Most sexual behavior in children and adolescents is a typical and healthy part of development. For example, children often explore their own bodies and the bodies of other children by looking or touching others’ genitals. Teens can masturbate in private or have sex with someone of a similar age.
However, the risks of being exposed to harmful content, the changes during puberty, the lack of sex education can make your kids have inappropriate sexual behavior. This article will show you what is inappropriate sexual behavior in teenagers and how to prevent it.
What are the problematic sexual behaviors?
There are 2 types: problematic/inappropriate sexual behaviors and inappropriate sexual behavior in teenagers which is more serious.
Problematic/Inappropriate sexual behavior in teenagers
- Your child is constantly touching his/her genitals in public
- Your child intentionally repeatedly shows his/her genitals, breasts, or butt to others
- Your child uses vulgar sexual language to comment on other people’s bodies or to criticize others
- Your child watch pornographic movies, games or websites
- Your child stalks someone who doesn’t seem interested
Which inappropriate sexual behavior in teenagers is more serious
- Your child caresses or touches another person’s genitals, breasts or buttocks without their consent
- Your child forces or threatens others to participate in sexual activities
- Your child makes sexual threats or makes unwanted sexual threats open to others
- Your child finds reasons to be alone with a younger child
- Your child watches pornography several times a day
- Your child shows young children sexual material
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The main cause of inappropriate sexual behavior in teenagers – frequent access to pornography
Pornography causes misperceptions
In addition to several reasons such as lack of sexual conversation and education with parents, or negative changes in the child’s adulthood, frequent exposure to pornography is seen as a huge impact on this behavior, here are a few reasons why:
Pornography leads to misperceptions about social reality, leading to a high rate of group sex and child pornography. In other words, Internet pornography draws viewers away from reality.
Some other misconceptions such as having sex is just entertainment by nature, men only care about sex and women are sexual objects or goods. These beliefs are deepened and strengthened by more and more porn watching, influencing a child’s perspective on what a healthy sexual relationship is in the future.
Once they have watched porn, they will be motivated to watch more, then they will find out that the time they spend is only valuable when they are sitting by the computer and watching black websites. No meeting friends, not playing sports, not joining clubs.
Pornography creates negative attitudes and behaviors towards women
The aggression and violence against women found in most popular pornography can teach your children (especially boys) that aggression towards women is socially tolerated and accepted to be hostile towards women.
A 2009 analysis of pornography and violence against women found a significant relationship between watching pornography and advocate attitudes toward violence against women. A 2001-2004 survey of middle and high schools found that 76% of people who commit some form of sexual harassment regularly watch pornography.
The above studies of sexual and violent content have shown that teenagers accept, learn from, and can mimic behaviors depicted in porn that are normative and engaging.
Pornography affects your child’s brain and cognitive development
Early access to pornography is closely related to the erosion of a child’s prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that contains executive functions such as morality, will and impulse control.
Meanwhile, when watching pornography, children increasingly choose to use more violent forms of pornography; This can be due to the desensitization of regular sex film consumption.
During adulthood, especially in adolescence, the prefrontal cortex is still underdeveloped during this period. This is why your child struggles to adjust to his or her emotions and impulses. Damage to the prefrontal cortex during adulthood is called a decrease in cerebral blood flow in the prefrontal cortex.
It is also a symptom of schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder and depressive disorder, causing your child to behave compulsively and make poor decisions such as forcing or threatening others to participate in sexual activities.
What can be done to prevent inappropriate sexual behavior in teenagers
The effects of pornography on the brains of children go far beyond their negative effects on the adult brain. Therefore, sex education for children should not only be given to schools and teachers, it is important that you actively participate and teach your children about healthy relationships, about love and sex.
Due to the vulnerable nature of children’s brains, it’s important to protect your child from pornography and have tools designed to do just that. Harmful content filtering tools are created to help you prevent the terrible damaging effects of pornographic content on your child’s brain, protecting them from accidental exposure to harmful content while surfing the internet or medium social media.
If a child or teen behaves like the above often and continues to do these things even if you ask them to stop, you should also seek professional advice.
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