Today’s digital world provides our kids with a lot of opportunities that we didn’t have as children. Some of these opportunities are great, some less exciting and others may even concern us. Easy access to the information on the internet via phones and tablets falls into all camps. We like the idea that our kids can learn useful skills and get new essential knowledge (and let’s be honest, sometimes the iPad is just great way to keep a long car journey drama free). Even so, we recognise that the internet comes with an inherent danger that our kids are vulnerable to inappropriate content including porn.
How many kids are vulnerable to adult content?
It’s so much easier for a child or a teen to get access to pornography today than it was 20 years ago. This study found that 93% of boys and 62% of girls are exposed to internet pornography before the age of 18. It gets even scarier when you recognise that the average age a child first encounters porn is around 11. These figures give us some idea just how accessible pornography is and how badly our kids are protected from it. This is a (perhaps surprisingly) central part of the screen time problem.
How does Internet porn affect kids?
Watching porn causes various problems (not only for kids but for porn consumers in general):
Their view of themselves. Porn causes a negative effect on self-esteem, shame and guilt. In part this is because of the way the human body is presented in porn – boy and girls think they are somehow less worthy because they don’t look like porn actors.
Their view of relationships. Many people (not only kids) try to bring things they’ve seen in porn into their relationships. And since pornography is often full of misogyny, domination and even physical violence, watching pornography can easily lead to relationship breakdown. Watching pornography distorts attitudes towards sexual intimacy, respect for partners and the very idea of commitment and marriage. In kids this broken world view can easily lead to relationship and marriage difficulties further down the road.
Addiction. Pornography is addictive and can cause sexual dysfunction as well as psychological disorders like shame, depression and anxiety. The younger the pornography consumer the higher the risk of addiction development.
Problems with the law. In some cases downloading pornography can lead to the legal issues.
What can we do?
As parents we do have some instruments to protect our kids.
Let them know that you love and care. Do not blame or shame them if you found out that they have with this problem.
Discuss the issue of pornography with our kids. Yes it’s potentially awkward. Yes both they and you might well squirm at the very idea of discussing sex. Of course, the openness of this conversation might well depend on your child’s age and maturity. But the less mysterious this subject is for them the less illicit allure it will hold. Talking to your kids (on any potential problem area) is generally a starting point.
Develop more open relationships with our kids. This comes out of the previous answer. And it’s less of an immediate solution, more of a long term plan. If your children trust you, there’s a much greater chance that they’ll come to you with their questions and not to the web.
Protect them online. Use a good parental control solution on your kids’ computers or tablets with a content blocking feature to protect kids from inappropriate content online.
Did you or your friends face this problem? What solutions would you suggest?
