Pornography offers a very harmful view of sex for children and adolescents and can instill distorted ideas in them that lead them to adopt violent patterns of sexual behavior without the consent of the other. For this reason, the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP), the Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics (AEPap), the Spanish Society of Out-of-hospital Pediatrics (SEPEAP) and the non-governmental organization Save the Children have joined together to request Public Institutions that prevent minors from accessing these contents through the Internet and social networks.
These organizations have warned that children and adolescents’ access to pornography occurs at increasingly earlier ages and consider it essential that they receive affective-sexual education in which they are taught that sexuality is part of the emotional relationship and must be satisfactory for both members of the couple.
The report prepared by Save the Children ‘Sexual (mis)information: pornography and adolescence’ highlights the negative consequences of early access to pornography. Their data reveal, for example, that 53.8% of the people surveyed accessed pornography for the first time before the age of 13, and 8.7% before the age of 10. The average age is 12 years overall (before 12 years for boys and 12 and a half years for girls).
“Viewing pornography makes adolescents consider that these practices, sometimes violent, unsatisfactory for women, and even aberrant, are normal in a relationship.”
The results indicate that the characteristics of adolescents’ intimate relationships have been altered due to the influence of pornography. This is not something new, but in recent years it has gotten worse. A 2010 study already warned about the early onset of viewing pages with sexual content. According to this study, 29% of minors began their visits between 11 and 15 years old, and 32% between 15 and 18 years old. Of the regular visitors, 68% are men compared to 32% women.
Affective-sexual education to counteract the influence of porn
The Save the Children report considers that the most dangerous aspects of pornography are the explicit exercise of violence and the failure to specify, or even raise, the need to give consent to participate in such practices. It is common for women not to express their approval, or even to appear experiencing displeasure or pain, without this altering the development of the scene. 47.4% of adolescents who watch pornography have at some point imitated its content, but they have not always done so by mutual agreement.
“Viewing pornography makes adolescents consider that these practices, sometimes violent, without consent, in groups, unsatisfactory for women, and even aberrant, are the usual thing in the relationship,” explains Dolors Canadell, representative of the AEP.
Regarding the gender perspective, the number of boys who report that they have practiced pornographic scenes with their partners is much greater (46.4%) than that of girls (22.8%). Differences are also observed regarding practices without consent: 12.2% of boys compared to 6.3% of girls.
A key point to reverse this situation is emotional-sexual education. Parents’ concerns are the precocity in their consumption, the changes in roles and knowing how they get to that content. The Family and Health magazine mentions the varied origin of these sources: web pages with explicit content, video chats, social networks (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube…), material shared on WhatsApp or advertisements that lead to those pages, etc.
Source: Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics (AEPap)
