We often come across RSE and PSHE resources which seem to have been written in the belief that ‘sex education’ means educating children about the types of porn that are available. We have seen pornography described as ‘harmless’, ‘fun’ and even ’empowering’. This is not backed up by the evidence.
We believe that good quality sex education should cover pornography, and should acknowledge that it is everywhere and that children may well have seen it. However it should also cover the harm that porn does, the way that its use affects relationships and both mental and physical health.
Here are some facts about pornography and how it effects children: we will be publishing these as a factsheet soon. In the meantime, please sign our petition to remove Childline and the NSPCC’s ‘WTF is porn?’ video from YouTube.
Porn – some statistics
2010:
An analysis of the content of porn films revealed:
- 88% of scenes included physical aggression such as gagging, choking, and slapping.
- In 94% of those scenes the aggression was directed towards women.
- Women were slapped in 75% of those scenes.
2015:
- 10% of 12 to 13-year-olds feared they were addicted to porn
- More than four in 10 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 in England said they had been coerced into sex acts.
- 22% of schoolgirls reported suffering physical attacks, intimidation from their boyfriends, including slapping, punching and strangling.
2019:
- 42 billion visits to Pornhub, up from 33.5 billion visits the previous year, or a 25% increase.
- 6.83 million new videos on Pornhub
- Average daily visitors to Pornhub: 115 million, up 15 million a day from the year before – this figure exceeds the combined populations of Canada, Poland and New Zealand.
- 2.8 hours of new content uploaded every minute/ 4,032 hours of new content every 24 hours/ 1,471,680 hours of new content uploaded in 2019.
- 77,861 searches per minute or 1,297.6 searches per second.
A study of teenagers’ porn viewing habits found that 75% of parents did not believe their children had ever seen pornography. However the majority of these parents’ children told the researchers that they had viewed adult material.
Rachel Fitzsimmons, a sex educator who speaks to school children, said on Women’s Hour that “nearly 100 per cent” of the boys she speaks to in schools have seen pornography and this is “how they learn about sex”.
Lockdown
Figures that are available for lockdown show a drastic increase in Italy, where Pornhub offered its premium service for free. Consequently, Pornhub traffic increased by an enormous 57%; 4.3% behind Spain.
Many children now have access to the mobile technology that Pornhub credits for this increase. According to an article written for the Journal of Clinical Medicine, mobiles are part of what is known as the “triple-A” influences: accessibility, affordability, anonymity. These factors have led to more online porn addiction.
Addiction
Porn addiction is on the rise and the latest neuroscientific research, published in another article for the Journal of Clinical Medicine, supports the assumption that the “underlying neural processes involved in addiction are similar to substance addiction” and this is because “behaviours, which are repeatedly reinforcing the reward, motivation and memory circuitry, are all part of the disease of addiction.”
Paula Hall is a porn addiction therapist and founder of the Laurel Centre. She writes that in the last ten years she has helped more and more clients addicted to internet porn and that she has “worked with students who have flunked their degree because of it.”
Teenagers increasingly understand they are addicted to porn. NHS figures, reported on Radio 4 Women’s Hour in 2019 revealed the number of teenagers in therapy for porn addiction had increased 228% in just two years, from 1400 to 4600. Sex and relationships therapist Miranda Christophers, in this interview, says that teenagers are looking for help because they are increasingly suffering from erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and female genital pain. She relates this to the use of pornography.
Damage
In her foreword to the 2011 ‘Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups‘ the Deputy Children’s Commissioner stated that:
The use of and children’s access to pornography emerged as a key theme during the first year of the Inquiry. It was mentioned by boys in witness statements after being apprehended for the rape of a child, one of whom said it was “like being in a porn movie”; we had frequent accounts of both girls’ and boys’ expectations of sex being drawn from pornography they had seen; and professionals told us troubling stories of the extent to which teenagers and younger children routinely access pornography, including extreme and violent images.
