March 19, 2025 • 15 mins
Research reveals that 99% of boys have seen pornography by age 15, with the average first exposure occurring around age 10-11. This isn't your parents' magazine under the bed—today's online explicit content is shaping our children's understanding of relationships and intimacy years before their first kiss. This episode provides practical, research-backed strategies for having essential conversations with your children about pornography and online safety. Learn how to protect your kids while maintaining open communication about this confronting but critical topic.
Quote of the Episode: "Not talking about it isn't protective. You need to talk about it because that's where the protection comes."
Key Points:
- Average first exposure to explicit content occurs around age 10-11
- By age 15, 99% of boys and 50-70% of girls have seen pornography
- Among 15- to 29-year-olds,
- 85% consume explicit content weekly or daily
- Children typically see explicit content 3-3.5 years before their first kiss
- Modern online pornography often contains aggressive and degrading content
- Early exposure shapes expectations about relationships and intimacy
- Open communication is crucial for protecting children
- Parents should normalise curiosity while not endorsing the behaviour
- Discussions should focus on healthy relationships and consent
Resources Mentioned:
- "Boys and Sex" by Peggy Orenstein
- "The Case Against the Sexual Revolution" by Louise Perry
- eSafety Commissioner website
- It's Time We Talked
- Fight The New Drug
- Collective Shout (Melinda Tankard Reist's work)
- Dr Marshall Ballantyne Jones research
- 2017 Australian study on pornography consumption
Action Steps for Parents:
- Start conversations early—before age two—to build comfort discussing difficult topics
- Talk often and naturally about body safety and online dangers
- Create an environment where children feel safe asking questions
- Establish clear but supportive boundaries around internet use
- Respond calmly and without punishment when children report exposure
- Discuss explicit content in the context of healthy relationships
- Address curiosity as normal while explaining why certain content is inappropriate
- Help children develop critical thinking about media messages
- Install appropriate safety measures on devices
- Maintain ongoing conversations about consent and healthy relationships
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
While not explicit, the content of today's podcast is for
mature audiences. We advise listener discretion. Today's content will be
for mature audiences. Just recently, a mum came to me
after apparent night and while she was upset, in fact,
(00:27):
she was furious. She and her husband were in the
process of splitting. In fact, in the week just previous,
he had been told to pack his things and moved out.
She and their daughter had gone away for the weekend.
Their daughter around about nine or ten years of age.
They came home after he'd moved out. The daughter turned
on the computer and this nine or ten year old
(00:48):
girl was confronted with a hardcore pornography site, breathtakingly explicit
content and she screamed, your children are almost certain to
see pornography today. How to talk to your children about
explicit content on the Internet. Hello, this is the Happy
(01:10):
Families podcast, Real parenting Solutions every day on Australia's most
downloaded parenting podcast. We are justin and Kylie Coulson.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I really wish we didn't have to have this conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Horrible story is.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
So important that we find a way to pre arm
our kids.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, and let's just talk about stats so that we
can be clear about why it's so important. Parents often
underestimate their children's exposure to pornography. I've just been writing
about this in my book about Boys, so I'm just
going to read an excerpt from that book right now.
I've written the most active consumers of pornography worldwide or
age between fifteen and twenty years. Pornography is typically, though
(01:47):
not entirely, a boy thing. According to doctor Marshall Valentine Jones,
an Australian researcher on the topic, boys typically encounter it
around age thirteen, though many have their first exposure in
primary school. Experts suggest that the average age of first
exposure is closer to ten or eleven. Girls generally encounter
it later, around age sixteen. Kylie. Here are a couple
(02:08):
of other alarming stats. Number One, by the age of fifteen,
ninety nine percent of boys are estimated to have seen
pornography explicit content. Fifty to seventy percent of fifteen year
old girls have. This is sobering. A twenty seventeen Australian
study revealed that among fifteen to twenty nine year olds,
every male respondent that's one hundred percent of fifteen to
(02:32):
twenty nine year olds in this study reported exposure to pornography.
