Talk to your kids about porn

It’s much more than the “girlie” magazines older generation New Zealanders might recall being surreptitiously passed behind the school bike sheds. More graphic, more violent, more dehumanised and degrading.

Today, a young man speaks out about the hardcore online pornography which piqued his curiosity at the age of 11 and led to him bingeing obsessively on the offensive content.

Auckland-based sex and relationship therapist Jo Robertson says porn teaches children and teens problematic ideas about sex and relationships. “The content they will most likely see is often aggressive and degrading to women, LGBTQI+ and people of colour. It can teach them that consent is not that important or that it’s okay to just ignore someone’s ‘no’ during sex. Adults have a higher level of critical thinking and have some reallife sexual experiences to compare porn to.”

A report by Australian Government agency the Institute of Family Studies found pornography use can shape sexual practices and is associated with unsafe sexual health practices. It also may strengthen attitudes supportive of sexual violence and violence against women.

Far from being schooled in loving acts, porn users are more likely to become sexually inadequate, the institute says. “Gaps between expectations and reality can produce ‘sexual uncertainty’ about sexual beliefs and values and may also be related to sexual dissatisfaction, anxiety and fear.”

University of North Carolina School of Medicine forensic paediatrician Dr Sharon Cooper says children and youth are more vulnerable to pornographic images than adults because of mirror neurons in the brain, which convince people they are actually experiencing what they see.

A November 2020 research paper for Oranga Tamariki found viewing of pornography at younger ages is becoming more common, with 20-50 per cent of all children and young people exposed to pornography online by age 16. As a result, more parents experience what the mother of the young porn addict says: “My son went through that and it never occurred to me once to have a conversation about porn.’”

Now is always the best time to open that conversation, for the sake of your child and other children.

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