Navigating Childhood Pornography Use: A Call to Action for Parents and Professionals
Growing awareness of the scope and harms of childhood pornography exposure has parents and professionals questioning how best to navigate the issue. Culture Reframed is partnering with Child Advocacy Centers across the country and other professionals to create action-oriented resources and educational materials for parents and clinicians.
Dr. Mandy Sanchez, Director of Programming at Culture Reframed, and Heidi Olson, a certified pediatric sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE), shared how the collaboration is identifying and advancing work on much-needed resources during a session at Culture Reframed’s virtual conference. The session, Pornography Is Harming Kids: How Do We Help? also shared sobering examples that reinforce the urgency of this work for parents and clinicians and the children they care for.
“Porn has become the de facto sex education for young people today. With its ease of access, it takes five seconds or less to get to any number of free porn sites,” Sanchez says. “Many adults are just naive about the depth, the breadth, and the harms of this $100 billion porn industry.”
“Porn has become the de facto sex education for young people today. With its ease of access, it takes five seconds or less to get to any number of free porn sites.”
Professionals who work with children have seen the prevalence and impact of youth porn use accelerate due to advancing technology that eases online access, says Olson, who was motivated by the scope of the issue to establish Paradigm Shift Training and Consulting and partner with Culture Reframed as a Clinical Consultant. “It’s all happening online for the most part,” she says. “There’s a massive gap that exists where a lot of kids are seeing a lot of violent porn, and parents have no clue that this is going on.”
As one example of the scope of the issue, Olson shared an example from a Midwest high school that tracked the computer use of its 140 students. In one month, there were more than 13,000 visits to Pornhub on school-issued devices — an average of three times a day. “We know a lot of kids are seeing a lot of porn,” Olson says. “We know exposure, especially with children at really young ages, is associated with so many poor outcomes on so many levels.”
“There’s a massive gap that exists where a lot of kids are seeing a lot of violent porn, and parents have no clue that this is going on.”
Research shows those poor outcomes include increased risky and casual sex, a preference for porn over sex with an actual partner, a limited capacity for empathy, and mental health issues including anxiety and depression. The risks are especially prevalent among youth who are LGBTQIA+, neurodiverse, in foster care, differently abled or who have a history of sexual abuse or other adverse childhood experiences.
But research and resources are lacking on how to screen clients for pornography exposure and how to talk with children about pornography, Olson says. “We’re just so far behind in the professional world that we have to start to create these things because they don’t exist.”
The Culture Reframed and CAC working group aims to change that by tapping into the knowledge and experience of more than 25 multidisciplinary specialists from the United States and the United Kingdom. “Our goal in this working group is to create free and easily accessible materials and resources so that we can have this interactive discussion or communication … talking effectively with kids about pornography and pornography use,” Olson says.
The resources for clinicians and other professionals will integrate Culture Reframed’s porn-critical lens and share an understanding of the harms of hyper-sexualized images and pornography to children and other young people, Sanchez says.
The 939 CACs are a crucial connection for this work, as they serve children and adolescents who are believed to be victims of abuse, including sexual abuse, domestic violence, and witnesses to violence. In 2022, they served more than 386,000 children.
Watch the full discussion:
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