More concerning the consumption patterns, thirteen nine percent viewed it daily,
another forty six percent viewed it weekly. Wow, which means
that eighty five percent of young men in this age
group are regular consumers of pornography, with only fifteen percent
(02:54):
abstaining from weekly use. Wow. So there's one more thing
that I need to say about this, and I struggle
to bring it up. But I was doing a parent
not a few years ago, and we were going to
be talking about this kind of content. A dad came
up to me ahead of time. He knew what we
had on the agenda, and he said, so this pornography conversation,
I don't get the big deal. It's just boops. And
(03:16):
I responded by saying, I'm not sure if you're familiar
with what intimate pornography is out there, but the pornography
that you're thinking of, the pornograph perhaps from when you
are a young man, it's changed. Here's a quote in
my book from Louise Perry, the author of the Case
Against the Sexual Revolution. She says pornography quote normalizes styles
(03:37):
of sex, which tend to be very aggressive and degrading,
particularly towards women. But it's worse than that. This content
is shaping sexual expectations and understandings at a critical formative
age before they have any sense of what is pleasurable.
I mean, you think about it, Kylie. If kids are
exposed to this content somewhere between nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
(04:00):
usually they're not going to have their first kiss until
they're what fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, maybe thirteen if they're early starters,
But on average, Marshall Valentine Jones, researcher in this area,
told me that most kids are seeing explicit content about
three to three and a half years before they have
their first kiss, So it's shaping their beliefs well before
they're engaged in the behaviors, which means that the way
(04:22):
they'll behave is different well.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And the challenging thing is that both males and females
are seeing this and it literally is creating the foundations
of what they think is a loving relationship. Because we
associate sex and sexual intimacy as part of a loving relationship.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, pornography changes that, and that's what we need to
talk about. What does it actually do. We could talk
a lot about the content. I don't think that's constructive
for our discussion today. Instead, we want to see with you
a handful of ways, a handful of things that you
need to be aware of so that you can talk
with your children because chances are they're almost certain to
(05:09):
see pornography.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I said at the beginning, the most important thing that
we can do is pre arm our kids. Yeah, start
having conversations. Have it. Literally, it's a natural part of
the relationship you have with your child. They come home
from school, they ask you a question because they've heard
something in the playground being talked about that they don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I still remember one of my sisters came home from
pony camp when my parents sent them off for that,
and she walked into mum, who was working with a customer.
At the time, mom and dad owned a furniture shop.
So my mom's trying to sell like a sofa or
a dining suite to a customer, and my little sister
asks her to explain to her what a certain sex
(05:51):
act is. Now, my sister may not have even known
that it was a sex act, but in front of
this stranger, my sister has said, hey, Mum, what's her
and then she's shared the sex act and Mum has
obviously gone bright red and said, I'll talk to you
about this later. And then look at the look with
the guy that's trying to buy the furniture and s
that I'm so sorry about that. She's just come home
from ponycamp. I wonder what they've been doing at night
when they've been supposed to be sleeping. So the way
(06:14):
that I say it is this talk early talk. Often.
I think that we want to have every difficult conversation
you can imagine with your children before they're too And
it's not because the children will understand it. They won't,
so that you can become comfortable with talking about difficult
things with your children from an early age. And like
you said, Kylie, when they walk in the door and
they've got a tough question, embrace it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, don't shy away from it. How amazing that your
kid wants to come home and talk to you, the
person they trust to the most, about difficult things, like,
don't shy away from it. Have those conversations, sit down
with them, talk about it. Yeah, they might be a
little bit uncomfortable, but if you can normalize that, then
they'll come to you and talk to you about anything.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Not talking about it isn't protective. I know that that's
a double negative, but you get where I'm going with that.
Not talking about it isn't protective. You need to talk
about it because that's where the protection goes.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We want to bubble wrap them up, right. We don't
want them to know that this stuff exists.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
But the reality is it does.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Number one, it does, But number two, they're having conversations.
They're part of conversations that are happening in the playground.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And would you rather day to day basis? Yeah, would
you rather their peers be the ones that are instructing them?
Or Google or the Internet or that pornographic website. Would
you rather that be their education educator or would you
prefer to be the educator yourself? I think that the
answer has to be us.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And I guess the only caveat warning that I would
give is you don't have to give them everything.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
If they come home and ask you where babies come from,
you might have a conversation about the female body.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You might not have to go.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
All the way all the way because they're only five
or six.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, yeah, don't turn on the fire hose because they're thirsty.
