New and uncharted phenomenon skewing children and young people’s views
Commenting on today’s (18th April) report from the Parliamentary inquiry into online child protection, YoungMinds Director of Campaigns and Policy Lucie Russell, who gave verbal evidence to the inquiry said:
“We wholeheartedly support Claire Perry’s brave and admirable crusade to raise awareness about children’s exposure to online pornography and the launch of the parliamentary enquiry report.
“We are witnessing a generation of children and young people who are having mostly unfettered access to a wide variety of pornography- the average age of viewing is 11 and it only takes 15 seconds on a computer, smartphone or Ipod to access a range of hardcore pornography.
“This is a new and unchartered phenomenon and we are yet to see the effect it is having on boys and girls who are growing up with completely skewed images of sexual relationships and the normalizing of sexual violence by men towards women.
“What is also compounding this is how difficult it is for parents to put parental controls on phones and other devices such as Ipods, making it much harder to protect our children from the millions of graphic images they are likely to be exposed to twenty four hours a day.”
2 Comments
-
Guy
about 1 year ago
This is a serious issue and we need to give children the knowledge and cultural wisdom that sexual violence is not normal or acceptable.
Firstly we need to redress the balance in sex education from an early age and let girls know their sexuality is for their own pleasure just as much as it is for boys. Why is it still the case that in sex ed, boys are introduced to concept of self stimulation, 'wanking' and girls are introduced to mensuration? Male sexuality is pleasure, female sexuality is as a vessel.
This imbalance will persist until the C word is used openly in all settings. Clitoris. Say it. Say it again. Say it without smirking.
Girls must be in control of their own sexual identity.
-
Tara
12 months ago
Back in 2000 when I became the victim of Internet grooming and eventual sexual assault, my parents didn't have as many areas to try and protect. Internet came into my life via the shared home computer or, if I was lucky, at school. Even then, I was exposed to pornography, sexual content etc by men.
Now there is so much more opportunity for deviants to reach children. The internet was still quite new for most families when I was being abused; now I think people see it as a necessity for the family unit. It's on phones, on your tv..basically anything that can receive the signal or the modem can go online.
It's not impossible to protect these areas but there is a lot less information about protect your child as they use their phone.
