Skirting around the issue of Children and Pornography at home, schools and wider society.

One of the classic examples of denial is when parents blame the locality or the schools for their children learning their first curse words and foul language. If this was not least of our problems we’d be a better social world. Yet bad language aside – pornography is still far too much a taboo subject, and as such has been allowed to permeate all levels of society.

As a parent are you still in denial of this?

Granted pornography has been creeping into society for a very long time, with the advent of the Internet, faster download speeds, 3G in 2000’s, 4G in 2010’s, 5G in 2020’s: it is virtually ubiquitous AND easily accessible. It is having a deeper impact upon our younger (and always impressionable) generation now and the next one to come.

Parents may be more vigil due to young vulnerable girls being sex-trafficked around the UK, yet most of these girls came from decent families with a good upbringing and therefore it was impossible to tell who would be caught and manipulated into these sick abusive trafficking events.

Pornography is not such far cry from this. Access is so easy at such young innocent ages – it permeates their minds, hormones will react, excitement and interest will be peaked … desire to find more of it becomes an awkward addiction that many do not know how to treat.

The negative social impacts of being brought up on a staple input of pornography will cause the user a deleterious effect upon their lives. Many will sexually objectify the opposite sex, or whichever gender they may desire. Making Love will be replaced with a colder approach of basic sex and sexual gratification. The possibility of becoming perverted on many sexual levels is an avenue that many pornography users may find themselves inextricably drawn to …. For all these reasons – the users (particularly the young) need some guidance to a normal and healthy, loving approach to normality and intimacy in relationships and not the cold dark side that pornography may possibly inflict.

An upcoming report from The Social Researcher will deal with tackling school pupils from challenging schools with the issue of pornography and highlight why children and teenagers are so desperate for guidance yet do not know who to turn to for fear of revulsion from their parents, being labelled a pervert by their peers or being reported to the local youth worker if their teacher found out the young individual was accessing pornography.

Thankfully a demand from higher management in schools has publicly been received that head teachers believe that pornography should be discussed in schools, be it as part of a sex education format or child sexualisation debate. In any case – the issue is forced now … so lets us all deal with this together.

You must all believe that this young generation today (the so called ‘lost generation’, or ‘entitlement generation’ – which is actually a more empowered generation that many elders would have acknowledged or feared to have acknowledged!) can deal with the burden of pornography.

It is not time to say who is to blame; parent’s groups may be established to revile pornography, councils and governments may be pressured to deal with pornographic grip on society etc. yet now it is here – we should just deal with it. By allowing our younger generation to be harnessed with the knowledge that the beast does exist; you may be well surprised how well children and teenagers can deal appropriately with pornography and not allow it to consume them (which thousands of adults suffer now from baseline pornography in the mid to late 20^Th century).

The responsibilities put upon our civil servants in education, social welfare, community safety and other area’s is constantly getting larger. Perhaps each county or district will need to set up a new position of child sexuality consultant who will go into schools, community centres, support centres, help workshops etc. to talk to young impressionable children and teenagers – open a dialogue and allow the younger people to have a balanced view rather than an ‘access and misinterpretation’ stance/viewpoint.

One thing is for certain – we may be entering an increasingly transparent society of information, location, updates etc. yet we must be vigil. Your children want to come to you and discuss what they have ‘found’ …. Will you react appropriately to your child, your pupil, your young neighbour finding pornography?