So what is the truth about porn? Is its rising availability the hallmark of a liberated society? Or is it a massive crack in the wall of our culture that crumbles more by the day? Some would have you believe that the porn industry is a no harm, no foul business proposition and those who oppose it are just religious zealots with an agenda.
But there’s an ugly underbelly to this cultural shift, the full extent of which we still don’t even know. Curious young people go online looking for answers about sexuality and fall off a steep cliff in just a few clicks. My husband jokes that when tween boys were curious about women in his day, the lingerie section of the Sears catalog was the most informative thing available. Today, the images thrust before them are far more graphic and damaging.
When you’re tempted to dismiss your child’s desire to seek out pornography, remember we’ve never raised a generation of boys (or girls, for that matter) with such easy access to this level of unnatural stimulation. Children need your help to be protected from the devastating harm porn can cause. Here’s what you need to know.
1. Your child has probably already seen porn online.
Hopefully, you’ve safeguarded your home computers, internet-streaming TV apps, gaming consoles, and mobile devices to help prevent access to inappropriate content in your home. But those tools are only so reliable. Plus, every time your kids leave the house, they’re surrounded by other kids with their own devices-many of which aren’t filtered at all.
Research tell us that 84% of teen boys and 57% of teen girls have seen pornography by age 18. The average age of first viewing is between 9 and 13.
2. Pornography is so readily available in such massive supply online, it’s considered normal to many Americans.
One in five mobile searches is for pornography. Porn sites receive more website traffic in the U.S. than X, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, and LinkedIn combined. According to Fight the New Drug, as of 2019, uploads to PornHub alone are estimated at 12,500 gigabytes per minute. That’s enough to fill the memories of every smartphone in the world.
Over time, this tsunami of material serves to desensitize our culture and normalize what was once taboo. This means parents must be that much more intentional in drawing the moral lines clearly for our children.
3. A significant number of porn sites promote things far more disturbing than consensual adult sex.
A startling number of young people are being exposed to things like bestiality, child pornography, bondage, physical violence, and rape. Studies estimate that 9 in 10 scenes in popular porn videos show physical aggression or violence. About half of the scenes contain verbal aggression.
These studies also found that women were the targets of aggression or violence about 97% of the time. In our post-Playboy world, porn now routinely features degradation, abuse, and humiliation of people in a way never before seen in the mass media.
One recent US study analyzed a sample of pornography videos for themes of male aggression and female submission. Results showed that 88.2% of the videos involved some type of rough sex. Of those, 49% showed the female actor complying with and enjoying the aggression.
When our children accidentally or intentionally land on a porn site, 1 out of every 8 porn titles will describe acts of sexual violence. Our kids are getting much “more than they bargained for” in the worst possible sense. Once those images are seen, they’re very difficult to forget.
4. Teens who view porn are much more likely to engage in aggressive sexual behaviors.
Graphic sexual context disorients teenagers during a key developmental phase in which they’re learning how to handle their own sexuality and the moral values associated with it. In one study, those who had witnessed intense, high-risk, sexual scenes participated in sexually aggressive behaviors four times as intense as those who had not seen pornography.
The curiosity is natural. But pornography presents such a distorted, unhealthy take on sex that it undermines a young person’s ability to enjoy a natural, loving sexual relationship within the long-term bond of marriage one day. It cripples them in ways we’re only beginning to understand and creates a need that will never be satisfied in a healthy way.
5. Sexual addictions, including addictions to online pornography, are having a negative impact on marriages.
Divorce rates double when one of the spouses starts watching porn. Whether it’s a habit which becomes an addiction or an on-ramp to real-life marital infidelity, it can and does erode relationships. The effects porn has on marriage can be devastating.
6. Low self-esteem and depression are closely linked to watching porn.
In a survey published in 2022, 78% of participants who reported watching pornography in the last 24 hours reported unhappiness with their physical appearance. This number went down to 58% for people if they hadn’t watched porn for more than 24 hours. It decreased to 44% for those who had never watched pornography.
It’s clear, the closer you are to porn, the worse you feel about yourself.
The Bottom Line
The stakes for your child are higher than they-and possibly you-even realize. Experts tell us that the most frightening thing about the societal impact of constantly available pornography is that we haven’t even had a chance to see the upper end. The first generation to come of age in a culture saturated with porn is only now entering adulthood, and we won’t know the long-term sociological costs for some time yet.
The answer is not to be frightened or overwhelmed, but to be informed and know the truth about porn. Have those vital conversations with your children about the dangers of porn. Resolve to be intentional about shaping your child’s thinking related to these things so he or she understands right from wrong when temptation presents itself. And keep that temptation away from them as long as possible through practical means.
You can do it, mom! But you’ve got to get your head in the game now that you know the truth about porn.