Just give me a couple Just give.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And ask them do they have any other questions? Once
you finish, will tell you where they're at, and you
can answer their questions without bombarding them with information that
they're not ready for.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Okay, Kylie. The second way that we can help our
children to have healthy and useful conversations with us about
explicit content is once the kids are old enough to
be online, and that might be four, or it might
be seven, It depends on every family and how they're
doing this. We need to consistently early and often remind
(08:35):
them that the internet is not always safe for children,
and by virtue of that, if they see anything that's
scary or makes them uncomfortable, that they really do need
to talk to us. They're not going to get in trouble,
but we need to know because sometimes the Internet is
not safe. Third, let's just admit, when you're young, you're
interested in this stuff. Our children shouldn't be punished for
(08:58):
being curious. Our children shouldn't lose privileges for seeing something explicit,
especially if it's unintentional, but even maybe if it is
intentional the first time, because it's normal that kids are
going to be curious about this. We want to normalize
curiosity while still not endorsing or encouraging the behavior. The
(09:20):
best way to do this, I think, is to say
to the kids, of course, this is interesting, but how
does it really make you feel? Because if the kids
are really in tune, not only will they be interested,
but like this mum's daughter who was exposed to something unintentionally,
she also cried out because it was icky and it
(09:42):
affected her. She felt like it was gross and there
was something not right about it. So we want to
be able to normalize the curiosity but also reflect on
the ickiness and talk about why that is the natural
desire that we have for intimacy with another person. That's exciting, right,
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
So I guess a beautiful flow on from that is
the acknowledgment that when our kids come and tell us
that they've seen something, discuss what they've seen and, in
the context of a healthy relationship, what that means.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, what that looks like? A child when you say
what what did you see is unlikely to say, well,
let me tell you all about it, Like they're going
to be reticent, but asking the question and gently prodding
for more information is going to help you to say, Okay,
well what does that mean and how did it make
you feel? And do you think that that's the kind
(10:34):
of thing that people in loving, healthy relationships do. What
messages is this sending to you about gender or about power,
or about what men want or about what women want,
or about what consent is? I mean, you can turn
this into a really really fascinating discussion, and depending on
the age of your child, you may continue the discussion
into ideas around what intimacy really should be like. You
(10:59):
can talk about mutual pleasure, you can talk about things
that women really really do want versus things that they don't,
and how pornography typically depicts things, as Louise Perry said,
that women are not on the whole excited about.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And I think the last thing that's so important is
helping our kids to set boundaries to keep them safe,
whether it be physical boundaries of what they will and
won't accept in the way people interact with them on
an intimate level. Depending on age, obviously it's going to
vary and change, but also the boundaries around internet use
(11:40):
and how to safeguard themselves so that they don't come
across this content on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
So again at quick content warning. I'm not going to
go deep here, but in my book, I've written about
what it does to our sons, and this is why
the boundaries need to exist, and I think this is
something to talk to your children about sons and orbs.
I talked with Peggy Orenstein, she's the author of Boys
and Sex, best selling author, and she put it really bluntly.
She said this. She said, if you, as a parent,
(12:08):
are imagining seventies porn, or eighties porn, or even nineties porn,
you're not getting what they're seeing. Her research revealed that
boys routinely acknowledge viewing extreme content like rape, gangbangs, and violence.
But then she went on to say this pornography rewires
sexual behavior in ways that should alarm every parent. Boys
(12:28):
who view pornography become less likely to use condoms, more
likely to share explicit images without consent, more likely to
engage in risky behavior, more likely to engage in delinquent
behavior in substance use, more likely to pursue casual hook
cups on one night stands, more likely to express intentions
to pursue higher numbers of sexual partners. Another study showed
that females reported negative consequences from viewing explicit content, including
(12:50):
lowered body image, experiencing a part in the critical of
their body, increased pressure to perform act scene in pornographic films,
and less actual sex, while males reported being more critical
of their partner's body and also became less interested in
actual sex. Last thing, the pornography script changes beliefs about
what's quote unquote normal, and that shift's behavior. Anal sex
(13:13):
and choking are the two most obvious examples. These sex
practices are no longer fringe. According to Marie Krab's research,
there squarely in the mainstream. I want to re emphasize
the percentage of boys watching this is not trivial and
it's not.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Just you said one hundred percent between fifteen to twenty
nine year.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Olds in that one study. Ye.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, and then thirty nine percent of them acknowledge daily viewing.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And the people who watch it the most, especially the
violent kinds of explicit content, are much more likely to
endorse what's known as the rape myth. Okay, so this
is becoming desensitized to sexual violence and blaming victims for
their own assaults. The rape myth is basically you must
have been asking for it. It's a sickening cycle. It
needs to be broken. We hope that the things we've
(14:00):
shared with you today, as hard as they are to hear,
will help you to recognize the importance of having the
conversation with your kids, and hopefully we've given you some
useful tips to have useful discussions with them. It matters
so much. There are more resources about this at Marie
Crab's website, It's Time We Talked. You can also check
(14:21):
out the e Safety Commissioner's website e Safety dot gov
dot a U. In fact, if you just google how
to talk about pornography with my kids, you'll find resources
galore to help you fight. The New drug is another
great place to go. Melinda Tankard Reeste's work at Collective
Shout is also helpful. We'll link to all of them
in the show notes. Really, really hope that this has
(14:43):
been helpful. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
Roland from Bridge Media. For more information and resources about
keeping your kids safe and helping your family to be happy,
visit happyfamilies dot com dot AU.
