Pornography ‘desensitising young people’
by Katherine Sellgren, BBC:
Most children are exposed to online pornography by their early teenage years, a study warns.
About 53% of 11- to 16-year-olds have seen explicit material online, nearly all of whom (94%) had seen it by 14, the Middlesex University study says.
The research, commissioned by the NSPCC and the children’s commissioner for England, said many teenagers were at risk of becoming desensitised to porn.
The government said keeping children safe online was a key priority.
Naked images
The researchers questioned 1,001 children aged 11 to 16 and found 65% of 15- to 16-year-olds reported seeing pornography, as did 28% of 11- to 12-year-olds.
They also discovered that it was more likely for the youngsters to find material accidentally (28%), for example via a pop-up advertisement, than to specifically seek it out (19%).
More than three-quarters of the children surveyed – 87% of the boys and 77% of the girls – felt pornography failed to help them understand consent, but most of the boys (53%) and 39% of girls saw it as a realistic depiction of sex.
Some of the children’s approach to sex was also informed by pornographic scenes, with more than a third (39%) of the 13- to 14-year-olds and a fifth of the 11- to 12-year-olds boys saying they wanted to copy the behaviour they had seen.
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