Reports & Summaries

It is unclear whether pornography is more extreme and violent today than in the past. What is clear, however, is that children’s access to pornography is fundamentally different from that of previous generations because of the prevalence of these materials on the internet. Explicit sex and violent still and moving images depicting rape, bestiality, the use of pain and humiliation are potentially just a few clicks away. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets and their use by children and young people to access the internet, often away from adult supervision, make it very difficult for parents to control access to these images. In addition, there is a significant problem of sexual bullying and harassment through children and young people sending personal, intimate images to others; this can have profoundly distressing consequences. This report goes some way to answering our questions about the impact on children of viewing pornography. Our request to the researchers was that they presented to us the unvarnished evidence, free from ideology. We know that pornography is pervasive and that a significant proportion of children are exposed to it or are accessing it.