12 year old and inappropriate websearch

[Duckduckquack1]

My 12 year old (near 13) is my first child so this is all very new territory to me.
He has had a phone for about a year and is in Year 8. He also has a computer in his room for homework and game use only. It has parental controls and he knows it is checked regularly like his phone. He can also watch Netflix and youtube on the family laptop downstairs. We don't social media at the moment apart from whatsapp. He plays mostly minecraft and similar games.

A few times it's been alerted by the parental controls or by finding it later that he has been trying to get around the controls to look at sexual content. Hes only got as far as frontal female nudity and we fully expect at his age that level of curiosity. We chat quite openly about it and have check ins etc.
Whats concerning me isn't so much that he's found light based nudity, it's that he's seeking it out and it's a chance that he could stumble upon something that is much more graphic.

I feel that completely stopping his computer use etc is too much at this point. But despite the controls, he still managed to see some images without much issue.

We have spoken at length about why it's not appropriate at his age, and the issues with porn/leading into porn, how feelings and masturbation is normal etc etc.

How do I approach this? Remove the computer? Let him just find the images and possibly worse because it's normal? I'm a bit lost to be honest.

Just to add, we haven't made this into a big deal to him, no punishment etc just a chat about it. But it has happened a few times even with the talks and keeping a closer eye.

He's a boy, and boys talk!

My son is 13 and has an obvious burgeoning interest in girls.
I see him look at certain girls out of the corner of his eye.

Keep up to date on parental settings as high as you can set. However, the fact is he will access pictures. Friends will screen grab and share etc.

The reality is boys were looking at magazines and Oxendales lingerie catalogue back in the 80s and the girls were reading the Barbra Cartland.

I have two boys, I am open about the difference between the images, there is a world of difference between a bikini calendar shot to the porn industry.

I believe it is very important to have ongoing conversations about sex. He hopefully you have been having discussions on consent, keep this up.

It’s normal that he’s trying to look but agree it’s not a good idea. Especially with the nasty forms of porn you can find on the net.

He will likely have seen very extreme pornography on other friends phones.

Continue doing what you're doing though, there isn't much else you can do I don't think but it mitigates the worst

There is an ocean of difference between a lingerie catalogue and what is readily available online, it is very naive to conflate the two.

The material available of course and I did not infer there wasn't!

I disagree that the behaviour isn't the same.The boys of the 80s sought what was available as do the boys of 2020s.

You can't control the content only the behaviour hence my comment.

I don't think young men were suffering from erectile dysfunction because of lingerie catalogues. A third of young women report unwanted spitting and hitting during sex from men who genuinely believe this is welcome behaviour. Pornsickness is real and serious and the effect of such extreme material is an issue

The content and the behaviour are linked

A few times it's been alerted by the parental controls or by finding it later that he has been trying to get around the controls to look at sexual content.

Where, on the phone or on the computer in his bedroom?

My DS has asked me (aged nearly 16) to make the controls tighter on his devices as he has stumbled across stuff - and again from conversations it’s not horrific - that he said make him feel crappy. He is aware that a lot of his friends watch really hardcore stuff, but he doesn’t at the moment, want to.

So we sat down together and tightened it up as much as possible and I have all the passwords. He says he is happier with it like this. He still watches utter drivel on YouTube but currently at least, nothing too bad. I don’t think this is a normal state of affairs but I hope it will stand him in good stead when he starts having relationships.

have you tried asking him what he is searching for? my grand daughter is into anime and some of her "searches" can bring up adult content warnings.

I think @Marblesbackagain is making a good point. As much as parents would love to ensure their children don't have the opportunity to look at inappropriate images, it would be nigh on impossible to make this happen. All we can is do educate on safe consensual sex and try to monitor what they can access at home. Exactly what the OP is doing.

Again I clearly commented on the behaviour. To avoid a repeat of the seventy million threads on porn.

It clearly is not hard core from the Op s description.

Mostly his phone. He's not allowed it in his room and it stays downstairs at night.

He has mostly seen it on films like Titanic. Hes then from seeing it on films like that trying to find similar pictures and clips

Perfectly normal preteen/teenage behaviour for boys . I wouldn’t punish him for it .

Educate! Talk as much as possible about how porn is not real and all the negatives of porn. You could (and I think should) also talk about how sexual curiosity is normal and plenty of people watch porn as part of a healthy sex life.