While not explicit, the content of today's podcast is for
mature audiences. We advise listener discretion. Today's content will be
for mature audiences. Just recently, a mum came to me
after apparent night and while she was upset, in fact,
(00:27):
she was furious. She and her husband were in the
process of splitting. In fact, in the week just previous,
he had been told to pack his things and moved out.
She and their daughter had gone away for the weekend.
Their daughter around about nine or ten years of age.
They came home after he'd moved out. The daughter turned
on the computer and this nine or ten year old
(00:48):
girl was confronted with a hardcore pornography site, breathtakingly explicit
content and she screamed, your children are almost certain to
see pornography today. How to talk to your children about
explicit content on the Internet. Hello, this is the Happy
(01:10):
Families podcast, Real parenting Solutions every day on Australia's most
downloaded parenting podcast. We are justin and Kylie Coulson.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I really wish we didn't have to have this conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Horrible story is.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
So important that we find a way to pre arm
our kids.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, and let's just talk about stats so that we
can be clear about why it's so important. Parents often
underestimate their children's exposure to pornography. I've just been writing
about this in my book about Boys, so I'm just
going to read an excerpt from that book right now.
I've written the most active consumers of pornography worldwide or
age between fifteen and twenty years. Pornography is typically, though
(01:47):
not entirely, a boy thing. According to doctor Marshall Valentine Jones,
an Australian researcher on the topic, boys typically encounter it
around age thirteen, though many have their first exposure in
primary school. Experts suggest that the average age of first
exposure is closer to ten or eleven. Girls generally encounter
it later, around age sixteen. Kylie. Here are a couple
(02:08):
of other alarming stats. Number One, by the age of fifteen,
ninety nine percent of boys are estimated to have seen
pornography explicit content. Fifty to seventy percent of fifteen year
old girls have. This is sobering. A twenty seventeen Australian
study revealed that among fifteen to twenty nine year olds,
every male respondent that's one hundred percent of fifteen to
(02:32):
twenty nine year olds in this study reported exposure to pornography.
More concerning the consumption patterns, thirteen nine percent viewed it daily,
another forty six percent viewed it weekly. Wow, which means
that eighty five percent of young men in this age
group are regular consumers of pornography, with only fifteen percent
(02:54):
abstaining from weekly use. Wow. So there's one more thing
that I need to say about this, and I struggle
to bring it up. But I was doing a parent
not a few years ago, and we were going to
be talking about this kind of content. A dad came
up to me ahead of time. He knew what we
had on the agenda, and he said, so this pornography conversation,
I don't get the big deal. It's just boops. And
(03:16):
I responded by saying, I'm not sure if you're familiar
with what intimate pornography is out there, but the pornography
that you're thinking of, the pornograph perhaps from when you
are a young man, it's changed. Here's a quote in
my book from Louise Perry, the author of the Case
Against the Sexual Revolution. She says pornography quote normalizes styles
(03:37):
of sex, which tend to be very aggressive and degrading,
particularly towards women. But it's worse than that. This content
is shaping sexual expectations and understandings at a critical formative
age before they have any sense of what is pleasurable.
