Many parents have a serious misconception that children enter puberty, the age when there are obvious physiological and psychological changes that can be addicted to pornography. This is absolutely not true. It is entirely possible that a pre-puberty child can become addicted to pornography when a 7-year-old recently peeked at the porn sites while studying online.
So, parents need to make relentless efforts now to prevent any harmful germs from reaching their children, in the worst case, What to do if your kid is watching porn? This article will suggest you the most delicate solution.
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What to do if your kid is watching porn?
Understand why your kid is watching porn
Curious
Children are naturally curious so they are forced to learn more about anything they don’t understand. And a sudden new perception of porn will spark new curiosity about it. Many young children – even if they are annoyed or hurt by pornography they see for the first time – will feel the urge to seek for pornography again.
Why is there such a situation? Why can Internet pornography affect a child who has not even reached puberty – a child who has not yet experienced sexual attraction and sexual impulse?
The reasons are primarily biological and developmental and are not at all reflective of the child’s moral character. Paradoxically, porn is a powerful agent because it taps into perfectly normal, healthy motivations in children (or adolescents) at a very vulnerable stage of development.
Sexual impulses caused by pornography
Exposure to pornography, even for a very short period, can “wake up” a child’s sexual impulses early. After feeling the intoxicating sensations of their sex drive, your child may well want to repeat the experience, even though they don’t understand what’s going on.
The addictive nature of pornography
For both exposed children and adolescents, pornography quickly becomes irresistible for three reasons:
Extremely high release of craving neurochemicals in the brain.
Dopamine – the main neurochemical – is normally released in the body during sex or drug use or simply when eating sweets.
However, pornography creates a dopamine tsunami that acts on the brain’s “reward centers,” making it like a brain command to continue watching porn again.
The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed
The prefrontal cortex is the “mental center” of the brain responsible for controlling impulses and desires.
This department is responsible for reasoning, making decisions, and assessing the consequences of actions – not developing to full capacity until young adults reach their twenties.
In contrast, the emotional center of the brain – where desires, impulses and sexual desires arise – is quite active in children and young adults. For children and adolescents, that means their “Do it because it feels good” impulse is much stronger than the alert impulse, “I should pause and think if this is really a good thing.” opinion or not”.
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Mistakenly that pornography relieves them of feeling stressed, bored, or emotionally painful
On their own, without timely warning and intervention, children will not be fully aware of the risks of pornography and are at high risk of developing pornography addiction (which can occur after a few weeks).
A child can immediately stop seeing pornography by turning the phone upside down, closing the computer, or clicking the X on the screen, but those images pop up in their memory over and over again to test their resolve. And pornography can have significant haunting and lasting power.
Many people feel drawn to porn when they feel bored, stressed, lonely, or sad. We found this to be true for children as well.
Teach your child how to react immediately after watching pornography
Some tips for when your child sees pornography:
- Close your eyes
- Always tell a trusted adult
- Distract yourself (when the image comes back to mind)
- Command your thinking brain to be the boss (i.e. the “mind center” of the brain – the prefrontal cortex)
Parents can make a big difference to their child’s anti-pornography success by training their children to distract themselves.
Instead of forcing your child not to think about it, you have to give him something else to think about. The best tool for distraction is to encourage your child to think of a happy memory from the past.
Use online content filtering tools
To ensure your child’s online environment is safe and healthier, you should consider using an additional online content filtering tool – 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
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.
You can also take advantage of available tools 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 about how to block porn on pc 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
Frequently talk to your child
Don’t let your child wonder about gender. Giving them age-appropriate sex education and books they can refer to and prompting them to come to you rather than going online to find out more on their own.
You should continue to discuss porn, and gender in general, with your child so that you can deal with any new questions and situations that arise. You should make it clear to your child how serious the effects of pornography can be on them.
When your kids first access the Internet, that’s the age you should start warning them about pornography. Every child deserves to be warned about the dangers of pornography and have the skills to refuse it.
Do not allow your child to use an Internet-connected phone until they are at least 11 years old and when you believe they can handle the responsibility.
Common times that put children at risk of viewing pornography are at night, after school, and during school holidays. Don’t let your child keep the phone or computer in the room overnight. And be on the lookout for unusual nighttime behaviors, such as if you see your child using the family computer at 1 a.m., saying they can’t sleep.
You should also teach children scenarios that will help them confidently decline a friend’s invitation to watch porn. For example, teach them to say something like, “I don’t want to see that, it’s not cool.”
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