English, Bella, “The Secret Life of Boys: Pornography is a mouse click away, and kids are being exposed to it in increasing numbers,” The Boston Globe, 12 May 2005, D1,6.

 

OVERVIEW

 

Psychologist Michael Thompson, coauthor of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, was meeting with eight seniors from a Boston-area high school and asked them how many had downloaded porn.

 

All of them raised their hands. “More than 10 times?” he asked. Everyone. “More than 20 times?” All hands went up. “More than 30?” Unanimous. “It’s a big part of my life,” one boy told him.”

 

“All you have to do is type a girl’s first name into Google and hit ‘images.’ Something will come up,” (another) 13-year-old boy explained.

 

A recent study found that “9 out of 10 kids, 8 to 16, have viewed porn online, most unintentionally while doing homework.”

 

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation report of a poll released in March, 2005:

 

• 70% of teens aged 15-17 say they have accidentally come across porn while using the Internet

• 25% of boys admit they have lied about their age to access a (porn) website

• 76% of teens say their schools have Internet filters on computers

• 33% say their home computers have filters

 

Family Safe Media sells Internet filters and blocking devices.  They claim that

 

• On average kids are first exposed to Internet porn at age 11

• Largest consumer of Internet porn it kids, age 12-17

• 12% of all websites are porn sites

• 25% of all search engine requests is for porn.

 

Cultural changes have pushed kids into their bedrooms with every sort of technology available. They are a new Net Generation, experts in multi-tasking. Seemingly alone, they feel alive in a virtual community. Favorite stars may be on television or favorite music group may be singing to them. They may be chatting with virtual friends online, or real-life friends may be talking with them via Instant Messaging. Somehow, they’re getting their homework done. It’s so easy to take a break or reward oneself when it’s done with the come-on of a needy nude.

 

Viewing pornography may not be deliberate. It slips up on students as in doing required research. Once exposed, it’s easy to stay awhile out of curiosity and titillation. From there it can become a habit—and possibly an addiction. Some porn sites are free; others charge. Whatever the extent, parents can be confronted with unexplained phone charges.

 

Thousands of hard-core pornographic websites (English writes) are a mere mouse click or unsolicited pop-up away, showing every fantasy imaginable, including bondage, bestiality, and groups sex.

 

Internet pornography is a $2.5 billion business in the United States, with more than 4 million websites, according to Family Safe Media.

 

Carleton Kendrick is a family therapist in the Boston area, and his comments about today’s pornography are sobering:

 

My father’s and my uncle’s (girly magazines hidden away in closets) were basically stripped down pinup girls. There was no simulation of sex, there was no bondage, no water sports or scatology.

 

Now any kid can go online and find women and men having sex with animals, they can find torture, they can find simulated rape, they can certainly find any kind of oral, anal, vaginal sex, group sex, gay sex.

 

Curiosity about sex among children and teenagers is normal, experts say. But what is abnormal today are popular perversions of sex. Many porn sites list alphabetical listings of fetishes and perversions for easy selection.

 

One of these experts is William Pollack, a psychologist and author of best selling Real Boys    :

 

What is a relatively normal thing is turned into an abnormal thing. Boys are looking for a normal aspect of what girls look like, biologically, but they’re getting this hard-core movie-industry type of material. If they didn’t have an interest in it before, they are drawn into a world that goes beyond normal curiosity.

 

The government can control to some extent what goes through regular mail. But the Internet has free reign. Although the U.S. Congress passed a Child Online Protection Law in 1998, various courts, including the Supreme Court have blocked enforcement fearing infringement on the Free Speech Amendment.

 

Responsibility has fallen back to parents who have turned to filters, blocking and tracking devices. Sometimes the parents stay ahead, sometimes they’re outwitted by often more-computer-savvy kids in this “cat and mouse game.”

 

Family counselor Carelton Kendrick has had to counsel many children porn addicts

 

The youngest (addict) was 10. If you’re going on these sites every day, it’s going to become part of your sexual DNA and your emotional DNA and your attitude toward women. (And we know that marriages have been broken up by obsession with porn.)

 

Pornography changes boys’ expectations of real girls, and that by default changes reality for girls. What bothers me is that the girls aren’t outraged by it.

 

Kendrick and other experts point out that pornography strips sex from romance. And of course it reinforces the cultural demolition of the critical love triangle: attraction, romance, and commitment in marriage.

 

Pollack adds a further concern:

 

(The soft-core porn sites you have to pay for may) offer the normal female body. The most abnormal, the most bizarre is what you get for free. It gives boys a completely objectivized, diminished and bizarre view of what the female body is, and what relationships between females and males are about.

 

Psychologist Cate Dooley adds her perspective:

 

The bottom line is, that (pornography) is moving away from emotional intimacy, and that’s dangerous ground. Boys don’t learn how sex comes out of friendship and emotionally intimate relationships. Boys and girls are losing that in our culture, and I think it’s a crisis.

 

At least in a marriage, if the wife is unhappy about her husband downloading porn, she can bring him into therapy. But for girls this is just the way it is. There’s no consequence for boys.

 

Now Playboy and X-rated film producers are planning to bring “adult material” to cellphones. This will create one more difficult challenge to parents. And Bella English reminds us that one third of children, 11-17 already have their own cellphones, and that percentage is rising.

 

Kendrick tries to give parents facing this difficult problem some perspective and starting point in terms of vulgar music lyrics and obscene music videos they’ve already faced.

 

You can say, I understand how you can be very curious about these images, but we don’t support people who think of women in these ways… We don’t welcome them into our house, not through the boombox, or your iPod, not through the radio, or the television, and not through the Internet.

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

 

1.   Do you consider the matter of Internet pornography as just another fact of life or as a real crisis?

 

2.   In your opinion do the media not only reflect but influence and shape our lives and character? Do we, to some extent, become what we eat and what we see? Would you go so far as agreeing with Kendrick that continued viewing of pornography can get into our “sexual and emotional DNA?”

 

3.   Are you more concerned about freedom of speech or the protection of children? How would you advise legislators and judges?

 

4.   How can we effectively teach children and advise teenagers about this issue?

 

5.   Are you concerned about the amount of pornography the U.S. exports, and the globalization of pornography?

 

6.   How do pornography, globalization, and consumerism relate?

 

7.   What now is the responsibility of parents, (youth) leaders, school administrators and pastors regarding this problem?

 

IMPLICATIONS

 

1.   Freedom can only be maintained if we set and maintain responsible limits. Pornography is first of all an unbridled industry of huge proportions. It exploits its subjects and clients for nothing more than profit.

 

2.   Obsession with pornography is addictive and exists at epidemic levels globally. Not only women but children are being terribly and irresponsibly exploited. It should therefore everywhere be seen as a serious public health issue.