In a bizarre turn of events, TV audiences find swearing more offensive than violence and raunchy sex.
(Clearly they’ve never watched Tipping the Velvet with their mum.)
According to Ofcom’s Media Nations 2018 report, 42% of the British public cite bad language as the thing that most offends them on TV.
Just 38% of people are offended by sex, while 37% find discrimination offensive, and 33% are put off by violence.
And, 19% of adults in total have seen something on TV in the past 12 months that they’d describe as offensive – though age is a factor, and the older you are, the more offended you are, it seems.
28% of over 65s said they’d been offended by TV, and the figure dropped to 23% for those 55 and over, and was just 17% for people 35+. Viewers aged 16-34 are the least likely to have taken offence, as only 15% said they were offended.
Wait, there’s more. Ofcom has also found out what people actually do when they see something they don’t like…
47% switch channels, 26% discuss what they’ve seen with someone else (probably on Twitter), 22% switch off their TV completely (hahahahaha), and 17% just carry on watching anyway.
Back in 2016, after interviewing over 200 people in the UK on how offensive they find words like ‘bellend’ and ‘beef curtains’ (yeah, we didn’t realise they were swear words either), Ofcom ranked every bollocking swear word in the English language in order of offensiveness.
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