Porn to be wild:
Sunday show looks at the detrimental effects of the world of porn.
Porn is so freely available on the internet it is becoming increasingly difficult to stop children being exposed to it. Sunday’s Jehan Casinader, who has launched a special investigation into porn addiction, hopes his story will help families to openly discuss many confronting issues. Cass Marrett reports.
Young people’s links to porn before the advent of the internet would often involve stolen giggles over a father’s hidden stash or a giddy peek in a store through an X-rated magazine (before they were sealed).
“That is not what porn in 2018 is,” says journalist Jehan Casinader, who travelled to Los Angeles to visit a porn film set and launch an investigation into porn addiction.
“Porn in 2018 is literally millions of high-definition videos streaming endlessly on the internet.”
For many Kiwis, the mere mention of pornography is enough to prompt a swift change of subject but this week when his story airs on Sunday, Casinader hopes to start a dialogue.
“My hope is that families can watch this story despite how confronting it’s going to be for them and sit on the couch and have a genuine conversation after it.”
As Casinader was growing up in the early 2000s, so too was the internet. He was fortunate to never have any issues with porn himself, but he noticed some of his peers became hooked from an early age.
“I don’t think anyone understood the impact (the internet) would have on our generation,” he says.
“We started to be bombarded by online porn whether that was through pop-up ads or through social media sites that were being created.”
After speaking with therapists, the Minister for Children, porn stars and a young Kiwi addicted to porn, Casinader says it’s not a case of kids finding pornography – rather, pornography finds them.
He wants parents to know that education is their best defence.
“If you are not willing to have conversations with your child about sex, the porn industry will gladly do that job for you. Is that really what you want?”