Nearly half of sexually active young people in UK have

Choking”, as it is commonly known, has become normalised in young people’s sexual habits, the study by the Institute for Addressing Strangulation (Ifas) showed, with 43% of sexually active 16- and 17-year-olds having experienced it.

More than half of people under the age of 35 have experienced it, with nearly a third wrongly believing there are safe ways to strangle someone.

The survey also revealed a crisis of distress among those on the receiving end, with 36% saying they felt scared during the experience and 21% suffering dangerous physical symptoms, including dizziness and even loss of consciousness.

It also showed a consent gap, with more perpetrators of strangulation believing their partner had consented to it in advance than those who had experienced it, with 1% saying they had explicitly not agreed to it the last time it happened.

Though both genders were fairly equal in having been on the receiving end, at 47% men and 52% women, men were considerably more likely to have carried it out. Of those who had strangled someone else, 5% said they had done it more than 50 times.

In recent years, “choking” has become part of a dangerous drift towards increased violence in mainstream pornography, which was cited as the biggest source of information about the practice among the respondents.

Pornography featuring strangulation and suffocation is to be outlawed in the UK at the end of this year, with a legal requirement placed on tech platforms to prevent users from seeing such material.

Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University and the author of Exposed: The Rise of Extreme Porn and How We Fight Back, said strangulation in pornography was a recent phenomenon.

“Depictions of strangulation and suffocation are brutal and graphic, often involving belts tied around necks, plastic bags over women’s heads, and two hands gripping the neck.”

She called for a national campaign to raise awareness of the real risks and harms of the practice, which could occur even when there was no visible injury.