by Gabriela Coca,Jocelyn Wikle, @JOCELYNWIKLE
- Pornography is killing social interaction and the craving for personal connection that all humans have.TWEET THIS
- One study found that only 57% of children reached out to someone after exposure to pornography, leaving many youth to grapple with the experience alone.TWEET THIS
- Children’s brains are not equipped to process the adult experiences depicted in pornography.TWEET THIS
Most of us probably have people in our lives who struggle with an addiction of some kind, whether it be to smoking, using drugs, gambling, or other vices. An addiction develops when changes in the brain and body cause a person to “feel compelled to continue using a substance or partaking in an activity, even when doing so may cause harm.” These substances or behaviors activate motivation and reward regions in the brain, resulting in an altered dopamine system. The thing about addiction is that oftentimes, the younger a person is when they are first exposed, the higher their risk for developing a serious addiction that can dominate minds and bodies, numbing them to the environment around them. This reality creates a strong motivation for parents, grandparents, schools, and lawmakers to focus on protecting children by preventing or delaying exposure to harmful substances and behaviors until their brains are more fully formed and their risk for developing dependencies is lessened.
One addiction that is becoming more normalized is viewing pornography, defined as “sexually explicit videos, images, or writing with the intent to cause sexual arousal in its viewers.” Creating pornography is a huge billion-dollar industry. This is troubling because pornography is increasingly impacting children and youth in negative ways. With technology and the internet as a crucial and necessary part of life, pornography has never been more easily accessible to children: 93% of boys and 63% of girls report being exposed to internet pornography before the age of 18, with the average age of first exposure being 12 years old. Today’s children are growing up in a sexualized cultural environment. As adolescents mature, it is natural that they search for information that they do not know. This includes searching for information about dating and sexual relationships, which may often lead to pornography. Thus, it is important to understand the ramifications when exposure to pornography starts at a young age.
Consequences Among Youth
Pornography proves to be especially detrimental to children and adolescents. According to many researchers, early exposure to pornography is connected to negative developmental outcomes, including a greater acceptance of sexual harassment, sexual activity at an early age,acceptance of negative attitudes to women, unrealistic expectations, skewed attitudes of gender roles, greater levels of body dissatisfaction, rape myths (responsibility for sexual assault to a female victim), and sexual aggression. Children’s brains are not equipped to process the adult experiences depicted. Early exposure to pornography also increases the likelihood that depression and relationship problems develop.
Sexual risk taking is another common problem associated with being exposed to pornography at an early age. This includes more sexual partners and not using birth control. As Gustavo Mesch found in a 2009 study: adolescents who use pornography “appear less socially integrated and more socially marginal. They express less commitment to their families, fewer pro-social attitudes, and less attachment to school…” This could be the case simply because youth are so enveloped in what they are viewing and how they feel about it that they lose touch with their environment and the people around them.
Another key issue is that an individual’s first exposure [and general exposure] to pornography may lead to mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, particularly among adolescents, and that the earlier a child was exposed, the more mental health problems they faced later in life. Researchers also concluded that the earlier one is exposed to pornography, the more likely they are to have problems in their future sexual and romantic relationships. This may be because pornography tends to be a solo activity, secluding one from people, thus affecting how one interacts with those around them. In a study published in the Child Abuse Review in 2009, Michael Flood also found that pornography exposure can lead to emotional disturbance that may affect the way they interact with others and view sexuality in general. According to Mesch, adolescents who view pornography “appear less socially integrated and more socially marginal. They express less commitment to their families, fewer pro-social attitudes, and less attachment to school.” In a study in the Journal of Pediatric Health Care, Gail Hornor reported that “Children less than 7 or 8 years of age have difficulty differentiating between what is happening on screen and what is happening in real life.” This can lead to problematic sexualized behaviors (or PBS). PBS has been linked to negative behaviors such as negative impulse problems, which can further affect the ability to interact with others. Not only that, but PBS can greatly affect the way one perceives their life, making it much more difficult for someone to perceive what is real and not real. Pornography is killing social interaction and the craving for personal connection that all humans have. It puts a false reality into the minds of those who view it and makes them perceive life in a darker and more selfish way.
Pornography use among youth also has been found to affect academic performance and mental health in adulthood. As one 2021 study found, this could be because
sexual stimuli trigger sexual arousal and subsequently also short-term needs of (sexual) gratification, thus discouraging engagement in activities with long-term goals, such as studying. These theories thus suggest that the arousal that comes from using pornographic internet content may impede academically oriented activities and may, consequently, impair academic performance.
Read more for “Solutions”: https://ifstudies.org/blog/what-happens-when-children-are-exposed-to-pornography
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