Sue Berelowitz
Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England
One GP told Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson, in 2015: “I’m afraid things are much worse than people suspect.” In recent years, this anonymous GP has “treated growing numbers of teenage girls with internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex.” Added to this, she says; “girls presenting with incontinence were often under the age of consent”.
These injuries are due to the increasing portrayal of anal sex in porn, which now includes extreme practices such as ‘rosebudding’ as standard. Journalist and campaigner Jo Bartosch describes this as “the term used in the pornography industry for anal prolapse, whereby the rectum is forced out of the anus.” To be clear, the effects are “excruciating pain, severe bowel problems and anal leakage.”
Rape and sexual assault
The BBC’s Panorama programme revealed that data from 38 police forces in England and Wales showed that in 2017 2,625 sexual offences, including 225 alleged rapes, were reported as taking place on school premises in the previous four years.
Research commissioned by UK Feminista and the National Education Union (NEU) into the experiences and views of students and teachers regarding sexism in school found that:
- 38% of secondary teachers are aware that students have been sent or shown pornography in school
- Over a third (37%) of female students at mixed-sex schools have personally experienced some form of sexual harassment at school.
- Almost a quarter (24%) of female students at mixed-sex schools have been subjected to unwanted physical touching of a sexual nature while at school.
Safe Schools Alliance believes that schools should tackle these difficult subjects via PSHE lessons and that parents should continue these sensitive conversations at home. We believe that PSHE should be taught in an age-appropriate way. This includes talking to children about healthy relationships, consent, and safe sex, as well as covering the exploitations inherent in pornography, how damaging pornography is to participants, how damaging it is to watch and that exposing children to porn is classified as non-contact child abuse.
You can write to your MP to ask for an update on age-verification laws and point out that just as we protect children from on-line gambling, children should also be protected from the dangerous influences of porn.
Childline and the NSPCC – getting it wrong
The NSPCC’s website defines showing pornography to children as ‘non-contact child abuse’:
It is puzzling then, why ChildLine – an advice line for children which is part of the NSPCC – has an online YouTube video that tells children that “porn is fun to watch” and “sexy to enjoy” and that it is great because “using your actual imagination is hard work”. It suggests a list of categories – including BDSM and hardcore – which they may choose to look up. The subject is covered in a mainly jokey and flippant manner, including when the presenter announces in a light-hearted way that porn is aimed at over 18s: “You are over 18, aren’t you?” [wink].
Between April 6th 2015 and 6th April 2021, this video had 3,181,991 views.
The existence of this video is even more puzzling in the light of the statement from Dame Esther Rantzen, director of ChildLine, who said, a mere six days before this video was put up, that children are “are telling us very clearly that [porn] is having a damaging and upsetting effect on them.”
It is unclear whether or not Childline expect this video to be used by schools, but given their reputation, schools may well believe that something produced by Childline would be appropriate for use.
Almost all children sexually abused in the last 15-20 years will at some point realise that the abuse they were subjected to could have been filmed and put on the internet. It would be completely inappropriate to show these children a film about how much “fun” pornography is. This video includes a cartoon image of BDSM (which may look similar to something they have experienced), jokes that “if it exists there is porn of it, and that’s not necessarily a good thing” while a cartoon of a young and upset-looking boy floats up the screen, and makes a joke about being over 18 using a young child’s voice.
A child who is being abused may hear children talking about the video in a similarly jokey manner because they have just been given ‘permission’ to treat the subject like that by the school and /or Childline. Some of these children will see a direct link between the porn that their abuser watches and what happens to them later. Some will be exposed to porn or to images of other children being sexually abused. This will not be a joke to far too many children.
If a child is contemplating trying to disclose to their teacher or Childline then their red alert ’not safe to disclose’ warning will have just gone off again. We are dismayed that Childline do not see this.
Please sign our petition to remove Childline and the NSPCC’s ‘WTF is porn?’ video from YouTube.