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Growing up in a Porn Culture: The Social, Emotional, & Cognitive Effects & A Public Health Solution

Description:

Prior to 2000, most young people, especially boys, would first encounter pornographic images in magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse. Their access to these (mainly) soft-core images was limited, so it was not a pivotal issue in terms of the sexual health and development of young people, and pornography did not serve as the primary source of sex education. Since 2000, the internet has become the main vehicle for porn, and hardcore porn is just a click away—it is free, violent, and based on the degradation and abuse of women and children. The proliferation of the smartphone, together with the growth of teen-targeted social media sites, has opened up yet more avenues for teens to access hardcore porn. This presentation will explore the most popular social media platforms accessed by young people today, linking the social media and porn industries and the harmful effects of their exposure on young people.  Today, online porn has become a primary source of sex education for young people around the world.  Researchers from across disciplines, using a wide range of methodologies, have shown that viewing pornography is associated with:

•       increased anxiety and depression
•       poor academic performance
•       risky and problematic sexual behaviors
•       decreased capacity for empathy, connection, & healthy relationships
•       lowered empathy for rape victims
•       lowered likelihood of intervening in a sexual assault
•       increase in committing domestic violence
•       increased likelihood of engaging in sex at a younger age
•       increased likelihood of contracting STDs.

Focusing on the public health approach, this presentation will highlight how Culture Reframed helps parents and professionals who work with young people to navigate this precarious terrain of hypersexualized social media and pornography.  We will discuss our research-driven online courses and resources for parents and professionals, including our Porn-Critical Sex Education Curriculum.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain a nuanced and research-based understanding of the social, emotional, and cognitive impacts of hypersexualized pop culture and pornography on young people.
• Understand the ways the pornography industry targets youth via social media platforms.
• Develop an awareness of the cultural impact of pornography, and how it impacts family and peer relationships.
• Debunk the most prevalent myths about kids and pornography.
• Understand the public health approach to the porn crisis as the basis for the development of CR’s courses and resources.
• Gain practical skills, tips, and strategies to address the harms of pornography.

The Intimate Connection between Social Media, Gaming, and Porn, & the Harms to Youth

Description:

In the last two decades, screen time has doubled for young people, with 10-14 year olds spending eight hours per day and older teens even more on screens.  The question is not if they are using social media and gaming platforms, but when, and what are they seeing? This presentation will explore the most popular social media and gaming platforms accessed by young people today, with discussion of the hypersexualized images and pornography they are exposed to.  I will link the massive social media, gaming, and porn industries through their explicit content, shared platforms, and common marketing tactics that serve as a fertile hunting ground for predators, exposing the harmful effects of their exposure to young people. Finally, I will highlight how Culture Reframed can assist parents and caregivers with free courses and resources to help them build resistance and resilience to hypersexualized social media and pornography.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the ways the social media, gaming, and pornography industries target youth and serve as a hunting ground for predators.
• Gain a research-based understanding of the social, emotional, and cognitive harms of hypersexualized images and pornography on young people.
• Develop strategies for safe, gentle conversations to engage young people in talking about hypersexualized social media and pornography.

How Mainstream Pornography Drives the Production and Consumption of Child Sexual Abuse Material

Description:

This presentation aims to break down the silos between two groups of researchers and frontline experts, those who are focused on preventing the harms of mainstream violent pornography depicting adults, and those working to stop the proliferation of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). The linkages that we explore in this session are the ways that mainstream porn sites sexualize children, and hence socialize consumers to see children as legitimate victims of sexual abuse. There has been an explosion in images of young looking female performers in mainstream porn sites, which also contributes to the normalization of child sexual abuse. Categories with ‘childified’ videos on the most traveled porn website in the world, Pornhub, have over half a million videos! There is an increasing amount of clinical experience and research evidence “accumulating to suggest that the Internet is not simply drawing attention to those with existing pedophilic interests, but is contributing to the crystallization of those interests in people with no explicit sexual interest in children.” (https://tinyurl.com/3a9397ea)

This session will explore: (1) the representational similarities between images of children on mainstream porn websites and CSAM, (2) the changes in CSAM images on the dark web toward more violent acts and (3) the ways that mainstream porn is implicated in the increase in the production and consumption of CSAM and child sexual abuse.

Outcomes of Presentation:

• Develop an understanding of how the consumption of mainstream pornography can lead to production and consumption of CSAM.
• Understand the ways that the typology of CSAM maps on to the child images on mainstream porn sites such as Pornhub.
• Gain a nuanced understanding of the latest research on the ways porn-addiction is implicated in non-pedophile men seeking out CSAM.

Pornography and Trafficking: Unpacking the Symbiosis

Description: 

While sex trafficking and porn have both been defined as forms of sexual violence, rooted in a system of gender inequality, what is often overlooked is the way these two industries are culturally and economically linked. In the first part of this presentation, we will explore how porn acts as both a method of recruitment into trafficking, and a major driver of demand.  Drawing from empirical research and testimonies from porn performers, trafficked women, and sex buyers, we argue that as long as we have a multi-billion-dollar porn industry, we will always have sex trafficking. The hard-core nature of mainstream porn means that women performers can only tolerate the body-punishing sex for approximately three months, after which they are often trafficked into brothels by their “agents,” who act as pimps. Once recruited into the brothels, these women are often forced into “porn sex” by sex buyers whose sexual template and masculine identity were shaped by porn.  By unpacking this symbiotic relationship between porn and trafficking, we can develop a more nuanced theory and practice to abolish all forms of sexual violence.

