Teenage brains can’t cope with porn

THIS week, I found myself reading about a boy who’s just turned 16, but admits he’s witnessed ‘every sex act known to man’.

His name is Michael and he’s still a virgin, but he’s been watching hard- core pornography on his laptop since he was 11.

Michael’s story appeared in a chilling Mail article in which teenagers spoke candidly about what they really get up to online. It left me horrified —– and worried.

The reason for my concern is a little part of the brain that lies behind the forehead, known as the prefrontal cortex.

It’s crucial for impulse control, foreseeing and judging the consequences of our behaviour, controlling emotions and inhibiting inappropriate actions.

It’s basically the part of the brain that makes us who we are and stops us from doing stupid things.

The evidence from brain scans is that the prefrontal cortex is still developing well into your 20s. This is why teenagers behave in impulsive ways.

With an immature prefrontal cortex, they can understand behaviour is dangerous or wrong, but they lack the ability to process these thoughts properly and understand them in the way an adult does.

This is why youngsters make particularly good Army recruits, because the prefrontal cortex that assesses risk is immature (similarly, it’s why the majority of squaddies leave by their mid-20s — because by then the risk assessment part of the brain has developed).

The threat with teenagers looking at pornography is that it presents extreme sexual behaviour as normal and the prefrontal cortex that would help them challenge this idea isn’t in full working order.

While an adult can view pornography and, in the vast majority of cases, understand it’s a fantasy and not a blueprint for human relations, teenagers struggle with understanding this.

It’s not their fault: their brains simply haven’t developed fully yet.

Just because teenagers look and sound like grown-ups doesn’t mean they have grown-up brains.

Never mind the moral arguments about porn, there is a sound neurological reason to do everything we can to limit teenagers’ exposure to it.