It is true that most children, especially during puberty, are often quite curious about gender and may look for porn.
Ways pornography harms children bring about the same effects as using drugs or addictive substances. Likewise, the harmful effects of watching porn are similar to that of addictive substances and you can easily guess that those affects badly teenage development.
This article will help you better understand 6 reasons why pornography is harmful to children.
6 reasons why pornography is harmful to children
Wrong perception about safe sex
Here are some examples:
- Girls are more likely to accept rape as a must or a favored thing, leading to your child having wrong rape myths and desires for rape later.
- Uncertainty about aspects of sex, such as what is safe sex. The formation of sexual beliefs and values is negatively impacted when your child becomes more willing to have a permissive attitude toward having unsafe sex.
- Having sex with multiple sex partners, anal sex, group sex, and using stimulants during sexual intercourse.
Risky behaviors – sexting
Sexting is sending, receiving, or forwarding pornographic content or pornographic messages via text message or email.
One huge mistake: many parents assume that sex is harmless because, in reality, no sex happens.
However, sexting is a form of sexual intercourse – sending, receiving, and transmitting nudity photos, messages, videos, pornography such as nudity, sexual behavior, or sexual emojis.
Unfortunately, sexting increases significantly when children and adolescents are often at home due to social distancing. Boring feelings motivate them to engage in more “interesting” behaviors, and many children make misunderstood when suggesting that sexting is one of those “fun” behaviors.
So, what are the risks of sexting?
- Blackmail: There have been many cases where photo recipients threatened to embarrass the sender. To preserve their reputation, many children, after being threatened, will try to give the attacker the requested money.
They are too ashamed to have to call for help and decide to take care of themselves.
When things get out of control, many children will suffer negative mental health, leading to suicide or participating in illegal acts to make money.
- Online bullying: People will attack and judge your child just by looking at the pictures. These images can even ruin your child’s online reputation. Once it is shared on the Internet, it will exist there forever!
Harmful to adolescent brains
A survey of 813 US teenagers and young adults (13–25) found that 26% of teens 13–17 years of age actively search for pornography weekly or more frequently. Research has proven that children are more susceptible to addiction than adults.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany, found that higher use of pornography reduces the brain’s ability to respond to conventional pornography.
This is probably what explains why more children tend to turn to more erotic, violent, and unique forms (to gain the same stimulus they got in the first time they watched porn).
These shields children from building up insensitivity to women and a distorted view of what constitutes a healthy sexual relationship.
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Emotional relationship with parents
A national survey of teens 9–17 years old reported that teens who watched porn online were more likely to report a poorer relationship with their parents than those teenagers who watch less pornography or not at all.
When children are at an age prone to making risky decisions or having dangerous behaviors (trying drugs/addictive substances, sexting, etc.) or here is watching pornography, although they might appear they are independent but they need you besides to guide and instruct them.
See women as a sexual tool
One of the worst harmful impacts of pornography on children. There is a strong relationship between children viewing pornography and seeing women as a sexual tool. This correlates with negative attitudes or violence towards women.
Pornography has been shown to cause children (especially boys) to lose sensitivity and empathy for the woman as it is so popular in porn that actors exhibit no empathy for women and that sexual abuse in these movies is completely normal.
Loneliness
Survey data of 1,247 participants seeking help using porn shows that children who watch porn are more likely to feel lonely and those who are experiencing loneliness are more likely to watch pornography.
And this circle goes on and on.
In other words, when anything is done secretly, your child will tend to hide it and feel ashamed of himself. The harmful effects of porn make your children dishonest and more susceptible to anxious personality disorders.
How to protect kids from porn?
The period of puberty is when your child has notable psychological and physiological changes, so it is necessary to have regular discussions with your child on issues related to gender.
When your child is in puberty, he or she is greatly influenced by the impact around them – the images of the actors in porn movies can completely mislead them that this is the body they must have had if they wanted a boyfriend in the future, leading to fasting, depression, anxiety disorders.
Due to the vulnerable nature of children’s brains, it’s really important to proactively protect your child from pornography.
CyberPurify Kids, which has seen 11,000 downloads after just 7 months, is considered by many parents as one of the best free parental control software to hide 15 types of harmful content on the Internet, including:
- Pornography
- Horrifying content like gore, accidents, ghosts, violence, murder, terrorism, etc
- Content about stimulants, addictive substances such as alcohol, beer, marijuana, drugs, etc
- Content with aggressive elements, hurting others like Hate speech
These free tools to block porn on the Internet can help to minimize your child’s access to harmful content, ensuring a healthy online environment for your child but at the same time, not invading their privacy rights.
Reference: Pornography & Public Health by National Center on Sexual Exploitation
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