Early exposure to pornography can cause detrimental effects: how pornography affects your child’s brain or how pornography distorts your child views about their body are some of the negative effects of porn on teens. There is another serious issue that you, smart parents, need to take it seriously: pornography can make children disrespect women.
The article below will help you figure it out. Research has shown that early exposure to sexual content is one of the potential factors that seem to contribute to inappropriate attitudes and harmful sexual behavior towards women and girls.
Why pornography can make children disrespect women?
Pornography violence regards women as sexual tools
Research has found evidence of a close relationship between kid watching porn and viewing women as a sexual tool. Since then, regarding women as a sexual tool is correlated with negative attitudes towards women; namely, the violence attitude towards women.
Pornography has been shown to cause men to lose their sensitivity and empathy for the woman, and instead see women as sexual instruments engaged in a “one-way interactive transaction”.This is evident in porn sites where the male actors show a lack of empathy towards women to the point where sexual abuse in these films is completely normal.
According to research, this loss of sensitivity occurs as a result of watching porn several times. Many boys who secretly watch pornography which indicates violence towards women will be shocked the first time they watch, but they will become completely normal after much exposure to porn.
Strong and inhibitory sex scenes with (still amused) female actors can reassure your child that violence and coercion in movies are perfectly acceptable, not women abuse. In short, the almost constant message delivered from pornography is, whatever a man can do with a woman, she wants it and likes it. This message is meant to distract your child from the woman on the screen: everything that happens is what she wants.
Shaping unrealistic sexual expectations of women.
The use of pornography is related to ‘sexual scenarios’: imitation and execution of new sexual acts. In other words, it is associated with an increase in your son’s expectations for sexual intercourse, in reality, most men want their actual sex to be the same as pornography (this is especially true of teenagers), from which there are unrealistic expectations of what women want.
A tendency to sexual violence against women
Evidence in the study also suggests that the effects of early exposure to sexual content may be associated with attitudes in favor of violence against women.
Attitudes supporting violence (ASV) is a strong indicator of future violence against women, and this indicator should not be underestimated. The literature reviewed shows a significant relationship between viewing pornography and an increase in attitudes toward violence against women.
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A major study on this topic is the 2010 meta-analysis by Hald, Malamuth and Yuen. The results showed a significant correlation between watching pornography and supportive attitudes toward violence against women.
Relationships for sexually violent pornography are significantly higher than for non-violent pornography, but whether violence or nonviolence or not, they both contribute to aggressive attitudes and behaviors towards women (violent pornography has a more significant effect).
Watch pornography and reduce your child likelihood of interfering with sexual violence
In addition to having harmful behaviors towards women, early exposure of pornography can also indirectly affect kids’ willingness to intervene in sexual violence. This has been argued by Foubert and Bridges (2016), who studied the correlation between intervention and non-intervention.
Foubert and Bridges found that for male, the use of violent/ degrading pornography was significantly associated with a reduced willingness to intervene in an act of sexual violence, making them (maybe your child) more comfortable for watching other men committing violent behaviors towards women.
Either way, it is clear that these two traits are related and they can adversely affect your child’s perception.
Conclusion
As shown in the analysis above, you can see significant evidence of a connection between viewing pornography and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviors against women. While the nature and severity of this connection differ from study to study and need more research, it is clear that a negative relationship does exist.
The problem is getting worse as kids have to stay at home frequently due to COVID-19 and have to depend more on using the Internet, heightening the risks of unwanted early exposure to sexual content.
As a parent, you need to acknowledge that the current context has never made it easier for Internet users to watch porn so easily. The use of smartphones and high-speed Internet has facilitated quick and easy access to porn. Much of the pornography shows (varying degrees of severity) sexual violence and disrespectful attitudes and violence towards women.
To better protect your children, you need to understand how pornography can make children disrespect women and frequently, openly talking with them about that. Porn is inherently addictive, which means that just a few times watching can make your child “indulge” in pornography.
To ensure your child’s online environment is safe and healthier, many parents have installed one of the best free parental control software – an online content filtering tool 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
This free porn blocker extension 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.
Also, you should take advantage of built-in tools in browsers to set up parental controls on your child’s device to filter out harmful content, limit the use of the device, or some other features for children such as no in-app purchases. You may need some online safety tips for kids below:
- How to set up parental controls on Macbook
- How to block porn sites on Google Chrome
- How to block porn sites on Safari
- Set up parental controls for Microsoft Edge
- Set up parental controls for Youtube
Reference: The relationship between pornography use and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours
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