In the second part of this presentation, we will highlight the most popular social media platforms accessed by young people today, exposing how social media has been hijacked by the porn industry. We will provide examples of how social media platforms are fueling sexual exploitation and prostitution, from the exchange of sexual currency in Live Streams to the grooming and recruitment of young people into prostitution and sex trafficking.  The harmful and dangerous effects of the collusion of these industries will be discussed.  Finally, we will conclude with how Culture Reframed, through a public health approach, assists parents and professionals who work with young people in navigating the treacherous terrain of social media, pornography, prostitution, and trafficking.

Outcomes of Presentation:

• Gain an understanding of how the pornography and sex trafficking industries are culturally and economically linked.
• Recognize how pornography acts as both a method of recruitment into trafficking, and a major driver of demand.
• Understand how social media platforms fuel sexual exploitation and prostitution and the harms this causes.

Connecting the Social Media, Gaming, Porn, & Sex Trafficking Industries & Harms to Youth

Description:

In the last two decades, screen time has doubled for young people, with tweens and teens spending an average of eight hours per day on screens.  The question is not if they are using social media and gaming platforms, but how, and what are they seeing? In this presentation, I will highlight the most popular social media and gaming platforms accessed by young people today, exposing how social media has been hijacked by the porn industry, exposing the intimate links between these multi-billion dollar industries through their explicit content, shared platforms, and common marketing tactics that serve as a fertile hunting ground for predators.  I will provide examples of how social media and gaming platforms are fueling sexual exploitation and prostitution, from the exchange of sexual currency in Live Streams, to the grooming and recruitment of young people into prostitution and sex trafficking.  The harmful and dangerous effects of the collusion of these industries on youth will be discussed.  Finally, I will conclude with how Culture Reframed, through a public health approach, assists parents and professionals who work with young people in navigating the treacherous terrain of social media, pornography, prostitution, and trafficking.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the ways the social media, gaming, pornography and sex trafficking industries target youth and serve as a hunting ground for predators.
• Gain a research-based understanding of the ways social media and gaming platforms fuel sexual exploitation and prostitution and the harms this causes to young people.
• Recognize how social media and gaming platforms (through pornography) acts as both a method of recruitment into trafficking, and a major driver of demand.
• Gain practical skills, tips, and strategies to address these harms through a science-based, research-driven public health approach.

The New Dangers of Deepfakes, Undressing Apps, Sexbots, and Other Pornified Algorithms

Description:

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is magnifying greatly the quantity, scope, accessibility, and harms of pornography. This is particularly true for children and minors. AI now makes it possible for any person of any age to easily create porn – and to be victimized by porn. In most cases, the perpetrators are boys and men; the victims are women and girls. Yet too few professionals who work with young people, and too few parents and guardians, are knowledgeable about these technologies.

School-aged boys, as frequently reported by the media, are now creating realistic but fake nude and sexualized images of their female peers. These forgeries are indistinguishable from real photos and so devastate victims and have driven some girls to suicide. They are so simple to make – there are thousands of easy-to-find websites – that any girl or woman, and any boy or man, is a potential victim. And with a few keystrokes, any person so inclined can easily become a perpetrator.

Another type of readily available AI technology allows users to create anime-like (hentai) and photo-realistic pornographic depictions of children and youthful characters. Although lifelike AI pornographic images that are indistinguishable from real minors are increasingly targeted by legislation, hentai images are especially difficult to control in the US without appearing to violate first amendment protections.

These are only two of the many types of AI pornography on the rise. The full slate of related products and technologies available online includes:

• AI-generated pornographic images (realistic and hentai)
• undressing or ‘nudifying’ apps
• Deepfakes
• virtual girlfriends or sexbots
• the metaverse
• sex dolls and sex robots.

This presentation will provide an overview of AI porn. It is aimed at parents/carers and professionals who work with children and are thus increasingly encountering these technologies and their harms.

Learning Objectives:

• Acquire a basic understanding of artificial intelligence (AI).
• Understand the different types of AI pornography that are used by and impact children and young people.
• Gain an awareness of the state of the law, especially in the US, regarding these harms, and the major difficulty in tackling some forms of AI porn (i.e., right of free speech).
• Gain practical advice for what to do if you find these types of images on a child’s phone/device

Taking a Public Health Approach to the Public Health Crisis of Pornography to Offer a Holistic Solution

Description: 

Since 2000, the internet has become the main vehicle for pornography, and free, violent, hardcore porn is just a click away! Many kids’ first encounters with online porn are accidental, but the proliferation of the smartphone, together with the growth of teen-targeted social media sites, has opened up yet more avenues for teens to access hardcore porn. Culture Reframed responds to this public health crisis of hypersexualized media and pornography by providing education and support to promote healthy child and youth development.  Focusing on the public health approach, this presentation will highlight how we assist parents and professionals who work with young people to navigate this precarious terrain of hypersexualized social media and pornography.

Over forty years of peer-reviewed research has shown that porn undermines the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical health of individuals, families, and communities.  These studies demonstrate the porn shapes how we think about gender, sexuality, relationships, intimacy, sexual violence, and gender equality. In the absence of comprehensive, porn-critical sex education, porn serves as the major form of sex and relationship education for millions of kids. Porn is teaching them that degradation, humiliation, and violence are central to relationships, intimacy, and sex.  We will end by discussing our research-driven online courses and resources for parents and professionals, including our new Sex Education with a Porn-Critical Lens Curriculum.

Outcomes of Presentation:

• Understand the public health approach to the harms of pornography as the basis for the development of CR’s courses and resources.
• Learn how to recognize and respond to the role pornography can play in sexual violence, unhealthy relationships, habitual use of porn, negative self-image, sexual dysfunction, depression, sexually transmitted infections, injuries, and other issues.
• Gain practical skills, tips, and strategies to address the harms of pornography with youth.