Has Your Child Been Exposed to Pornography?

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What happened to Maddie, a mom of two boys, one afternoon has no doubt happened to countless other parents across the country. Maddie's computer was out of juice, so she hopped on her 15-year-old son's laptop. She looked at the history of something she was working on and then, bam. There were links to 40 porn sites with topics too racy for me to print. "I was freaking out," said Maddie, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy and her son's. She immediately did something she has never done before during her nearly two decades as a parent: called her husband out of an extremely important client meeting. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, we need to talk about this,' " Maddie said. "There's nothing I can't handle with the kids. ... This I cannot handle," she added, remembering how she felt at the time. (Wallace, 2015)

With today’s growing technology of iPad’s, notebooks, and smartphones, your child could be just a click away from viewing something a parent would find offensive. In today’s world social media plays a big role in an adolescent's life.  Unfortunately, chances are high that your child has been exposed to pornography through a mobile device or computer.  As children are growing and maturing they are naturally curious about sex, but what they are encountering on the internet can be damaging to their social, emotional, and sexual development.

Watch this short clip on the definition of pornography:


Prior to the Internet, adolescents had to really search to find pornography.  They would need to gain access to something in print like a Playboy magazine.  These soft porn magazines were usually kept behind the counter at convenience stores. The images one can accidentally encounter on the internet with the click of a button or a simple Google search are much more hard-core today.

What are the statistics?

This clip tells of some adolescent pornography statistics:


Statistics from CovenantEyes.com

What are the potential consequences of your child having viewed Internet pornography?

While every family dynamic is different, understanding the potential risks will help parents understand what they are up against. “Parents are encouraged to recognize that although their adolescents may be the ‘computer/internet’ experts in the home, they are novices when it comes to intimate relationships and still need parental guidance and protection (Wurtele & Kenny, 2016, p. 340).” Children are learning a mixed set of moral values due to the easy access they have to online pornography. They are neither emotionally nor intellectually prepared to understand and process what it is they are seeing when they view pornography.

           Misconceptions about sex

In today’s world, the Internet is potentially the most influential sex educator for American youth (Braun-Courville & Rojas, 2009).  Teens who have viewed a considerable amount of online sex are more likely to think that it is normal to have more than one sexual partner at a time, and instead of sex being part of a committed romantic relationship, it is viewed more as a recreational activity (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017).  Instead of a reciprocal, loving bond between a man and a woman, online pornography often portrays men as sex driven and women as sex objects. When teens believe these skewed gender roles they are more apt to search for online sex (Valkenburg & Jochen, 2011).               

     Sexual behavior

Youth who were going through puberty and have viewed online sex were more likely to initiate sex, while the opposite was true for older teens who view pornography (Livingston & Smith, 2014).  Other studies revealed that youth who were exposed to sexually explicit media had an increased chance that they would participate in oral sex and sexual intercourse within two years (Spies & Margolin, 2014).  

     Mental health

Many are already familiar with the fact that viewing pornography can alter the brain much like that of an alcoholic or a person addicted to cocaine (Kuhn & Gallinat, 2014). Youth have also experienced depression, anxiety, shame, and loneliness from the frequent viewing of pornography.

What can you do as a parent?

          Smartphone, iPads, tablets and social medial platforms

With the explosion of personal mobile devices on the market (e.g., smartphones, iPads, tablets), home computers are no longer the main source of pornography for adolescents (Fanetti, O’Donohue, Fondren-Happel, & Daly, 2014). Social media apps (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, twitter) are very popular with mobile devices.  These social media platforms all provide an almost unlimited source of pornography to your child’s device.  Parents need to be familiar with their child’s mobile device and discover how to block or filter unwanted content. 

Adolescents need limits


Getty Images
It is important for parents to monitor adolescent’s online activity.  It is also important for parents to be familiar with the social media apps that their child is using and what personal information they may be sharing over the Internet.  Many parents underestimate the amount of time their child spends on the internet or what they encounter when they do (Elsaesser, Russell, Ohannessian, & Patton, 2017). It is important for “parents [to]create boundaries for their teens by setting guidelines for how [their] teen engages online or by personally monitoring their teen’s online behavior (Erickson et. al, 2016, p. 1387).” The goal is to keep your child safe.

The book Good Pictures Bad Pictures could be a helpful resource for your family.

Questions to consider

  • Do you have filters installed on your smartphones?
  • What type of boundaries or limits do you have for your child’s Internet use?
  • What social media platforms does your child use?
  • Have you and your child talked directly about pornography?

Challenge

Prepare to have a discussion with your children about pornography and what they can do when they come across it. Come up with some strategies together on how to combat any further viewing of pornographic images. Whether you have had a discussion about pornography or not, you need to start somewhere or continue your conversation. 

 Tip: If you make the conversation uncomfortable, your child will instantly feel uncomfortable.  Make it a casual and continual conversation.

Blog Discussion and Improvement

  • Comment below with any thoughts, questions, or ideas you may have.
  • Be sure to take our poll on the left sidebar.  
  • Don't forget to take our 6 question survey by clicking on the link below. 


READER SURVEY


References
Braun-Courville, D. K., & Rojas, M. (2009). Exposure to sexually explicit web sites and adolescent sexual attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Adolescent Health, 45(2), 156-162. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.12.004
CovenantEyes (2015). 250 facts and stats about pornography. Retrieved from http://www.covenanteyes.com/pornography-facts-and-statistics/
Elsaesser, C., Russell, B., Ohannessian, C. M., & Patton, D. (2017). Parenting in a digital age: A review of parents role in preventing adolescent cyberbullying. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 35, 62-72. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2017.06.004
Erickson, L. B., Wisniewski, P., Xu, H., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., & Perkins, D. F. (2016). The boundaries between: Parental involvement in a teen's online world. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(6), 1384-1403. doi:10.1002/asi.23450
Fanetti, M., O'Donohue, W. T., Fondren-Happel, R., & Daly, K. N. (2014). Forensic child psychology: Working in the courts and clinics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Greenfield, P. M. (2004). Inadvertent exposure to pornography on the Internet: Implications of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for child development and families. Journal Of Applied Developmental Psychology, 25, 741-750. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2004.09.009
Kühn, S., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: The brain on porn. Journal of the American Medical Association: Psychiatry, 71(7), 827. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93
Livingstone, S., & Smith, P. K. (2014). Annual research review: Harms experienced by child users of online and mobile technologies: The nature, prevalence and management of sexual and aggressive risks in the digital age. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 55(6), 635-654. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12197
Spies Shapiro, L., & Margolin, G. (2014). Growing up wired: Social networking sites and adolescent psychosocial development. Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review, 17(1), 1-18. doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2014.12.002
Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2011). Online communication among adolescents: An integrated model of its attraction, opportunities, and risks. Journal of Adolescent Health, 48(2), 121-127. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2010.08.020
Valkenburg, P. M., & Piotrowski, J. T. (2017). Plugged in: how media attract and affect youth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wallace, K. (2015, January 16). Help! My teen's watching online porn. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/16/living/feat-teens-online-porn-parents/index.html
Wurtele, S. K., & Kenny, M. C. (2016). Technology-related sexual solicitation of adolescents: A review of prevention efforts. Child Abuse Review, 25(5), 332-344.

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