Explaining porn and its harms to kids

[Whatarewedoing]

I have two DSs 8 and 11. They have been growing up very protected so far, but my older DS is about to go to the local comprehensiv and I am sure he will come across porn other pupils phones soon enough. There is such absolute toxic stuff out there - it really worries me and I want him to have some awareness that it is not the real world and how it harms women and girls as well as the people exposed to it. When did you talk about porn and its harms to your kids and how did you start that chat? I was exposed to hardcore porn when I was a young around DSs age and it really damaged me. Only, this was in the 80s and just in pictures and words. Both would now be regarded as fairly run of the mill and boring. It terrifies me what kids these days get to see. To be clear - DS won't have a smartphone for many years but many others do.

Hey am in a similar boat with boys roughly the same ages. I try to talk about it with them but they are both appalled and run away as it’s ‘cringe’ to talk about sex with me. Only one of their friends has a smartphone so it hasn’t been quite as rife as I feared. But I could use a really good documentary to watch with them or something.

One resource we've found helpful is a website called Fight The New Drug. They have some good informational videos and other resources.

I don't know but I really do think that the adult world allowing kids access to porn is tantamount to abuse and that it traumatises them. Tech companies could do so much more to prevent access but they really do not care.

My sister has 5 sons and stepsons. She explained porn to them by saying it is like an action movie. When did you last see a car chase with one car turning over and bursting into flames? Never. That is what porn is like. It is not a true representation of life. I thought this analogy was quite child-friendly. It doesn't cover the harms, but it is a conversation starter.

"It will harm you" is not necessarily that helpful in my opinion, because pornography doesn't tend to feel harmful to its users and they might just conclude you're making stuff up. Focusing on the immense harm pornography causes to the women involved might be a better bet. That of course though requires your sons to be capable of empathy for people they've never met.

When we are talking about porn we are talking about a lot of contemporary culture.. music videos, clothes advertising etc. Have a look at the Parent's Programme on Culture Reframed. They are a brilliant website with excellent help for parents including scripts that you can use as examples of good conversations about the harms of porn. I have an 11 year old and 9 year old. I've been looking into this a lot for the last eighteen months and have organised parent chats etc. I think it's important to get a really good grasp of the nature of the industry by listening to things such as the P-Word Talks by The Naked Truth Project and listening to Gail Dines and Mandy Sanchez from Culture Reframed. I also think the Fight the New Drug films are good. We are surrounded by porn-inspired culture and hypersexualised images. Have a look at the Collective Shout website from Australia. The best conversations are the short ones that are prompted by something you have seen or heard. The conversations don't need to be long but you need to have a good grasp of the dangers and the nature of the industry. My kids sometimes say about other kids that have been -TikTokified which is short hand for they have been swept up in the madness of a conformist world that they want no part of. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

I’ve just been hunting for the recording of a webinar I went to last yr - ‘raising kids in a pornified world’ by Nordic model now - this was helpful to me. Also love Gail dines!

Thanks! I'll have a look a that webinar today.
RE other posts. I do think it can be helpful to say to very young kids who have stumbled upon something awful, 'don't worry it's not real' and that's all they need to hear but the message to older children who are surrounded by other kids using porn that it is just fantasy stuff is not great. This is real stuff happening to real women.
Also, the porn today is definitely harmful both to the individual who is using it and those involved in the industry and to society.
Who wants to have their sexual scripts choreographed by somebody else? Very conformist, violent scripts mostly. Who wants to be in bed with someone where their fantasies whilst you are together are coming from a vastly profitable industry? I think the people who aren't using porn (the rare few) will be the very desirable partners of the future!
And that's before you get to how very addictive it can be and for a sizeable number of people takes them along very dark paths.

I've found nurtured first is a good resource. She's a therapist from Canada with a podcast/ Instagram account and she sells short courses on consent and other parenting topics for about £25.
I do think it's better to start earlier if possible. Apparently around one in ten nine year olds have already seen it.

we talked about it intentionally and just made our kids sit down and join in, it took a good hour.
We talked about consent first and went from there. Used the teabag video about consent from YouTube and then talked about what sex should be and often is - between two consenting adults, often in a committed relationship and always enjoyable for both people, that it involves trusting the other person to pleasure you, and that you can say no at any time along the way.

We then talked about rape and porn from that starting point, defining each one really clearly. ie rape is non consensual, deeply traumatic and painful for a survivor, gave rape statistics and examples from our own lives or people close to us. I was really clear that this will happen to someone they know at some point in their lives, if not themselves.
we defined porn as when sexual acts are recorded and watched to give pleasure to an audience who often pay.
we discussed how throughout history and today sex workers have chosen to work in the porn industry for money, but that people in porn videos are also often doing so because they have no other choice. You can’t tell from watching the video/images. It could be rape and it could be painful for those people.

I just laid it all out, would you intentionally watch someone breaking another person’s arm online? Well, unfortunately if you google this you could find a video of that. Similarly, porn is completely accessible now but it’s vital to know that it’s not a realistic representation of sex and by watching it you are part of the problem not the solution- as long as people watch the videos they will still get made.

separately we talked about some different photoshopped images of Botox-y people’s faces vs normal faces on photos and that was pretty straight forward, I just said how many people do you see who look like this? Right, well, porn is not a real representation of sex either.

Thanks for the links, I will check them out