report, published in Psychology Today, suggested there has been a “tectonic shift” in the dating and sex life of men, with growing numbers turning away from real-life relationships and towards the virtual world.

Data from the US, UK, Australia, and Italy suggest that between 76% and 87% of 18-to 29-year-olds consume porn regularly. Those who use porn more often tend to report less satisfaction with real-life sex.

According to another study, from 2016, there is a rise in psychogenic-related erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, and diminished libido in men under 40, associated with frequent porn use.

While men and women previously met long-term partners during face-to-face encounters, in pubs and nightclubs, or at work, most people now use dating apps, but these too have been shown to be problematic for both sexes.

Successive research studies have shown that men are likely to be more promiscuous with their "likes" on dating apps, while women are more selective. As a result, men often feel frustrated at the amount of effort required to obtain even a single match.

The Herald: Many young people now use dating appsMany young people now use dating apps (Image: PA)

In contrast women feel deluged by the amount of attention they receive and are more likely to feel that the process of choosing a relevant match is made impossibly hard, with 70% experiencing dating app burnout, according to a survey by Bumble last week.

As a reaction against this - and a reluctance among Gen-Zers to speak to one another - a new dating app called hati (Indonesian for heartbreak), is challenging convention, claiming “we’re not about matches, we’re about dates”.

When two people are matched, they are not able to message one another but, instead, they must then organise a five-minute phone call. If things go well, they can then progress to a five-minute video call before deciding whether to meet face-to-face.

Finding pornographic magazines in bushes and having Reg Varney from On the Buses promoted as a modern-day Casanova may not have been an ideal introduction to sex and relationships, but at least it had the effect of provoking the curiosity of men so that when they did meet a real woman it was a rewarding experience.

Young people today might be pleasantly surprised to know that less is more and that pursuing the goal of face-to-face human interaction really is worth the candle.