I mean, you think about it, Kylie. If kids are
exposed to this content somewhere between nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
(04:00):
usually they're not going to have their first kiss until
they're what fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, maybe thirteen if they're early starters,
But on average, Marshall Valentine Jones, researcher in this area,
told me that most kids are seeing explicit content about
three to three and a half years before they have
their first kiss, So it's shaping their beliefs well before
they're engaged in the behaviors, which means that the way
(04:22):
they'll behave is different well.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And the challenging thing is that both males and females
are seeing this and it literally is creating the foundations
of what they think is a loving relationship. Because we
associate sex and sexual intimacy as part of a loving relationship.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, pornography changes that, and that's what we need to
talk about. What does it actually do. We could talk
a lot about the content. I don't think that's constructive
for our discussion today. Instead, we want to see with you
a handful of ways, a handful of things that you
need to be aware of so that you can talk
with your children because chances are they're almost certain to
(05:09):
see pornography.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I said at the beginning, the most important thing that
we can do is pre arm our kids. Yeah, start
having conversations. Have it. Literally, it's a natural part of
the relationship you have with your child. They come home
from school, they ask you a question because they've heard
something in the playground being talked about that they don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I still remember one of my sisters came home from
pony camp when my parents sent them off for that,
and she walked into mum, who was working with a customer.
At the time, mom and dad owned a furniture shop.
So my mom's trying to sell like a sofa or
a dining suite to a customer, and my little sister
asks her to explain to her what a certain sex
(05:51):
act is. Now, my sister may not have even known
that it was a sex act, but in front of
this stranger, my sister has said, hey, Mum, what's her
and then she's shared the sex act and Mum has
obviously gone bright red and said, I'll talk to you
about this later. And then look at the look with
the guy that's trying to buy the furniture and s
that I'm so sorry about that. She's just come home
from ponycamp. I wonder what they've been doing at night
when they've been supposed to be sleeping. So the way
(06:14):
that I say it is this talk early talk. Often.
I think that we want to have every difficult conversation
you can imagine with your children before they're too And
it's not because the children will understand it. They won't,
so that you can become comfortable with talking about difficult
things with your children from an early age. And like
you said, Kylie, when they walk in the door and
they've got a tough question, embrace it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, don't shy away from it. How amazing that your
kid wants to come home and talk to you, the
person they trust to the most, about difficult things, like,
don't shy away from it. Have those conversations, sit down
with them, talk about it. Yeah, they might be a
little bit uncomfortable, but if you can normalize that, then
they'll come to you and talk to you about anything.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Not talking about it isn't protective. I know that that's
a double negative, but you get where I'm going with that.
Not talking about it isn't protective. You need to talk
about it because that's where the protection goes.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We want to bubble wrap them up, right. We don't
want them to know that this stuff exists.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
But the reality is it does.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Number one, it does, But number two, they're having conversations.
They're part of conversations that are happening in the playground.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And would you rather day to day basis? Yeah, would
you rather their peers be the ones that are instructing them?
Or Google or the Internet or that pornographic website. Would
you rather that be their education educator or would you
prefer to be the educator yourself? I think that the
answer has to be us.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And I guess the only caveat warning that I would
give is you don't have to give them everything.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
If they come home and ask you where babies come from,
you might have a conversation about the female body.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You might not have to go.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
All the way all the way because they're only five
or six.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, yeah, don't turn on the fire hose because they're thirsty.
