(LifeSiteNews) — “This report is one of the most sobering my office has ever published,” wrote Rachel De Souza, the UK's children's commissioner, in the first paragraph of a recent government study. “It paints a stark picture of what childhood will look like in 2025, in an online world that is in many ways completely unsuitable for children.”
The report is called “”Sex is kind of broken now”: children and pornographyAnd it's yet another devastating indictment of a society deeply shaped by the porn industry and enabled by adults who value sexual libertarianism over the health, innocence and safety of children.
“It's shocking because it's report In particular, pornography is no longer something that children may seek out during adolescence,” writes Dame de Souza. “Today, many children stumble upon it by chance while still in primary school. This is what they are shown without even looking for it on the same social networking sites that were created to help them connect with other people and have fun.”
“And it's not just pornography. It's violent, extreme and degrading, often depicting acts that are or will soon be illegal.” De Souza is clearly upset, and viscerally so, declaring that the report “should be the last of its kind” and “a line in the sand.” Now, she writes, it is time for society to refuse to tolerate the weapons-grade poison that the porn industry is pumping into our cultural groundwater. “This report should be viewed as a snapshot of what the bottom looks like.”
report found that 70 percent of respondents had seen pornography online, with 73 percent of boys and 65 percent of girls reporting they had seen digital porn. The average age of first acquaintance is 13 years. More than a quarter of respondents, 27 percent, had already seen porn by age 11, with many saying they had seen porn at the age of “six years or younger.” Most children who find pornography are not looking for it; a staggering 59 percent say they saw it by accident. Eight of the top 10 sources on which children saw pornography were not porn sites, but social networks or networks.
As I've been writing for years, this near-constant exposure to real-time pornography creates a rape culture. Here are the report's findings:
- The majority of respondents who had seen pornography reported that they had seen images of activities that were illegal under existing pornography laws or would soon become illegal under the Crime and Policing Act when it became law.
- 58% of respondents had seen strangulation pornography before they turned 18.
- 44% reported having seen images of rape (specifically sex during sleep).
- 44% of respondents agreed with the statement “Girls may refuse at first, but then they can be persuaded to have sex.” Children who had seen pornography were more likely to agree with this statement than those who had not.
- Girls were more likely to agree with this statement than boys.
- Children were more likely to report seeing pornography depicting women being sexually abused than men being sexually abused.
READ: Supreme Court of Canada lenient on child pornography
In short, pornography prepares girls to be victims and boys to become predators. It erases—and I use that word deliberately—not just our desire, but also our cognitive ability to understand sex, sexuality, and intimacy in a healthy way.
Even when kids aren't looking for porn, porn is looking for them. “Other social media companies also appear in survey responses with reasonable frequency,” the report notes. “Social networking sites popular among children have high levels of exposure to pornography: Snapchat (29%), Instagram (23%), TikTok (22%) and YouTube (15%). Concern that social media is a gateway to pornography was echoed by a participant in a focus group conducted for this report.”
And what do they see? 69 percent of children see hair pulled out; 67 percent see suffocation; 64 percent see vile and degrading name-calling; 65 percent see anal sex; 57 percent see incest; most see some form of sexual coercion.
Result? “Children also believe that pornography changes their expectations about sex,” the report said. “82% of respondents agreed that viewing online pornography influences young people's expectations about sex. More girls (85%) than boys (78%) agreed with the statement that 'viewing online pornography influences young people's expectations about sex.'”
The girls who spoke with the researchers confirmed that pornography had penetrated their lives. “I definitely think pornography changes people's views on sex, and I think it can lead to more violent sex,” said one 16-year-old. “I think what worries me most is that it also affects people's behavior in general.” A 17-year-old girl agreed: “[Porn] makes boys act mean to girls.” A boy of the same age agreed: “I saw at school that boys expect girls to look a certain way or they are useless, it’s terrible.”
De Souza is right: this report should be the lowest. We have chosen to embrace this society by prioritizing the increasingly perverted sexual desires of adults. If we are going to protect children, this will have to change.
