Our kids and porn – what on earth do we do? What do we say? And how do we advise parents to respond when the dreaded moment occurs and they stumble across their no-longer innocent kid watching porn.
Right now, there are at least at least 4.5 million porn sites on the web with 64 000 visitors per minute. According to a 2019 report 70.7% of tweens and 84.0% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature online. So while we are not trying to give it the thumbs up, we ARE putting it out there that it is pretty inevitable that most of our kids are going to land where your kid did today. Like anything inevitable, it’s easier if we plan for it, but if we can’t, give yourself a break, pull up your big girl panties and dive in.
We all have different values in relation to porn but some basics prevail when it comes to the big chat – a much harder one than the birds and the bees for sure
Know where you stand on porn before you get into the discussion.
Don’t respond immediately with shock, horror shame or indifference (they won’t buy the latter anyway)
Get real – if they big enough to stream it, they have to big enough to talk about it. This means NORMALISING THEIR INTEREST IN SEX, BUT Not NORMALISING WHAT THEY FIND ONLINE. What you want to get over is there is no need for shame in relation to their curiosity, but that what they are finding is not the real deal. Women and men don’t look that in real life. They don’t act like that either. Talk about how these kinds of images are going to make it hard for them to get laid in the real world, ‘cause women actually like to be engaged as people not life support systems for Vajajays. And guys don’t have to pump it for three hours straight to be considered men. If you can help them understand how porn affects THEM in THEIR lives, not just that it is sexist, you have a much higher chance of being heard.
Its also important to impart (but maybe not all on the same day) that porn is not that different to a drug – our brains need more of it to feel less. And by more in this case, we mean extremes. And then it will be hard to be aroused in the real world, by real girls. There’s no fun in that.
Don’t forget to throw in how important the notion of CONSENT is in the real world, something not often seen in the world that is PornHub.
Lastly, stay away from shaming them –even if your family values abhor porn. The teen years are hard enough without added angst.
Watch our talk on teens and sexting here.
- Pam and Sarah
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