Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure
I had just returned home from work and was putting away something in my closet when my sixth-grade daughter walked in and asked, “Dad, what does the word ‘prostitute’ mean? I know it has something to do with sex, but what does it mean?” Through the conversation, I discovered that she had heard the word on her elementary school playground. In that moment, I realized my response could either build a protective barrier against pornography or create curiosity that might lead toward it.
There is no quick fix that ensures your child will not purposely consume pornography, but a parent can do specific things that will reduce this risk. It is nearly impossible for a parent to prevent all accidental exposure to pornography. Still, again, a parent can do specific things that will reduce the volume of accidental exposures and their impact.
The Growing Problem of Children Exposed to Pornography
Rates of exposure, purposeful or accidental, are overwhelming. 53% of eleven-to sixteen-year-olds report seeing online pornography at least once. Of this sample, 94% report viewing online pornography before age fourteen.1 According to other research, these numbers are likely very conservative, with pornography consumption growing among minors of all genders.
With this level of prevalence, all children are at a high risk. Many past generations have been exposed to pornography as minors and led healthy lives. Some may even argue that pornography is part of the normal sexual development of young people. So, should we care or even bother?
Why Parental Intervention Matters – Risks and Realities
There are three specific reasons we should care and bother to intervene.
01
Sexual content is used to groom children
During interactions with a victim, 98% of online groomers introduce sexual content into the conversation within the first day. 69% introduce sexual content within the first 30 minutes of an initial interaction.2 Reducing exposure to pornography is part of reducing the risk of children encountering online predators.
02
The nature of today’s pornographic content is video-based and often violent.3
This exposure introduces children to unrealistic and harmful portrayals of sexual activity.
03
The consumption of pornography can become compulsive
Due to brain development, minors are more susceptible to the development of addictive or compulsive behaviors when exposed to a stimulus. Early exposure to pornography could create unwanted compulsions that are hard for the child to remove even in adulthood.
The Role of Technology – Reducing Accidental Exposure
There are great technologies that parents can use in their homes. However, parents must realize that their house is not the only place their children will have access. Children who want to access pornography are very resourceful and usually find a way. It could be through school resources, a friend’s device, bypassing parental controls, using a neighbor’s internet connection, and the list can go on and on.
While technology can reduce accidental exposure to explicit content, it's a limited defense against deliberate seeking. In fact, excessive reliance on technological barriers may actually undermine efforts to reduce the risk.
Overreliance on technology often leads to extensive technology restrictions. This is often the best approach for our younger children, but it can backfire as children grow. When a child, particularly an older teen, feels overly restricted, they often resort to deception to bypass restrictions. When they bypass a restriction, they shut down communication and turn to secrecy. Secrecy is where purposeful pornography consumption thrives and builds deep roots.
Parents should view technology as one tool in their overall tool belt, not as a fix-all. Like any tool, you use it for a specific job, but not every job. Purposeful consumption must be addressed through other methods and tools.
Combatting Purposeful Pornography Consumption – Effective Strategies
Pornography use among children flourishes in environments of dishonesty, embarrassment, and hidden behaviors. Understanding this makes it clearer how to intervene. Just know that reducing this risk requires deliberate, steady work that can be challenging. The foundation of success is keeping communication channels open.
Maintaining Open Communication With Your Child
Maintaining open communication with a child is a monumental task for any parent, even under ideal circumstances. Children go through regular and natural developmental stages to gradually assert their independence. It becomes common for teens to shut down or significantly limit dialogue with parents. Add to this the deception, shame, and secrecy, plus the awkwardness of talking about anything of a sexual nature, and you have a recipe for silence. And this recipe does not even account for the baggage we as parents carry into the relationship.
With all this against us, we may wonder if we will ever have a meaningful talk with our children again. So, how do we overcome these seemingly insurmountable odds to maintain open communication? We start early, reduce our tendency to inflict shame, and create safe spaces.
It was previously mentioned that children undergo stages of asserting their independence. Children also go through regular and natural developmental stages where their parent(s) are their entire world—their superheroes. And fortunately, this stage coincides with their early ability to rationalize. The sweet spot is usually between the ages of 6 and 10. Parents can use this stage to set curiosity, listening, and respect patterns when communicating with their children—reaping big rewards later as children mature.
Another crucial step is to stop shaming our children. This is often the most difficult change because our childhood experiences shape how we parent. If we experienced shame growing up, we are likely to use it with our kids. While shame is a topic that deserves extensive exploration, the most important thing to recognize is how easily we slip into shaming our children during correction or discipline. Those are the moments when shame typically emerges.
We must rethink how we talk to our children when disciplining and correcting them. Please don’t misunderstand; discipline and correction are critical to a child's healthy development, but how we discipline and correct can be damaging and counterproductive to our goals. Why is this so critical for this topic? When children see pornography, whether on accident or purpose, they already feel uncomfortable and likely have a sense of shame. If we respond to their disclosure with additional shame, it may be the last time they disclose, effectively putting them in a downward shame spiral that is the breeding ground for additional pornography consumption.
The third step to open communication is to set safe spaces. Safe spaces are places our children associate with positive, essential discussions. These spaces imprint in the child’s brain and can create a sense of safety that allows them to open up. They can be anywhere—a specific room, in a car, at a park. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they associate that place as a spot where they talk with their parent(s) about important things. It is helpful if a parent consciously and proactively picks spots for open dialogue. This sets a pattern that is familiar and safe for the child.
Following these three communication steps will help us overcome the seemingly insurmountable odds of maintaining open communication with our children. It also sets the parent up to create a plan with the child for what they will do when, not if, they are exposed to pornography.
