11year old son and pornhub

[ScalingTheCliffsOfInsanity]

My ds is 11, nearly 12. He's only had his phone for a short while and I only check it occasionally to make sure nothing untoward is going on. He's a nice kid, friendly, kind hearted and a bit of a softie a lot of the time. I happened to check his phone tonight after he'd gone to bed and his search history shows a good 15 or so pornhub pages. Obviously I need to talk to him about it but I don't want to jump in to the deep end and have a massive go. He's growing up and is obviously curious. What's the best way to approach this? I want him to know that porn is not what normal sex is, but not totally sure what else I need to be saying to him (other than don't bloody do it again!). Help. I'm not ready for this level of him growing up yet!!

@ScalingTheCliffsOfInsanity - what school requires a mobile phone with internet access? This isn’t about clutching pearls it’s about controlling access to the internet, which can be dangerous to kids, until they get to an age where they can process what they read. This isn’t just about porn - your son currently has unrestricted access to extreme hate content / false news too. Lets see how well he does on his studies when he’s accessing deliberate misinformation - some people even deliberately go into wikipedia to change content to screw with schoolkids.

Exactly @CassianAndor - giving a child a phone with internet access and then expecting them to magically stay away from extreme content is crap parenting

Teddybear, what age wpuld you say was old enough to have internet on their phone?

Teddy bear - how do you propose to stop your children being shown porn on other kids' phones? Vet their friends? How big a friendship pool do you think they'll have?

How do you propose to stop them being shown porn by other kids at school? Home-school?

Yes, restrictions on access help (whether that's giving them a Nokia brick, no phones in bedrooms, blocks on the router). But they can never be the whole solution, partly because these days kids need access to tech for school (and then it becomes a question of how early they learn about VPNs), and partly because at some stage 11, 14, 16, - you will need to take a step back as parent and allow them to regulate their own behaviour.

That's why there's no technological magic bullet. Use tech fixes to minimise risk, yes, but you have to talk to them too.

And keep putting it in the context of kindness and respect for other people. Does what you're seeing on screen look kind? Does it look respectful? If not, it is a bad form of sex.

And don't shy away from moral judgements - but make sure you can back those judgements up with arguments. Teens hate being preached at. What you're aiming for is opening them to the Idea that it's possible to think critically about whether sex acts are good or bad for the people involved, rather than having them mindlessly bleat the so-open-minded-their-brains-have-fallen-out mantra of "your kink is not my kink and that's okay."

@Teddybear45 my sons' school requires internet access on their phones. They use it for reading circles because buying the books is too expensive when you can access the school e-copy.

Lots of schools encourage mobile phone use in lessons for research because they don't want the expensive of tablets or needing to be in a room with desktop computers.

They log into the school wifi so they are monitored on what they access as they all have their own unique log in. Obviously it doesn't stop a child using their own data but this was to answer your question on what schools require it.

But yes, talking about the fact that porn is for over 18s for a reason and that he may see something that he cannot bleach from his brain.

Sadly children can be exposed to porn even through apps for kids.

If the app has the ability to post photos you can almost guarantee there will be dick pics and porn pics.

im sure the people that come in talking about how its super easy, are probably parents of 3 year olds

never said it was easy. And yes, not the parent of an 11 year old but not much off it and we've had conversations already and will broaden those the closer we get to secondary. But right now my thought is that DD will get a brick Nokia. And I've seen and read nothing to change that view, and I'm certainly not persuaded by this thread.