Just give me a couple Just give.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And ask them do they have any other questions? Once
you finish, will tell you where they're at, and you
can answer their questions without bombarding them with information that
they're not ready for.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Okay, Kylie. The second way that we can help our
children to have healthy and useful conversations with us about
explicit content is once the kids are old enough to
be online, and that might be four, or it might
be seven, It depends on every family and how they're
doing this. We need to consistently early and often remind
(08:35):
them that the internet is not always safe for children,
and by virtue of that, if they see anything that's
scary or makes them uncomfortable, that they really do need
to talk to us. They're not going to get in trouble,
but we need to know because sometimes the Internet is
not safe. Third, let's just admit, when you're young, you're
interested in this stuff. Our children shouldn't be punished for
(08:58):
being curious. Our children shouldn't lose privileges for seeing something explicit,
especially if it's unintentional, but even maybe if it is
intentional the first time, because it's normal that kids are
going to be curious about this. We want to normalize
curiosity while still not endorsing or encouraging the behavior. The
(09:20):
best way to do this, I think, is to say
to the kids, of course, this is interesting, but how
does it really make you feel? Because if the kids
are really in tune, not only will they be interested,
but like this mum's daughter who was exposed to something unintentionally,
she also cried out because it was icky and it
(09:42):
affected her. She felt like it was gross and there
was something not right about it. So we want to
be able to normalize the curiosity but also reflect on
the ickiness and talk about why that is the natural
desire that we have for intimacy with another person. That's exciting, right,
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
So I guess a beautiful flow on from that is
the acknowledgment that when our kids come and tell us
that they've seen something, discuss what they've seen and, in
the context of a healthy relationship, what that means.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, what that looks like? A child when you say
what what did you see is unlikely to say, well,
let me tell you all about it, Like they're going
to be reticent, but asking the question and gently prodding
for more information is going to help you to say, Okay,
well what does that mean and how did it make
you feel? And do you think that that's the kind
(10:34):
of thing that people in loving, healthy relationships do. What
messages is this sending to you about gender or about power,
or about what men want or about what women want,
or about what consent is? I mean, you can turn
this into a really really fascinating discussion, and depending on
the age of your child, you may continue the discussion
into ideas around what intimacy really should be like. You
(10:59):
can talk about mutual pleasure, you can talk about things
that women really really do want versus things that they don't,
and how pornography typically depicts things, as Louise Perry said,
that women are not on the whole excited about.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
And I think the last thing that's so important is
helping our kids to set boundaries to keep them safe,
whether it be physical boundaries of what they will and
won't accept in the way people interact with them on
an intimate level. Depending on age, obviously it's going to
vary and change, but also the boundaries around internet use
(11:40):
and how to safeguard themselves so that they don't come
across this content on a regular basis.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
So again at quick content warning. I'm not going to
go deep here, but in my book, I've written about
what it does to our sons, and this is why
the boundaries need to exist, and I think this is
something to talk to your children about sons and orbs.
I talked with Peggy Orenstein, she's the author of Boys
and Sex, best selling author, and she put it really bluntly.
She said this. She said, if you, as a parent,
(12:08):
are imagining seventies porn, or eighties porn, or even nineties porn,
you're not getting what they're seeing. Her research revealed that
boys routinely acknowledge viewing extreme content like rape, gangbangs, and violence.
But then she went on to say this pornography rewires
sexual behavior in ways that should alarm every parent. Boys
(12:28):
who view pornography become less likely to use condoms, more
likely to share explicit images without consent, more likely to
engage in risky behavior, more likely to engage in delinquent
behavior in substance use, more likely to pursue casual hook
cups on one night stands, more likely to express intentions
to pursue higher numbers of sexual partners. Another study showed
that females reported negative consequences from viewing explicit content, including
(12:50):
lowered body image, experiencing a part in the critical of
their body, increased pressure to perform act scene in pornographic films,
and less actual sex, while males reported being more critical
of their partner's body and also became less interested in
actual sex. Last thing, the pornography script changes beliefs about
what's quote unquote normal, and that shift's behavior. Anal sex
(13:13):
and choking are the two most obvious examples. These sex
practices are no longer fringe. According to Marie Krab's research,
there squarely in the mainstream. I want to re emphasize
the percentage of boys watching this is not trivial and
it's not.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Just you said one hundred percent between fifteen to twenty
nine year.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Olds in that one study. Ye.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, and then thirty nine percent of them acknowledge daily viewing.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And the people who watch it the most, especially the
violent kinds of explicit content, are much more likely to
endorse what's known as the rape myth. Okay, so this
is becoming desensitized to sexual violence and blaming victims for
their own assaults. The rape myth is basically you must
have been asking for it. It's a sickening cycle. It
needs to be broken. We hope that the things we've
(14:00):
shared with you today, as hard as they are to hear,
will help you to recognize the importance of having the
conversation with your kids, and hopefully we've given you some
useful tips to have useful discussions with them. It matters
so much. There are more resources about this at Marie
Crab's website, It's Time We Talked. You can also check
(14:21):
out the e Safety Commissioner's website e Safety dot gov
dot a U. In fact, if you just google how
to talk about pornography with my kids, you'll find resources
galore to help you fight. The New drug is another
great place to go. Melinda Tankard Reeste's work at Collective
Shout is also helpful. We'll link to all of them
in the show notes. Really, really hope that this has
(14:43):
been helpful. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
Roland from Bridge Media. For more information and resources about
keeping your kids safe and helping your family to be happy,
visit happyfamilies dot com dot AU.
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