Today, a key research warns that ministers must prohibit online porn from corrupting the minds of young people.
Children as young as nine are exposed to graphic adult content on the Internet, according to a poll of 1,000 young people.
By ‘normalizing’ sexual violence, according to Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, pornographic material has a disastrous effect on real-life adolescent relationships.
Four in ten individuals between the ages of 16 and 21 believe that girls ‘like’ aggressive sex, such as strangling and slapping.
A poll of 1,000 young people revealed that children as young as nine are exposed to graphic adult material online (file image)
By ‘normalizing’ sexual violence, according to Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, pornographic material has a disastrous effect on real-life adolescent relationships.
And nearly half of the respondents claimed to having personally experienced a demeaning sex act, with frequent porn viewers being the most likely to have done so.
The survey finds that children are “frequently exposed” to violent pornography, the majority of which targets women.
And nearly half of 13-year-olds having viewed porn by age nine, up from one in ten by age nine.
The research, according to Dame Rachel, demonstrates the “urgent” need for the Government’s Online Safety Bill, which will require age verification on platforms hosting pornographic content.
She cautioned, however, that age verification was not a panacea and that teachers and parents played a crucial part in educating and helping children to have “healthy, safe, and consenting relationships.”
According to the Children’s Commissioner, adult periodicals that parents may have read in their childhood are “quaint” in comparison to the online pornography of today.
She noted that ‘present-day representations of debasement, sexual compulsion, aggressiveness, and exploitation are prevalent and disproportionately directed at adolescent girls’
Dame Rachel stated, “I will never forget the girl who told me about her 12-year-old boyfriend strangling her after their first kiss.” He had seen it in pornographic media and deemed it acceptable.’
Twitter was the site where the biggest proportion of young people accessed sexual content (41%), as opposed to adult websites.
Despite allowing users as young as 13 to create accounts, it is one of the few social media companies that still permits sensitive adult content.
Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents had witnessed sexual violence in pornography by the age of 18, while more than a third actively sought it out.
According to the research, it was “perhaps most concerning” that young people were discussing “the influence of pornography in informing real-life sexual aggression and coercion.”
It noted, “Young age of first exposure and frequent consumption of pornography were predictors of actively seeking out violent content for sexual satisfaction.”
Tomorrow, the Online Safety Bill will have its second reading in the House of Lords, giving peers their first opportunity to debate it.
Lord Bethell of Romford is proposing an amendment that would require pornographic websites to implement age verification measures within six months of the bill’s enactment.
Supported by fourteen organizations, including the NSPCC and Barnardo’s, he warns that the Bill’s definition of age verification is inadequate and leaves too much to eventual codes of practice and guidance.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children stated that the findings of the survey demonstrated that Britain “cannot underestimate the sheer number of children of all ages who are daily exposed to online pornography.”
Richard Collard, associate head of child safety online policy for the charity, stated, “The negative and long-lasting impact this can have on children and their views on sex and healthy relationships is deeply concerning, and it is essential that the Government implements strong measures in the Online Safety Bill to protect them from viewing such content.”
»Ministers are instructed to protect children from online sexual content«