Teenagers and warped views of sex through misuse of porn. How to address?

[oneofsuesylvesterscheerios]

I'm interested in using/adapting/creating some resources for secondary school students that addresses the problems being caused by their free access to porn via mobile phones/ social networking etc.

Just this week i have had experience of the fallout of this: Some boys are getting horrible perceptions of girls / women through their constant receiving and sharing of porn; some girls are allowing their low self-esteem to lead them into very dodgy situations...

Are there any existing resources appropriate for say 13+ that show teenagers the consequences of heavy porn usage and the effect can have on perceptions, relationships, and can damage healthy attitudes to sex? And I mean resources that are bang up to date, sensible, open but hard-hitting. I am depressed at the way some teens seem very desensitised to some aspects of sex and detached from the emotive and mental well-being that comes with a healthy respect and knowledge of how relationships really work.

any ideas?
Thanks

Bumping this as I really agree with you and I am worried for my dc's.

there was a brilliant programme on radio 4 about a year ago called Teenage Kicks, the producer was called Lizz Pearson I think. It was a real eyeopener.

Maybe you could find out if you could get hold of a recording. Google Teenage Kicks radio 4 and it comes up first.

The bit I found most disturbing was the fact that some boys have so much exposure to porn they expect their first girlfriend to behave like the most raunchy pornstar you can possibly imagine. I don't want to go into details - but I thought I was broadminded.

Check out the Stop Porn Culture website: lots of brilliant resources there. Gail Dines - an absolute POWERHOUSE of anti-porn activism - has a recently published book called Pornland which would be well worth reading.

This is such an important issue.

Meant to add, Gail Dines will be speaking in London at this 2-day conference later this month.

It needs to be right in the mainstream. Most my ds's friends have laptops, but only a few have parental control. Many parents do not realise that iPods and iPhones have uncontrolled access to the internet. We took the Internet off my ds iPod and put the mobicip app instead but most parents do not know or care. Many teenagers now also have iPads which also have unrestricted access to the Internet and inprivate browsing so no one can see their browsing history.

It is normal for boys to want to look at porn but I don't think many parents really realise how bad so much free porn is in terms of rape, physical abuse and normalising how girls let themselves be treated.

This is a hidden time bomb that the government refuses to deal with. We will see the effects of it over the next generation.

This is fantastic - thanks so much.

You are so right about parental ignorance. The huge gap we have in the reality and the perception comes I think from our own experiences of technology and its connection with teen culture when we were younger.

To us (30s/40s +) open internet access, mobile phones and social networking has crept up on us very very recently. Facebook is only 8 years old! For our children though, it is something they have had all their lives and they are streets ahead in their understanding of just what a big deal technology is in their lives.

Maybe when they are parents, we might not have these sorts of problems. We are working at a phenominally slow pace in realising what a problem this has become.

I'm not being alarmist - if you could hear what I heard this week at school: an Ofsted 'outstanding' school, in a MN-friendly leafy and 'naice' area, one with an excellent reputation with pastoral issues and well-being... I suppose that the kids there are pretty relective what our (MN) kids are probably like...

The casual way that the boys concerned saw sex, the cruel way in which they spoke (online) about girls they knew, girls and women they did not know but had seen in pornographic images passed casually from phone to phone; the devastating effect this has had on girls who have attended the parties they all go to (with full parental permission) and the consequences of what has happened at these parties. It is horrible.

But do you know what is even more horrible? The attitude displayed by many of the mothers defending their son's behaviour and attitudes; the refusal to blame their sons for what they have been doing and the openly hostile attitude displayed towards the school in trying to deal with the fallout and tackle the problem. Articulate, professional women, coming out with phrases such as 'boys will be boys'; 'it's none of the school's business what my son does online' and even, even, to the headmaster 'You're a man - surely you can see why the boys use these images.'

Our own experiences of porn as kids I am guessing would have been sneaking peeks at parents' mags, stashed under beds and at the back of cupboards; of gathering around torn out pages from jazz mags on the playing fields or down the brook. And later, 'blueys' watched in a group at college or something. It was rare to see any, it bore very little resemblance to our own experiences (if any) of sex and it remained slightly out-of-reach (literally, on the newsagents' shelves!), quite exotic and probably fairly rare.

Our teens' experiences of porn could not be more polar opposite. Kids get sent pornographic images out of the blue, completely unsolicited, by other kids. Some willingly engage in swapping photos, videos and it becomes part and parcel of their phone usage. And even more worryingly, perhaps, is that vulnerable and impressionable girls join in with the idea that they will attract and impress lads if they too strip off and take photos of themselves or have photos taken of them. They take part in sexual acts at parties and boys talk about them afterwards. They rank them.

I don't think most parents have a clue about the extent of this. We definitely need to take this on as parents or we will (to use a much-hackneyed phrase) 'sleepwalk' into a very very worrying world of warped, damaging and dangerous sexual attitudes for our children. It's not just a one-off; something rare that happened at my school. It's all over.

Phew - turned into a bit of a rant. But it has made me really sad and really angry this week. I will start my investigations into the excellent links you have kindly provided.

If future generations are less inhibited sexually than our own, perhaps that's a good thing. Our offspring will set their own limits, make their own rules. Would we have them do otherwise, follow our mores?

Pleasure Vs Profit

Make Love Not Porn (this one says over 18 only but there's nothing on it that would traumatise the average teen)

I have read other posts along these lines OP and I wonder if there are quite a few teachers and others who are trying to do something about this.
Just thinking that if you could find a way of organising with them you could really achieve something. I am sure I have read of at least 2 others on MN asking for advice to achieve exactly the same thing.

Just trying to think how to find them!

There have been 2 channel 4 series aimed at secondary age children that we have watched as has DD. Several sections covered how porn warps perception. One I recall had a series of photos of bare breasts and boys and girls asked to identify the 'normal' ones. Both sexes selected the 'medically enhanced' breasts and commented negatively on all the others that were indeed all perfectly normal although all very different.

Yes JWIM it was ch4's Sex Education Show. It's not on 4OD any more unfortunately and I can't find any decent clips of it on YouTube. Maybe there's a ch4 education pack / materials. I'll do some more investigating.

I think there might be something in joining forces to raise the profile of this as an issue - maybe mumsnet could help? I'm convinced tht, if more parents were aware of how widespread and disturbing it's become, more could be done.

Lastsummer believe me, I would love to make sex education more open, realistic and healthy. I loathe the DM take on 'if they know about it, they'll do it' school of thought and the idea that we should suppress curiosity and answer questions. However, if you could see half of the images I think are on a scarily large number of teens' phones & laptops, I don't think you'd think they were in any way promoting liberation. Far from it.

Sorry, should say 'not answer questions'

My mistake Sex Ed show still on 4od, just couldn't gt it on iPad with no Flashplayer. Found it on laptop