Lisa’s son was only 11 when he was first exposed to pornography.
She told ABC podcast Parental As Anything: Teens she didn’t anticipate that she’d have to talk about pornography with her child at this young age.
“It came up a few years earlier than I expected,” says Lisa, whose name we changed for privacy reasons, “[and] it was very, very explicit.”
Interest in sex is not new, the access to content is
According to Our Watch, almost 50 per cent of Australian boys have seen porn by age 13 and almost 50 per cent of girls have seen it by age 15. About half of them came across it by accident.
Maree Crabbe is the director of It’s Time We Talked, an Australian violence prevention initiative focused on pornography and young people.
“Primary school children being interested in sex is not new. But … the kind of content that primary school-aged children have access to now is the key [difference],” Ms Crabbe says.
“Mainstream, free, online pornography these days is incredibly graphic. It’s often violent and degrading, and the violence and aggression in pornography is almost always directed towards women.”
The impacts of porn on young minds
What Lisa was most worried about was how her son’s exposure to porn would warp his relationships with his female classmates, while still in his final year of primary school.
Research from around the world shows porn has troubling effects on young people and Ms Crabbe says Lisa is right to be worried.
“Consumption of porn,” she explains, “is associated with an increase in aggressive attitudes and behaviours. ”
“The kind of message that young people are getting from porn is that men need to be dominant, in control and aggressive, and women need to be enthusiastically subservient to whatever men want them to do.”
She says that porn has become “young people’s default sex education” and it’s “shaping their sexual understandings and expectations”.
“Remember that curiosity is really healthy. It’s part of how we learn and thrive as human beings,” Ms Crabbe says. (Supplied: Breeana Dunbar Photography)
Preventing or limiting your child’s exposure to pornography
Ms Crabbe says the first step is to try to prevent or limit children seeing pornography by managing their technology usage. That includes using browser filters and not allowing devices in bathrooms and bedrooms.
“I know these are really challenging things to do, but it … can prevent a lot of unintentional exposure [to pornography].”
She told ABC News that the federal government’s plan to pilot age verification technology was “a cautious first step to look at what might potentially be a very significant strategy for preventing and suddenly reducing children and young people’s exposure to pornography”.
What age to talk to your child about porn
Ms Crabbe says early on, we need to support our children in thinking critically about what they see of bodies and sex in media and advertising.
Then as they get older, it is important to have overt conversations about pornography, especially if you know your child has seen it already.
“There’s no hard and fast rule for when it’s time to have those overt conversations, but think of when you might be comfortable to have them and then take about three years off,” Ms Crabbe says.
“We know that parents are generally not having conversations about porn early enough.”
Professor Lelia Green from Edith Cowan University, who has studied the effects of porn on teenagers, agrees.
“It’s not a case that not talking about these things is protecting [children],” she told the ABC’s RN Drive program.
“Without those conversations … children have a sense that it’s dirty and forbidden and they shouldn’t have seen it and that they’re somehow at fault. Those are all terrible messages.”
What to say
Deanne Carson, a sexuality educator and researcher and CEO of Body Safety Australia, also spoke on the RN drive program.
She says the first thing for parents to say, even before their child might have seen porn, “is that the internet is a place for all people, not just for children and there are things on the internet that are not made for children”.
“And [if they are] exposed to something online that makes them feel worried, scared, uncomfortable, or that they just don’t feel it was made for kids, it’s really important they speak to a trusted adult about it.”
When Lisa, who we mentioned at the start of the story, discovered her son’s porn searches, she had a conversation with him about “what healthy relationships are — a balance of responsibility and participation — and how the porn content he’s seeing doesn’t always reflect reality”.
Ms Crabbe agrees with that approach.
She says to speak about “what porn depicts about men, women, gender, power, consent.”
“We don’t need to show them porn to have those conversations. And it’s not legal to do that … but we can have conversations about the kinds of messages that are portrayed in porn.
“We need to inspire young people that relationships and sex can and should be so much better than what they’re likely to see in porn.
“[Discuss] a model of sexuality in relationships that’s about equality and mutual pleasure and respect and consent.”
Communicating with calmness and curiosity
Ms Carson says one of her “biggest pieces of advice … having facilitated these conversations between parents and children, is leaving the conversation open and without judgement” to prevent kids closing down and not reaching out for help when they need it.
Despite Lisa not feeling ready to talk about porn with her son, she says that her discoveries have led to many open conversations between them about sex and relationships.
“Much to the shock and horror of some of my mum peers,” Lisa says.
“But for us, it did create an opportunity … and I believe that it has evolved into a more trusting relationship between the two of us.
“And it gave me a license to continue to have those conversations.”