Many experts view pornography as a public health crisis, especially because of the way it affects children and young adults. According to the UK Children’s Commissioner’s Office, “Basically… porn is everywhere.”
Regardless of how you learned your child was watching porn – whether it was by chance seeing his or her browsing history, or catching him watching porn, you are likely to have some negative reactions – This is understandable, but don’t let this negative emotion affect you and your future relationship with your child.
In this article, we will guide you through 6 proven tactics for when your child sees porn online.
Pornography is everywhere
Research by the UK Children’s Commissioner’s Office on the impact of pornography on children has drawn several conclusions such as:
- A significant and growing number of children and young adults are exposed to pornography.
- Exposure to and access to pornography is more likely to occur online, and exposure increases with age.
- Boys are more likely to be exposed to porn online and look for them.
- Watching porn affects what children believe about sex and intimacy, and that affects their behavior.
Parents should look at the report and gather as much information from porn as possible.
One parent said that when she noticed her 8-year-old son behaving strangely after returning home from school, she discovered that one of the older boys at the school told him to search for “sex” on the internet. Internet. The boy followed suit and watched these erotic images, even a violent pornographic video.
Another story when a father said he wasn’t too bothered until he came across his 7-year-old son searching for phrases he didn’t know his son knew. When he asked him how he learned to look for those words, the boy said that someone showed it to him while on the school bus. Everyone laughed and even though it disgusted the boy, he was curious to see (and know) more.
The two examples above show that your child is at a very high risk of getting access to pornography movies without your knowledge: such as stumbling across pop-up ads, peer pressures, hearing other people talk about them, etc. So, to be better prepared to one day when my kid watched porn, or you learn or detect your child’s exposure to pornography, you need to equip yourself with a few skills.
6 proven tactics for when your child sees porn online
The age of exposure to pornography is getting younger, with the average age being around 10 years old. There have been cases where 7 and 8-year-olds have been exposed to porn online. And not every case is because your child is intentionally searching for porn, maybe your child accidentally saw or accidentally clicked on an ad. Whatever the reason, parents need to keep these 6 proven tactics in mind:
Keep calm
Once discovered, your child may feel embarrassed, upset, or scared. This is something every child will feel, but how you react can make a big difference. Instead of making your child feel like they’ve done something wrong or done something seriously bad, make sure you approach them calmly. This will help them feel more comfortable opening up and listening.
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Being upset will make your child worry that they will be yelled at. Your child’s fear will close the gap between you and him, and worse, he won’t share sensitive things with you later.
So instead of panicking, which has so far failed to solve the problem, stay calm and thank your child for being brave enough to let you know and reassure her that you will be with her/him to handle this.
Seriously listen
If your child accidentally comes across adult content, ask them to tell you about how they found it on their device. This will help you know how to improve security measures.
Find out where your child has seen porn, who (if any) has shown your child porn if their friends have talked about it, and how your child feels when he or she sees porn. Remember, the goal is to try to understand your child, not to reprimand them.
Assure your child that he or she will not be scolded
Don’t blame your child. This will damage your relationship with your child, reducing the likelihood that your child will come to you about problems in the future. Don’t take your child’s devices right away as they will feel punished. Stay calm and let your child know they won’t be in trouble.
Remember, your kids can get annoyed when they see adult content when they’re just curious. They may even be hurt by pornographic images that are more obvious than you can imagine. Parents need to be supportive and understanding, admitting how upset they feel when they see these things.
Once you and your child are calm and can talk through it, it’s time to have a conversation about porn. You don’t have to have this conversation right away after discovering that your child has viewed pornography, but instead harmoniously integrate it into subsequent conversations.
Talk about your children feelings
Find out if this makes your child feel positive, negative, safe, scared, annoyed, curious, or something else? All of these feelings are normal and children should know such feelings are fine. Most children will feel a mixture of curiosity and disgust.
You can also use this as an opportunity to teach your child about true intimacy: that a respectful relationship includes sex when both partners agree in advance to what’s going on and how they feel satisfied with that. Besides, emphasize to your child that what he sees in porn movies is not real.
Your child is at an age more susceptible to what he sees and exposes to the outside world because neurons reflected in the brain are developing. These neurons play an important role in the way your child learns. Your child learns for the most part by mimicking, with reflective neurons involved in observing what others do and imitating those behaviors.
Therefore, children are more susceptible to pornography than adults when it comes to convincing your child that he is really experiencing what he is seeing.
Explain why how porn harms children
After listening to your child’s feelings, you can also share with your child what is appropriate and inappropriate for your child to see, how pornography harms your child and teaching your child the negative effects of pornography such as:
- Watching pornography normalizes sexual harm: Pornographic content normalizes sexual harm by portraying a lack of affection between partners, unprotected sex, and, in some cases, violence and rape.
- Pornography makes your child aggressive towards women: Aggression and violence against women found in most popular pornography can teach your children (especially boys) that aggression towards women is socially acceptable and accepted as hostile towards women.
- Negative body image perceptions: Many adolescents in qualitative research believe that pornography actually has a negative impact on how they perceive their bodies. For boys, this mostly revolves around penis size, although some also report feeling worried about not being strong enough and muscular enough to attract girls.
Meanwhile, girls worry about not having big breasts and big buttocks to be attractive in the eyes of their boyfriends.
Use content filtering software
Porn is inherently addictive, so with just a few viewings, your child could very well be “infatuated” with pornography. Therefore, you should proactively protect your children by using content filtering tools to minimize these billions of harmful content reaching your children, protecting the inherent healthy online environment for children. It will filter:
- Pornography
- Horror content like gore, accident, ghost, 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
The special thing is that this extension is completely free and you can easily download them as a browser add-on.
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