Stay calmīeing upset will make your child worried she or he is in trouble. Often it happens accidentally, but in many cases someone will show your child explicit material. The average age of exposure to pornography is around 10 years. She brought it to me, confused and upset.” What do we tell our children when they stumble upon pornography accidentally? Everyone laughed and even though it made him feel 'yucky', he was curious to see (and know) more.”Īnd another mum explained: “My 9 year-old was playing on her older brother's iPad when she found pornography. When I asked him how he learned to search up those words, he told me someone showed him something funny in the playground or on the bus at school. Her friends' big brother had told them to.”Ī dad said he wasn’t bothered too much until “I caught my 7 year-old son searching up terms I didn't know he knew. I thought she was tired, but she eventually told me that the other girls starting looking up sex and pornography on the iPad once the adults had gone to bed. He also watched an explicit and sexually violent video.”Īnother mum told me, “I collected my 11 year-old daughter from a slumber party. He did, and saw hard-core pornographic images. I asked if he wanted to talk, and with some coaxing I discovered that one of the older boys at school told him to search up "sex" on the Internet. One mum said, “I noticed that my 8 year-old son seemed upset about something when he came home from school. When I speak on the topic in schools, parents tell me how easily and unexpectedly their young children are exposed to pornography. The report is a few years old now, but still has some of the best information out there to help parents and educators keep kids safe.
I really recommend you take a look at the report and gather as much information from it as you can. They found people get hurt because of pornography. Third, boys are more likely to be exposed to it, and actually seek it out.įourth, seeing pornography impacts on what children believe about sex and intimacy, and that affects their behaviour especially their risky behaviours around sex.
Second, exposure and access is most likely to occur online, and exposure increases with age. According to the UK Office of the Children’s Commissioner, “ Basically… porn is everywhere.” Their analysis of research into the impact of pornography on children was conducted in 2013, and confirms several concerning things:įirst, a significant number of children and young people are exposed to pornography. Many experts view pornography as a public health crisis, especially because of the way that it impacts children and young people.