UFI has reported to you before that the average age child first view porn online is 11 years old. A new British survey written about in the Daily Mail gives even more distressing news. A third of kids watched porn online at 10 years of age or in many cases even younger. The Daily Mail also reports that most of the children, three-fourths of those surveyed, indicated that their parents don’t talk with them about online porn.
That’s your cue parents. Be SURE you regularly discuss the dangers of pornography with your children. The largest consumers of Internet pornography are the 12-17 age groups, mostly while doing homework. Ninety percent of teens have viewed pornography online, which illustrates the importance of education for parents and teens on how to tread cautiously online. Porn addiction usually has its root in early adolescent years of porn-viewing.
Even though there are programs that can be installed to monitor and block porn, be aware that that may not be enough. Industry experts indicate that as soon as a new porn-block program is released, there are blogs written that teach individuals how to disassemble the software and render them totally ineffective. The basic preventive measures (keep computers out of bedrooms and in “public” spaces, regularly monitor “history” on computers, don’t let your children have mobile phones that have internet access) require constant awareness and vigilance on the part of parents (and spouses! we might add).
Psychologies magazine interviewed hundreds of secondary school pupils for this new British survey. The leading sociologist for the survey, Michael Flood, warned: ”There is compelling evidence that pornography has negative effects on people and communities…Porn shows sex in unrealistic ways and fails to address intimacy, love, connection or romance. It doesn’t mean that every young person is going to go out to rape – but it increases the likelihood.”
Gail Dines, an expert in pornography in popular culture, has repeatedly warned of the future if this pornography tsunami is not halted: “We have now reached a tipping point where we have raised a generation of porn addicts that have come of age. They are now the police officers, the public officials, the politicians, the physicians… They’re addicts and they don’t see anything wrong with porn. They don’t want it stopped. These are the people now making public policy. So where and how do we stop it?”
For more information on the dangers of pornography you can visit http://pornharms.com/http://pornharms.com/ United Families also has a Guide to Family Issues that extensively addresses the research on the pornography problem.