Almost half of young Britons came across pornography whilst under the age of 18, a new study shows.

And one in eight young men were first exposed to explicit sexual material before they turned twelve.

YouGov surveyed more than 4,000 people for the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).

Despite the legal age for viewing porn being 18, just seven per cent of respondents said they were older than this when they first saw it.

Four in ten Brits in their 30s said they saw porn for the first time while under 18, falling to one in three people now in their 40s.

A quarter of people now in their 50s and a tenth of people now in their 60s said they saw porn for the first time while underage.

CEASE is calling for age verification controls in law to prevent children accessing porn online.

CARE has campaigned for this change for more than a decade and worked with MPs to establish a law that the govt never enforced.

New age verification provisions are included in the government's Online Safety Bill, currently being scrutinised by parliament.

Vanessa Morse, chief executive of CEASE, commented:

“We have a moral duty to keep kids off porn and, currently, we’re failing. Violent pornography is ubiquitous online and it is being viewed every day by thousands of children across the country.

“This not only causes untold damage to the child viewers but fuels a culture and acceptance of violence, particularly against women and girls, which has spread into real life, driving 'rape culture', normalising harmful attitudes and inspiring sexual harassment.

“We have repeatedly raised concerns that porn sites are targeting children with advertising and content designed to keep them on the sites for longer and returning more frequently, resulting in them viewing increasingly violating and harmful material.

“The enforcement proposals to hold these hugely wealthy and powerful porn sites to account are impossible to deliver. We need urgent action from the Government to give Ofcom greater power to block porn websites which fail to comply with age verification".