Address Early Childhood Trauma to Prevent Pornography Consumption
Another key to reducing the risk of purposeful consumption is to help your child process early childhood traumatic experiences. We all have them. These experiences impact some more than others, and sometimes, the impacts can become debilitating.
Think of traumatic impacts as the result of an experience where we did not feel safe. When we have a traumatic experience, and it is followed by additional insecurity or dismissive responses, the experiences can leave an imprint in the survival systems of our brains, leading to trauma symptoms. Anytime we are in an environment that reminds us of the original traumatic experience, our physical senses instantaneously alert our biological survival systems, and those survival systems activate our stress responses in the brain and body. This is called a trigger.
If we have too many triggers and, thus, an abnormal amount of stress responses, our brain and body become maladaptive and start looking for a coping tool to create a sense of safety. This is often the birthplace of compulsive and addictive behaviors. We use these compulsive or addictive behaviors to calm the stress response. Our brain and body begin to crave these behaviors, and pornography can be one of these.
Because of the neurochemical release that accompanies pornography consumption, our brain may associate our triggers with a craving for that consumption, and, as a result, the purposeful pursuit of pornography begins.
So, what does a child need? The child requires a parent who will honestly identify traumatic experiences and help them healthily process those experiences. This is very hard for a parent to do because the traumatic experience is often associated with a sense of failure as a parent. The parent(s) tell themselves, “I did not protect them.”; “It is my fault this happened,” or the worst one of all, “I caused the trauma.” When a parent has this dialogue going through their head, dismissing or ignoring the hard work needed to help a child process their experiences is easy.
So, what is my child’s early childhood trauma, and how do I recognize it? The answer to this question can be as different as the child it applies to. A parent must become an astute observer. They watch moments when their children show insecurity or act out. Observing these moments, they look for patterns and connect the dots across these behaviors. Once they identify the patterns, the parent can help the child process traumatic experiences better.
Not all traumatic experiences are created equal. Some experiences are so consistently traumatic that a parent does not need to guess why their child struggles. The big three that almost always produce a significant trauma response are physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. These are closely followed by several other significant traumatic experiences, such as the death of a loved one, divorce, bullying, and emotional abuse. These significant traumatic experiences often require professional help. As parent(s), we should be quick to engage professionals when our children go through these types of experiences.
When we identify our children’s traumatic experiences and help them process these experiences (often with the help of professionals), we reduce the likelihood that our children will develop long-term triggers and maladaptive responses, which, in turn, reduces the possibility that they will use pornography as a coping tool.
Normalizing a Healthy Approach to Sex
Nothing says awkward more for a child or a parent than discussing sex. But we must embrace the uncomfortable and do it anyway. Our sexual expressions are essential to us as humans. They are beautiful and healthy when approached with the respect that they deserve. But, as with most things wonderful, they can also be abused and put us in harm’s way. Because of this risk of harm, parents often choose not to breach the topic of sex with their children, or if they do, discuss sex primarily using negative language.
Either of these approaches, silence or using negative language, tends to create sexual shame. It tells the child that this is not a safe topic. It is taboo. This leads children to quench their curiosity through internet searches, discussions with friends, or observation of popular media. Each of those alternative methods is fraught with danger and misinformation.
For this reason, it is critical that the parent(s) open dialogue about sex and sexuality in age-appropriate ways. Many resources guide parents on what to discuss at each stage of a child’s development. And it should start when they are a toddler. For example, a perfect discussion with a toddler is about privacy and boundaries. You can also talk with a toddler about healthy expressions, such as cuddling with a safe adult or giving hugs when they want. This age-appropriate dialogue progresses as the child grows and, as a result, normalizes a healthy approach to sex and sexuality.
There may be some awkwardness even in a family with healthy dialogue. Still, when a child hits a critical point, such as an accidental exposure to pornography or even a purposeful one, the openness will significantly increase the likelihood the child will discuss it and process the exposure with their parent(s), thus giving the parent(s) the opportunity to reinforce a positive and healthy view of sex.
A Reason to Hope – Empowering Parents Against Pornography Risks
These risk reducers, open communication, addressing traumatic experiences, and normalizing sexual conversations are critical for parents. Otherwise, you leave things up to chance, and the odds are not in your favor. But these keys also need a word of caution. You can do everything by the book and still have a child choose to pursue pornography purposely. This is why they are called risk reducers and not risk eliminators. Regardless, a parent should have hope that their plans and efforts will make a difference. As an engaged parent, you influence your child's choices more than any other person.
Pornography is rampant. Our kids will likely be exposed. Empowered parents willing to educate themselves, invest the time and energy, and approach the risk with commitment can make a difference for their children. They can reduce the risk that pornography will become a long-lasting, detrimental challenge.
About the Author
Chris Yadon, MPA
Managing Director
As Saprea’s first employee and Executive Director, Chris Yadon collaborated closely with the organization’s founders to launch and establish its operations in 2015. Chris now serves as the Managing Director, leading the organization’s public efforts to drive societal change around the issue of child sexual abuse. He has previously held executive leadership positions for start-up tech and healthcare organizations.
Chris is committed to driving broad societal change to address child sexual abuse and uses his influence as a thought leader and strategist to inspire others to take action. He firmly believes we can collectively create a better future for our children.
A sought-after speaker, Chris inspires audiences with timely topics such as overcoming emotional numbing by learning how to feel again, protecting children from child sexual abuse in a hypersexualized world, and how to intentionally drive societal change. He has been featured across several media platforms where he is requested to contribute as an industry leader and subject matter expert.
Chris received a BA and an MPA degree from Brigham Young University. He is the grateful father of six children: three boys and three girls. He and his wife, Christy, have been married for 28 years.
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